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Topic: My true Christmas List

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Posted by RonyWeissman on 12-24-2009
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Wish list;A mid-bass horn for my Altec 515-8G drivers operating from 100-600hz (it seems only Santa can make this for me)a new CD-player as my STuder A730 is kapputa collection of bruckner LPs (i don't have any!)a new listening chair to replace my IKEA nightmareand finally a trip to Boston to listen to Macondo doing Beethoven violin concerto/narciso yepes guitar/maria callas traviata/dvorak quators!Thanks for all the things I learn on this site, R WeissmanFrance

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-25-2009
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This is complicated as I usually get very pissed on Christmas. I very pissed that Christians have stolen my great holiday and attributed it to own religion.  I all my life celebrated last week of the year, it was wonderful holyday and I never attributed it with any religion, I do not observe any religion. Suddenly the Christians come to the scene and they name own God after my celebratory New Year Tree. Since then the world turned upside down and each meeting with official sad adult realty of Christians is a new and new blow into my unadulterated memories about Christmases. A Christmas in truth, the absolute truth, is a celebration of Santa Clause bringing the Christmas Tree and people welcoming a New Year. Why Christianity enslave my Christmas Tree and sticks own noise into the Santa Clause business I have no idea. The Santa Clause rides deer, heavily dressed for cold weather and brings Christmas Trees along with a lot of shit that people hang on the trees. Christ is from in Middle East, you saw a lot of deer and evergreen coniferous trees in Bethlehem, did you? Also, Christ was not able to be born on December 25 as everything was closed that day as usually. Hold on! The Chinese restaurants were open! Perhaps Christ was born in Beijing then? The socks with the gifts, the snows and white-bearded old man, the New Year resolutions – how the hell Christianity managed to initialized all of this. I remember that when I was 5 year old Santa Clause come our home and brought me a gift. I was so excited that I peed in my trousers – does it make me a Christian?

Well, whatever! As Albert Einstein once nailed a horseshoe above his door assuming that horseshoe might bring luck to somebody who does not believe to superstitions, I think I need to make my own Christmas List. In this country a Christmas list is very much the shopping list, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti so brilliantly mocked in his “Christ climbed down from His bare Tree…” So, what I would like to get on Christmas?  Ironically have no audio wishes – whatever I need I can get. What I would like to get in the  coming year would be just a quite house at a distance of just one speeding ticket from Boston, the one that that would have my 800 sq feet singe room with 25 feet ceiling (preferably cathedral ) and DO NOT have those needless 3.000 extra sq feet around my single room.  I would not need Christ’s help as I myself am perfectly capable to convert this quite new house into a wonderful Nerd Dwelling…

And of course the music. What I remember from the Christmas of my childhood that it was overwhelming Tchaikovsky, Russians played as it was no tomorrow, particularly the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker’s second act.  I remember that there were countless cartoons with different animals dancing around Christmas Trees under that Waltzs. Where those rabbits, cats, bears, wolfs, hedgehogs, pig, chickens and the rest of animals all Christians? Anyhow, I still love the Waltz of the Flowers tremendously. I will probably play  later on the Rostropovich take on the Nutcracker with Berlin Philharmonic or Knappertsbusch with Vienna Philharmonic. BTW, if somebody are in Nutcracker then do not miss the Mravinsky own version of Nutcracker from 40s – it is very non-Christmasy and it is wonderfully dark and gloomy. It feels more like under-snow symphony then Christmas Balet.  But who said that Christmas must be cheerful? The American Thanksgiving is a cheerful day, but how about if you are a turkey?

And of course there is no Christmas without playing the magnificent 2-piano version of Nutcracker by Martha Argerich and Nicolas Economic. The first marche from the Danses Caracteristiques, that is hardly sound like marche, arranged for double piano is “something else”. Does anybody else recognize in the 2-piano version of the marche the Sholem Aleichem’s satire?

XmasCat.JPG

The Cat


Posted by zako on 12-25-2009
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Funny how this time of the year brings childhood memories... Christmas for us came aroud 6th of January..Celibrated in exchangeing some gift or exchange of food or sweets.. To celebrate the birth of Christ,,, Nothing more,,,,, But what I would like to see this year is a picture of ROMAN BESSNOW him self., and not that beast of a cat that resides in his home,,,I have 5 cats and do not want to see another one of lesser pedegree,,,They could care less aboute audio.,,,I live 2 hours away from The St Louis Symphony,,and the St Louis Philharmonic,, Both grand old orchestras.......I miss Slatkin leading the orchestra,,He was at his peak,, I was the recording engineer for the Philharmonic for 19 years,,, And would prepair the tapes for rebroadcast on sundays,,On KWMU and KFUO  FM radio...  Now the stations prefer to broadcast SHIT TALK programs...How sad... But I am caretaker of all master tapes plus of others before my tenure,,, Another college friend Who recorded with me B Huffker and Hoekstra,, also recorded the St Louis symphony,, both now gone,,so a sad time now,,,     MARON,,ZAKO the cat

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-26-2009
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 RonyWeissman wrote:
A mid-bass horn for my Altec 515-8G drivers operating from 100-600hz

Rony, I think your wish to have mid-bass horn with 515G is a bit faulty. A mid-bass horn for 515G shall be 50-600 Hz. Let me to explain. The 515G has 37Hz resonance frequency, in practice 40-45Hz. That would make it a perfect driver form 55-65Hz horn. One would ask: why do not make 100Hz horn and just to cross it a driver higher. There are two answers. First: a need of use a high order high-pass crossover. Second: 100Hz horns is about 40” mouth but you have a 15” driver, so how low big would you do the throat? 10-15” of throat to 40” mouth is good but if you can go to 4-6” throat then you will have better EQ at 100Hz. You might not be able to go for 4-6” throat with 15” driver.

So, I feel that 515G is too good driver for 100Hz. I would look for much smaller driver. There are plenty people who did short horns around 515G, with full 15” throat and small mouth. They are not particularly good sounding solutions. The 515G is itself has good sound and might work very fine (I would say not fine but better then other crap I have seen) as direct radiator in short and wide horn but ONLY if you have a very small room. I would say 250-300sq feet it maximum. If you push this driver harder if bigger room then you won’t get good sound. So, you need the pressure was coming not from the driver exertion but from horn EQ. You need a longer form for it and a narrower throat.

The Cat

Posted by drdna on 12-26-2009
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This Christmas I wish for 100 hours in every day, so I finally have enough time to take the EAR phono preamplifiers, the second turntable, the tonearms, the capacitors, tubes and everything else and put it together. And maybe even fix up the secondary speaker system. If only I had won the lottery and could quit my job. Oh well, maybe I will buy a Christmas lottery ticket and put Santa's secret numbers in it.

Adrian

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-26-2009
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As I said I do not truly have any audio Christmas List. If I move I will build my midbass horn but with all honesty if I move and will not go for midbass horn then it will be little difference. With my current understanding of sounds I am very confident that I will be able to get the sound I want regardless what topology and equipment I will be using.

What I would like to accomplish in next year is to found some kind enterprise that would allow me do not do the shit I have being doing now for the next 20 years. This year I have a number of my friends retire and they had VERY difficult time financially. It did not look good and I get me scare in way and I would like to have some kind of operation that would produce amore or less constant cash flow to help pay bills juts, “in case”.  I do not need a lot of money and I would like say $5K per month with a condition that I would not spend more than an hour per week for this operation. I need to set up something like this. The next year I will take some time from my normal work and will look into the “buffer business” very attentively.

Tt would be nice to retire all together. I have a book that I need to finish sometimes to write (already over 20 years! Soon I might loose interest in it) and I have 2 great ideas for film scripts (both are music-related) that I would like to look deeper into.  The only problem is that the older I am getting is the more stupid I get and less able for the creative things….Well, I think it is the name of the game…

Posted by Stitch on 12-27-2009
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My wishes:


- Post in Forums from Morons, those who pray in front of their components, those who look for price tag first, all those who go on the nerves of others with their nonsense:

  They can post their message, they can view their messages, but God deletes their "messages" in the display from the readers

- "Reviewers" and "DIY" who have absolutely no idea from what they write about should get a looooooong nose ( Pinoccio-Nose)

- "Reviewers" who are corrupt should looser all Hairs and should get the long nose, too. And VERY fat ears....

- Manufacturers who have absolutely no idea from "High End" should get fat and ugly.


The world could be so wonderful....

Posted by zako on 12-27-2009
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Roman,,, May i call you Roman,,, I have had only three jobs in my life,,The last one lasted 30 years, Retirement is a living hell,, I still dream of that goddamn place,,  Please finish the book,,If it dont sell,,write another,, Films is a whores business,,Its a rat hole to pour money in..  If I lived in Boston I would be banging on your DOOR,,, IS IT FINISHED YET ???? Like The POPE Banging on the schaffold of Michealangelo to get the Sistien Chapel finished..  Dont make me come up there...

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-27-2009
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 zako wrote:
Roman,,, May i call you Roman,,, I have had only three jobs in my life,,The last one lasted 30 years, Retirement is a living hell,, I still dream of that goddamn place,,  Please finish the book,,If it dont sell,,write another,, Films is a whores business,,Its a rat hole to pour money in..  If I lived in Boston I would be banging on your DOOR,,, IS IT FINISHED YET ???? Like The POPE Banging on the schaffold of Michealangelo to get the Sistien Chapel finished..  Dont make me come up there...

Well, this book is in a way a biggest failure of my life but I learned to sell this particular failure to myself as “normality”. Sometimes I do not know where I would like to navigate the characters and events, and sometimes it takes to me years to recognize where it shall be.  It is not finished yet, it is far from finished and at this point I have no idea what even would constitute the “finish” state. I would disagree with you that film score is whores business – it is all depends how you perceive it.  I have no interest or knowledge about business part of films business. To me it is more interesting that certain spiritual things might be rendered by visual expressionism.  In fact the way in which I see my films it is not pure films.  The 1940 Fantasia was a film of not?  Anyhow, I do not no see myself to do anything with my film ideas but I like to think about them…

The caT

Posted by zako on 12-27-2009
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Roman,,,, you dont know where any thing will end up... i was involved in a small film,,,Concerning the First Mercury space craft,, With ALLEN SHEPARD,, They (NASA) wanted a anamation film to be broadcast over TV while Shepard made his suborbital flight,, It was only 5 min. long showing take off,, seperation,,reintry,, Parachute deployment and landing in the ocheon,, This film was done in advance and ready for first flight,,,  That film is  now in the SMITHSONIAN,, Along with other artifacts I have done..  To me it was a insignificant piece os shit...But now its in the museum,,, So please dont think your work is unimportant...  This Forum is a good example of your compilation of good and bad of things come to pass of music,,     Maron/zako

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-27-2009
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 zako wrote:
Roman,,,, you dont know where any thing will end up... i was involved in a small film,,,Concerning the First Mercury space craft,, With ALLEN SHEPARD,, They (NASA) wanted a anamation film to be broadcast over TV while Shepard made his suborbital flight,, It was only 5 min. long showing take off,, seperation,,reintry,, Parachute deployment and landing in the ocheon,, This film was done in advance and ready for first flight,,,  That film is  now in the SMITHSONIAN,, Along with other artifacts I have done..  To me it was a insignificant piece os shit...But now its in the museum,,, So please dont think your work is unimportant...  This Forum is a good example of your compilation of good and bad of things come to pass of music,,     Maron/zako

Well, I would not argue it in this thread, as the thread is more about Christmas wishes. I would just says that I disagree. Regardless how good or bad was your experience or the experience of others with the film industry I still feel that there is no significant difference between a painting, a book or a film. All of them are communication events of reflected reality.  Sure, a film might be “Avatar” or “8 and 1/2”, it is all depends what kind intend and objectives are loaded into the film. In my thinking a good script is no inferior in complexity or creating to any other artistic forms. In fact the way how I see the subject, it is much, much, much more complex to compose it to work in the way how I would like it to work.  Anyhow, I am one of those who feel that if Mark Twain or William Porter (O’henry) would be alive today then they would be writing the latest News from Lake Wobegon or the script for the “Golden Girls”.

The Cat

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-28-2009
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 zako wrote:
I live 2 hours away from The St Louis Symphony,,and the St Louis Philharmonic…. How sad... But I am caretaker of all master tapes plus of others before my tenure.
Zako,

do you have any interesting performances in those taps the you feel worth to share? The St Louis Symphony nowadays under David Robertson. I have some of his recording from San Francisco and he might be very good. I n past it was Leonard Slatkin, Walter Susskind and Hans Vonk. Did you guys have interesting guests? I less heard the St Louis Philharmonic…

The Cat

Posted by zako on 12-29-2009
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I remember one live performence the St louis Symphony did on the Mississippi river front,,( Summer Concert) Slatkin,,Of Carmina Burana,, Concert was going fine,,Till the Soprano hit high C,,Nothing came out,,She grabbed her throat,,Hit a lower note and gained recomposure and finished the song,, I have that on tape,,Later,Slatkin said to me, can you fix it???  Later as a joke i spliced in a FOG HORN,, For a replay study,,,The Soprano laughed,,I gave her a copy,,,     But the best Carmina Burana was with Hans Vonk,,We did a Video plus audio recording,,Shown on NPR,,, This was a joke on Vonk and some of the orchestra members,,, The Baratone singing as he staggers through the orchestra,,acting drunk,,some times sitting on musicians laps,,all in perfect pitch and not missing a note,,It was halarious..     I also loved the St Louis Philharmonic,, They loved a Party after every concert,,Insisting On a tape playback ,,,Drinking and listening till three in the morning...   All master taps are sealed of all concerts and need the writen permission of president of orchestras involved,,They are pretty strict on any distribution..  I have the tapes under special climate control vault,, Some times other conductors Have me pull a tape for study,, But they do not get a copy,,  I am converting some performances to CD for FM playback,,Only..       Maron/Zako

Posted by zako on 12-29-2009
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You mention ,,,What interesting GUEST ?  ,,,RUDOLF SERKIN,, One guest concert ( St Louis Symphony) playing one of the Beethoven piano concertos...He asked me where he could audition a BOZAK Concert Grand  speaker in St louis,,,, I set up an appointment the next day,,

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-31-2009
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 Romy the Cat wrote:
music. What I remember from the Christmas of my childhood that it was overwhelming Tchaikovsky, Russians played as it was no tomorrow, particularly the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker’s second act.  I remember that there were countless cartoons with different animals dancing around Christmas Trees under that Waltzs. Where those rabbits, cats, bears, wolfs, hedgehogs, pig, chickens and the rest of animals all Christians? Anyhow, I still love the Waltz of the Flowers tremendously. I will probably play  later on the Rostropovich take on the Nutcracker with Berlin Philharmonic or Knappertsbusch with Vienna Philharmonic. BTW, if somebody are in Nutcracker then do not miss the Mravinsky own version of Nutcracker from 40s – it is very non-Christmasy and it is wonderfully dark and gloomy. It feels more like under-snow symphony then Christmas Balet.  But who said that Christmas must be cheerful? The American Thanksgiving is a cheerful day, but how about if you are a turkey?

I decided to go for a complete ballet. I have many versions. I heard a few Dorati Nutcrackers with London Symphony Orchestra, Minneapolis Symphony and with somebody else but I found on my shelf a sealed album with Dorati leading Concertgebouw. I do not know the history of this recording but I do like it and it is way different then what Dorati did with other orchestras. It is on Philips, Netherland pressing. Judging the Concertgebouw sound and recording style I guess it is from 60s. I have my things that I would do differently with this ballet but all-together it is a wonderful performance, not as cheesy as him Minneapolis and not as cold-stoned as him with London.

The Cat

Posted by RonyWeissman on 01-01-2010
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yes the nutcracker, I should have put that on my x-mas list as I only have two versions : markevitch philharmonia and rozhdestvensky highlights with bolshoi.  I'll order the mravinsky if I can find it on GEMM.R Weissman

Posted by ArmAlex on 01-02-2010
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I'll be more than happy if an "audiophile" Santa Clause could show me DPoLS of my speakers!

Armen

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