Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Peter McGrath

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Peter McGrath is a recording engineer, photographer, and longtime advocate for high-fidelity sound reproduction whose career has spanned more than five decades. He has worked extensively with organizations including Harmonia Mundi, the New World Symphony, and Friends of Chamber Music. In addition to capturing performances by leading orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and vocalists, he has also served for many years as a Director of Sales at Wilson Audio, acting as a key voice for the company’s approach to music playback and loudspeaker demonstration. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

tetragameter. Given the nature of how I record more so perhaps than most, because Rick, I have always believed in minimal micing, which means that I'm sort of using the sound by positioning instruments relative to each other, by position to try and get a balance with a pair or maybe four mics or whatever, but as minimal as possible.

So therefore, how they're interacting with each other and the room becomes an incredibly important component. A lot of times with multi-miking, you can minimize the effect of the room. You just go in close and, God forbid, even add a room to it later, you know, vis-a-vis whatever DSB you want. But my approach is borne out of maybe ignorance or simplicity, but it's what I've always done. If musicians are used to playing in a certain position, but the recording would benefit from them being in a different position. How do you approach that? If it's a, in a concert situation, I try not to mess with it.

Because the primary purpose of they're doing what they're doing is for them to be comfortable in the concert setting. And I don't want to get in the way of they're doing what they do. So I have to make decisions about altering my technique of what mic to use or where to put them. I just did a recording of the Jerusalem Street Quartet. Normally I would do things with a pair of spaced omnis, because they give me a beautiful sense of air,

but they were really, really, really tight. And the room was not a good room. And so I went in, Rick, with an AKG, a C-24, which is a classic blue-blind mic, and I almost put it inside of them. And when you hear the playback, it's like they're right here. Yeah.

There was no room to begin with. The room wasn't additive in that case. Yeah, exactly. It was not additive. And frankly, in some ways, best ignored to minimize the effect of it. And that's a totally different sound of a String Quartet

than typically I would capture in a great room. And sometimes they sit a little bit too close of an arc. I might ask them to expand the arc if they are comfortable. And if not, I'm fine with that.

I'll deal with it because they're not there to serve my recording. They're there to perform. In a recording session, however, we could spend hours moving people around because I'm chief. Yeah. You're going to have to figure out how to do this because I need you there. And typically, that's how we did it. I mean, we did a Messiah, handled Messiah, Robina Young, my producer from Harmonia Mundi, with the Philharmonia Baroque from Berkeley and chorus and organ and soloists with two mics.

Wow. You would never guess that it was done that way. But it was a question of doing it, you know, making it work. And I think today singularly remains one of the most beautiful messiahs. It's on Harmonia Modi. And it featured a wonderful soprano by the name of Lorraine Hunt, now known as Lorraine Hunt. Lieberson. And years ago, I don't remember how many, we were doing a project with the Philharmonia

Baroque, with the conductor Nick McGegan, who is now their conductor of merit. That's how far back this was. But he brought along this beautiful woman who wanted to be auditioned by Robina Young, my producer from Harmonia Mundi, and she was a former violist, but she was a former violist, but she also happened to have a talent for singing. Little did we know the level of that talent. And Nick, the conductor brought us and said, we finished our session.

We were at Lucas Skywalker. We finished our session. We had a few hours left. And Nick said, do you mind Rubina? I'll play the harpsichord and just let her sing. We'll sing a few handle pieces. And Peter, make sure you left the tape roll, you know, because I was doing analog tape back then.

And I did. And she came out and started singing. and Robina's partner, Renee, he's very typically French. No, no, Peter, we have a dinner reservation at Chapanese and we don't have time for this. And Robina says, no, no, no, Nick brought her here, we're going to listen to her.

And I sort of said, I'd love to hear her too because she was frankly, stunningly beautiful. It was just so I was influenced. And she started singing. And all I remember Rick was about a minute and half in, I had to restrain from leaning over the tape recorder so that my tears would not fall on the tape path.

Wow. Then I look over at Renee. His eyes are streaming with tears. And Robina has this incredible smile of discovery on her face. It was just the three of us in the back there. And that was Lorraine Hunt Liebertson. And she went on to become one of the greatest singers of our time.

We lost her to her. too early. Then she went on way beyond us. She was seeking for everybody. She married the son of Goddard Lieberson and she put out an album of songs by Neruda. She was breathtaking. And people who know of her consider one of the greatest. And then we did to handle Messiah with her. And it was a challenge only that we didn't know if we could actually make it work with just this purest approach, but we're able to do it. And she just drives this thing to the highest possible level.

And yeah, that's one of the great, great experiences of my life recording an artist of that level. Can we listen to that? Yeah. Okay. I found this. This is the Messiah. Lorraine Hunt.

This voice, forgive me if I start crying when I hear it. Two bikes. Was that recorded in front of an audience? Yeah. And then I have the commercial one. which was not, but we did a concert, and then we did the record. Is it ever a problem with an audience

in terms of the sound? It bends sometimes, but it's part of the real thing. It's part of the real thing. Actually, my recollection with Lorraine, we took that whole aria in one take. Wow. Yeah.

And the reality is that when I started my record label, in 1979, my partner in that label was a gentleman by the name Julian Krieger. And I had the pleasure of recording people like Leonard Shore, Ivan Davis, Earl Wilde. The last recordings that Earl Wilde did

was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. And the reality was that Julian and I came from the approach that we're dealing with masters. We're not asking them to record something they probably haven't performed 200 times in their lifetime. We would rather that they not rely on editing. Obviously, if something had to be cut, we would cut, and we were doing this on tape. You know, scissors and splicing and actually cutting the master, the 30-IPS master,

and taping it together, not, you know, some edit point on a computer. And so we encourage them and discourage them from doing a lot of retakes. Or we would do, like, a whole movement and pick them. the best of the three whole movements that we did. Because we felt that it was more musically legitimate. And the ones that we worked with came to rely on that. And they actually, it was not easier for them, but it was better for them. And I think that resulted in recordings that more realistically approached a musical event

rather than something that's pastished and put together that would never been able to exist in real life. And that was the approach that Julian had, and I couldn't have agreed more with it. And so, now, sometimes some of our actual commercial recordings might have an occasional slip or a wrong note. And we left it in because to go in and correct it, Julian and the artist would agree that that would destroy that kind of spirit. There was the momentum that was already happening. And the humanity in the recording. It's a human playing an instrument. It's real. And if a piano bench made a noise, so be it.

You know, it was okay. And our recordings, the label is still in existence. Unfortunately, we lost Julian last year. I had a partnership with it for 40 years. He was by closest friend. He married Elizabeth and me. His wife was a judge. She actually performed the ceremony.

So it's how far we go back, you know. And his organization, Friends of Chamber Music, that organization still continues in Miami. And I'm now helping with his sons to continue. continue to drive it. And I'll be recording all their recordings as long as I physically can. So this is the thing with the, I reference where I put the bike inside of the Jerusalem Street Quartet. Again, they were fairly tight in a circle. This is not a great hall. But tell me if you don't think that they're here.

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slash tetra. Do it today. Explain to me about time alignment both from a recording perspective and from a playback perspective. That's a good question. The time alignment here, this mic by the way, which was designed by

AKG, I think in the early 60s. It's a vacuum tube design. And this is what subscribes to what's called the bloomline technique, which means that the two capsules are in virtual coincidence. The capsule is what's called a figure of eight, but they are precise coincidence with each other, and they are opposed at 90 degrees. So the left channel is this bottom, capsule looking over there, and the right channel is the top capsule looking over there. In one mic. In one spot. They're literally physically within millimeters of each other.

Inside the capsule, there are two microphones aimed at 90-degree angles. Exactly correct. Left and right. And that is considered in many ways the classic stereo approach, meaning that you don't have any time delay, you don't have any cogging effects, any kind of cancellation. you're capturing essentially the essence. In that regard, the time alignment is essentially what the microphone is doing. Now, in time alignment of the playback, which you're achieving here with Andrew Jones speakers,

and we work very hard to do that on our Wilson speakers, is that as the various frequencies come out of the various drivers, you want all of those frequencies to be arriving at your ear in the same time sequence that the record, actually captured. He has done this very cleverly by using a dual concentric driver so that the time alignment is essentially done. So the high-end, the tweeter is inside of the mid-range speaker,

the rest of the driver. The full-range speaker. Yeah. So this is a two-way driver, and the high frequencies are coming, along with all the other frequencies, are starting at the same place and time, so that there's no smearing of the various frequencies arriving.

And this, method limits it to one two-way speaker essentially. Precisely, exactly, which is clever the way he's done it. He's mastered this. Yeah. He's a very bright guy. He knows what he's doing. Absolutely.

And it's very difficult to make drivers at work this effectively. Yeah. The way Daryl and David, Daryl Wilson, David's son, have always done it, is using bigger drivers, more of them to achieve a more expansive approach, but to be able to physically move the drivers relative to each other so that the ictus, the actual start of the sound, by moving it forward or backwards, it's like a lens. We can change the focus of the lens. Understood. So that if you wanted to sit 10 feet further back, we could adjust them so that all of the drivers give you the sound as if it's coming to one point. And that happens physically.

It's not a rendering. It's a physical fact. Yeah. So the speakers are essentially in separate boxes In separate boxes, in different places. And then we can move them forwards and backwards, independently of each other. On our biggest model, we could actually get the timing down to almost four microseconds. Wow. And the idea is to mimic what the microphone does, to make the speaker a point source. Now, not many recordings are made the way the one you just heard. There's a lot of time smeared, but that's okay.

You don't want the speaker to be adding. And many times the time smear in the recording is part of the artifact of the process that could be very delightful. You know, it gives you the sense of depth, that it gives you all of the other wonderful things that delight the ear when you're playing back reproduced music. What's kind of interesting, Rick,

is that I feel very privileged to have been involved in the aspect of music reproduction both in terms of capturing it and also in terms of how to reproduce what has been captured. I by no means a recording engineer of great training or a speaker designer. I don't profess.

I'm an interloper between these two incredibly massively complex technologies. And there aren't many people who have done that. I mean, most engineers, because it's a daunting process. You know, their job is to make recordings. Yes. And by the way,

One of the things that attracted me to David Wilson was David Wilson, first and foremost, as a recording engineer. I didn't know that. Yeah, he started as a recording engineer. He started with purest principles, two microphones. I'll tell you a wonderful story about that is that I was working on my graduate degree in photography, which is what I've studied. I was in 1971.

I was in Chicago and attending the Illinois Institute of Technology. where at the time they had the finest graduate photography program in the country. And I went there to study with Aaron Siskind, who had just left to teach at Rhode Island. And I was really upset, and they got in this character that I'd never heard of before to be the chief teacher for the incoming year. Fellow by name of Gary Winnegrann, who I'd not known. And you know how life can be? You have expectations of one thing.

Well, Gary came in, and he became the greatest influence of my life. Wow. We would spend time listening to Mozart Arias together. If you don't know who he is, he's, I think one of the greatest photographers of the 20s, Gary Wintergrat. He kind of, he took the genre of basso to another level of street photography and had a profound, and again, simple techniques. One camera, one lens, how you approach the world, you know, and no modification of the image, just translate with the negative capture into a print, you know. These are sort of the guiding principles of how they overlap in the world of recording and making images. Because after all, you're capturing events and you're trying to reproduce those events.

In both cases, you're a documentarian. Exactly. I think I am, yeah. Although I don't have a real narrative. I let what has been documented be the narrative. Yes. I'm letting people bring their minds to see the story that has been captured. Absolutely.

And not addicted. Well, all the information is in the recording. It's there. It's there. And words that you attempt to apply to them sometimes can weaken it. So I'm suspect of that. You know, always have been. Anyway, I was working at a high-end audio shop while going to graduate school. And this character wanders in one day. He had beautiful wife following it. He walks in. Back in the day, Rick, people walked into hi-fi stores with a stack of LPs that they wanted to hear. So he came in with half a dozen the LPs. and he announced that I'm in the market for a stereo pre-amp. I have everything else. I just need a good pre-empt. The store was working was a precursor to what later became known as high-end audio stores. They didn't exist back then, although this one was run by two gentlemen.

They both had doctorates in musicology, and their training of me and my wife was, here are tickets to the Chicago Symphony, second row balcony, and if you don't show them to us as having been stamped, don't bother coming back. That was your education. That was my education.

To work in the store. To work in the store. It's to attend the symphony. Train your ear. Listen to what sound is. Become passionate about it. That's how they started me. And that was really back in the day,

that's what audio was. How old were you at that time? I was just coming out of the university. I went to the University of Notre Dame. I would have been 22. I worked through college as an audio engineer doing recordings. That was my college scholarship at Notre Dame. So I'd been exposed to the technology and so forth.

But so I kind of knew my way around it and had a natural proclivity for it. I actually got off on a tangent than another tangent, but I'd like to go back to this guy came into the store with a bunch of records and wanted to buy a pre-app. And so I played him three different things, and he finally selected one. And it was an audio research, S-P-something, rather, of that era,

one of the very first ones. A tube pre-empt. A tube-designed pre-hap. He took the pre-amp home, and I'm at work at one night, and I see him carrying it. And he walks in the door and sees me and says,

oh, no, Peter, it's not what you think. I said, okay. I wanted to show you something. Wonderful. I hope you like it. So he puts it down on the calendar. Whips out and screws you every takes the cowling off.

Look inside. There's a green card, these green card holders that were part of the original thing. Reaches into his shirt, puts it a card. It says, this preamp is now exactly what it was when you sold it to me. Oh, okay. Now, I'd like to show you what I did to it. I said, well, you got to understand, it's no longer under warranty. I said, I get that.

I get that, not a problem. He puts the card in. He says, now this is what I was actually after it. And I have to confess, I wasn't really looking for a pre-amplifier for home. You see, I'm starting a record company, and I've been shopping the world for microphone pre-empts. And the thought occurred to me that none of them can be as good as the world's best photo pream. But the problem with photo is the RIAA, which is an equalization for the cartridge. So when I put this card in, it has the RI.A.

When I take this card out, put my card in, it bypasses all of the circuitry of the RI.A. And I now have 60 dB of gain. of the most beautiful DB of gain. So this will now become my microphone preamp for the start of my recording company. That was David Wilson. Wow.

I didn't know him from Adam back then. He didn't know me from Adam. And a thought went through my brain. I said, this guy is someone I have to know. And I will follow him. Yeah. And it turns out we hit it off. We became friends.

He moved to California. I moved down to Florida to start my audio file. store. David then started his recording company, and then we met up again at high-fi shows. He had these little tiny triangular speakers that he was showing his recordings, because that's what he was selling. He had an organ, chamber music, various ensembles that he

actually did some beautiful choral recordings at Trinity Cathedral. But what really struck me were the little tiny speakers that he was playing. And people like me started to say, Dave, you should maybe find a way to build? Oh, no, no, no. That'd be way too expensive. No. No, there's so much that I have to put into them. And then Cheryl, his wife, said, you know, Dave, there might be an opportunity for us. They went through three bankruptcies. Then he got to a point where he no longer made recordings. But he came from that background, and that's unique, is that his whole goal was to make speakers that reproduced recordings that he made.

Yeah. And that he knew intimately. and many of them involved his wife singing. So it was one of the things that really attracted me to him and him to me because at that point I was starting to make, I got very serious. I also had the degree in photography. I'm still now that the kids are gone

and I've become very seriously involved in it again. And one of the joys of working for Wilson is I get to travel a lot and I get to photograph a great deal. Yeah. And wherever I go, I have my camera. But back, In the mid-70s, when I was getting serious about making recordings, it was Mark Levinson

who posed the question to me. He said, Peter, do you want to be a master at what you do? I said, yeah, of course. We all strive to do the best we can at it. He said, well, what kind of credibility would you have as a photographer if you did know the the first thing about what goes on in the dark room. And all you knew about was looking at pictures and looking at other people's pictures and so forth.

He says, in order to really understand the medium that you love so much, you have to understand the process. And he said, the same applies to music. If you want to capture music, you have to not only know about the playback, but you have to become intimately involved as a master with the process of capturing it in the first place. That struck a chord with me, literally. So come with me. And then for two years, I accompanied him on all of the recordings that he made while running my store. Then I ventured out and I started doing more and more local recordings. This is before I started audio

fond records. Then it got established. But I also started doing recordings for friends. And one of the loudspeaker manufacturers that I loved back then was a company called DCM. time windows. And Bob Waterstripe was based in Ann Arbor, and his father was involved with an organization called Something or Other Burlch Orchestra of Ann Arbor. And Bob engaged me to come up with my stouter and my microphones to record a full performance of all of the Bach-Brandenburg concertos. That was my first Burlke Orchestra that I had done. I did the record. I did the record. Back then early days of CDs, I was able to burn CDs, and I sent the CDs made from the tape to everybody I could think of,

and I had heard that there was a Harmonium Mundi, which was a company that I thought was a pinnacle, because again, all their recordings were minimally mic, beautifully done, and I sent the CD to a woman that I'd heard was going to be opening up the offices for Harmonium Mundi USA. Her name was Robita Young. name was Robina Young. Two months go by, and I never, you know, I figured, it's nothing, you know, then finally the phone rings at the office and this is Peter McGrath? And I said,

yes. The one that recorded the Philharmonia Baroque, you know, the orchestra, said that she went out to say, I must tell you, it's easily the worst performance of the Brandon Berg's I've ever heard but the most beautifully recorded. Would you work for me? It was that simple. Amazing. That was the basis of it. And she had no idea who I was, but like all of us, we make decisions. There's the evidence.

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And stay salty with element electrolytes, L-M-N-T. When you tell the story of David Wilson as a recording engineer and bringing these triangular speakers, historically in recording studios, the speakers in the recording studios are not good speakers. Historically not. And it's understood that there are these Yamaha NS10s with toilet paper. Or a standard in every recording studio. Absolutely. And the reason they were the standard was they don't sound good.

Yep. Yeah. Well, David's position was he wanted to know if he was capturing what he heard. Yeah. But it's a revolutionary idea because in the recording industry, it was never about the playback. It was always about the recording. Absolutely. And for a long time, I made it a point to only use the same monitors that I would have in a recording studio in my home to be in tune with that.

Just keep in sync. But it was not a good idea because I never got to hear music sound great. Yeah. And where the exception that I found was typically the one I worked with the most, and as closest to, of course, is Bob. I sold them as speakers. As we got to know each other over the years, when I went through my divorce and sold my business to my employees and my former wife, I was ready. I was done. I didn't want retail anymore.

And I mentioned photography. ordered by mentors was another photographer by name of William Eggleston, and he had a, or has, a very talented son, who was a fantastic cabinet maker and loudspeaker maker. And I actually became a dealer, the old man, I won't utilize my son speakers. I said, all right, you know, I'll be happy to. You've been such a kind person to me. Any way I can help it. I heard William the third speakers. And when I left my business, I joined him.

And I put him on the map. Unfortunately, like many young starting companies, he brought in an investment group, didn't understand. And we both quit. And that's when Dave Wilson reached out to me, said, come join me. It was wonderful. And the way he did it was he had a pair of our best speakers,

which was called the Andra, the Engelston Andra. Andra. Had him set up. He flew me up to Utah. And he had just developed the new Wat Puppy Six. Because I was competing directly with that. Because this is the same bill quality same category. And he had those there.

And said, Peter, now, you know those speakers, probably better than I do, set them up as best you can. And I'll set mine up as best I can. And now you listen. And as the old saying goes, if you can't meet him, join them. That's how I joined.

It really was wonderful, and it was like coming home. Wilson really stands apart in the hi-fi world. So many of the manufacturers are small mom-and-pop shops, and they make limited runs of small things, and they're very interesting things. And very good things. And if you go to a high-fi show, you'll hear hundreds of amazing sounding systems. But it feels like Wilson is the only one from that world

that has transcended that world, and now it's considered, I want to say, the standard of high-end audio. It certainly is, and we're 51 years doing it, and I've been fortunate to be involved in at least half of that time, which is great. Actually, longer than half,

because I knew it before it even started. And I met and became a very close friend of day before Darrell was even a twinkle in the father's eye. You know, so that's how long I've been involved. And we're very fortunate. But reality is, is it, yes, it comes from Dave's mind, his singular dedication. And, you know, he stopped recording because he says, I can't do both. I can't do both.

And I've decided that this is what I really want to focus on. And he also jokes, he said, plus I got you around, Peter. Which is one of the reasons. And he encouraged me to keep doing it. It's what you do well. And you serve my company extremely well as well because of what you do as a recording person. It's to my benefit as well as yours. And also the added benefit is that I can still flourish in my own way as a photographer.

Yeah. A tip off to me about Wilson was when I first started going to high-fi shows, I would go and see, you know, 200 different systems. Sure. And in most of the rooms that had the best electronics of all different kinds, they all chose Wilson speakers to show their equipment with. Yeah. We were fortunate, and I helped play a role in that, but so did Dave, because of the credibility that he had as a recording engineer. And a lot of electronic designers felt that this was a standard. I'll also add that we were known, particularly the early days, for being a complex load.

to drive. And if you could make our speakers sound good, you're building a damn good amplifier. You're building a good pre-app. You're building a good turdable because our speakers will reproduce the rumble, whatever. You know, that we would provide a challenge

and a fulfillment at the same time. And therefore, we were pretty good tool. Plus, we got to be known as essentially neutral, meaning that we would serve any kind of music, whether it be pop, whether it be rock, whether it be a solo violin, or whatever, it would reproduce those things, and we could become a very good, one vacuum tube manufacturer.

He said that we are the ultimate design tool for him. To try and design his amplifier without us was a bigger challenge that it would be with it. So Wilson is a traditional cone speaker. Has been, and for the foreseeable future will likely remain. Tell me about the other types of speakers, strengths and weaknesses. Sure. My start in audio, I'll tell you, we were living in Chicago and I interviewed for this high-end store because he came into another store that I was working at that sold Bose, sold Mac,

sold JBL, all of the stuff. And he came into the store with a pair of headphones that he wanted to sell to our manager, Stacks, electrostatic headphones. And the manager said, play him for that kid. And he'll tell me what he thinks of them. And David brought the headphones over to me. And I had to connect them to an app and I listened to them. I said, these are amazing.

But, you know, I don't think this store is geared. He said, well, at least you have ears, you can tell. I said, yeah, I aspire to be involved in this business and many other things. He said, well, my offices are about four blocks down the street. Why don't you come in for an interview? Maybe we could use you. Fine. I show up for an interview with my wife, and David is standing there in the hallway and beginning of the store.

He's talking to me about what they do. They're principally an import company. Back then, they were importing products from England, Saks headphones from Japan. We imported the first Linn-Sondek turntable in the country and so forth. But he's telling me all of these things that they do and this and the other. and I'm getting more and more irritated with him because from the other room, someone is playing the Sarabod for Bach Suite number three.

Excuse me, Mr. Shooks, but can I go see who's playing the cello in the other room? It's, oh, yeah, be my guess. And I walked around into it. It was a pair of quad speakers. It was tortellier playing the box suite. So it's the first time you ever got fooled by speakers thinking it was a musician in the room. Precisely.

And it was a come to Jesus moment for me. I mean, at that point, I realized, this is frightening, but this could be my fall from the horse kind of thing. And I pulled up a chair and just continued listening. And probably for the next 10 years of my life, I own those speakers. Now, how do those speakers work? They're a different design.

Pure electrostatic. What does that mean? It means that it has, and the speaker, by the way, It was designed. It was called the Quad 57, because that was the year that the speaker was designed. Wow. Yeah. And it was the first quad electrostatic.

Where's Quad from? Huntington, England. Unfortunately, no longer, now they're made in China. But the company still is based in Huntington, I believe. So it's a thin, milar film, and two larger ones that would produce the lower frequency. Then another panel in the middle with again mylar film with three sections two of which were mid-range and then the tweeter section but those are crossover in the speaker that would divide their frequency So they're flat they're not a box no box at all flat with no boundary in the back either

And so it radiated sound equally both in front and back and what drives it is a Forgive by layman terms I because I don't really know that as a high voltage grids of on either side of it, and depending on the alternating current coming from the amp, the bilar diaphragm, which is plated with a chemical, would be attracted one way or the other, and it would vibrate. An almost massless diaphragm responding to the electrical impulse of the signal. And to this day, they still remain. The limitation, however, was dynamics. They can't move a lot of air, but for what I experienced that day,

and for almost a decade beyond, that was music to me. It reproduced the sound of a violin, the sound of a human voice, but with clear limitations, you know, but nothing that I'd ever heard, while speakers could play louder and go lower, nothing gave me the beauty that was intrinsic to that, until Dave Wilson came along. But the surface area that was producing the music

was much larger than a traditional cone speaker. Absolutely. That was the difference. It was possibly that. Plus, as you said, no box. No box. There was no enclosure. And the enclosures had coloration.

Did Quad invent that electrostatic? No. The founder of Quad was a genius by the name of Peter Walker. And like in many industries, his son then carried on to the next generation. I had many stories about that. My teacher, Gary Winigrad, for example, as I told you, we listened to Mozart arias when I was still working at the store, and I was still taking classes. Gary became addicted to the quads, as was I. You know, he'd come into the store, and we'd listen to music together.

He was Hungarian Jewish, and I remember vividly Gary would, you know, Peter, you know what's so beautiful about Mozart? Mozart is about singing, singing, you know, the way he pronounced. And, you know, he's right. Everything beautiful was heard of song. Lyrical. And these goddamn quads make singing more beautiful than anything I've ever heard. So he became it. And then the time went on and I was still working at the store.

And I called him, I said, Gary, I got good news. I got bad news. What's the good news? Somebody traded in the quant system. Really? Yeah. The bad news is it's motto. It's only one.

Followed by a long pause. Then Gary said, you know, Peter, at this point, I'd rather listen to one quad than two of anything else. Wow. Amazing. That was his line, and he bought it. Yeah. And they're still in production today. Well, that model, of course, no longer is.

The company was acquired by a Chinese company, and they're made in China, and they make a bigger one now, a brand new one, which is really quite good. And what they have done in their modern design is they use what's, called a concentric delay, meaning that the impulse goes to the outer panel, and then in concentric delay lines, it resolves to a single point so that it mimics a single point. So that's how they deal with a large panel, radiating sound, but it reduces, it pinpoints the image. It sounds focused. Totally, totally focused. Again, though, they're limited. I mean, they can't begin to approach what we do dynamically. I mean, I couldn't play a piano on a quad at a realistic level. the way I'm used to playing it now,

or even a voice letting loose or a Mahler symphony, you know, which I love. And that's where, to my knowledge, nothing can beat cone designs. What are magnopans? Magnopans are similar. But instead of being a thin,

electrochemically coated, magnopans are, again, a mylar diaphragm with wires attached to them. So kind of like a giant voice coil. running up and down the extreme of the magnet pan. And that is purely magnetic, magna-magnetic panel. And so it's a purely magnetic system,

although magnet pans of recent vintage combined and is still magnetic, instead of being a panel for the high frequencies, they will actually have something that approximate what is called a ribbon. And what is that? It's the inverse of a ribbon microphone. I'm sure you've encountered,

ribbon microphone, you know, which is a corrugated, thin thing in a magnetic field that the acoustical energy vibrates the ribbon. It's the reverse. You put an electrical signal into the ribbon inside of that magnet, and it creates just the inverse, typically used for tweeters. How do Martin Logan's work? Martin Logans are electrostatic combined typically with a woofer in a box. I see. What is still unique to the quad, in my view, is, again, the idea that it attempts to replicate a point source. Martin Logans, however, are large panels radiating the same sound everywhere, which I couldn't mix on that.

I couldn't recreate the image that the mic captured. It would give me a great sound. For the same reason, I've never been able to use magnet pans in a professional way to mix on. Wilson's replicate what the microphone captured in a, unique way in much the same way this does, you know. And the idea of imaging in reproduced music is an artifact, but it's one that's treasured. And if you're really good at recording, you want that replicated. Because you're deprived of the visual component. You can't see what they were doing. But if you can, closing your eyes and having the speakers reproduce where this vocalist was relative

to that one, where the drum set was behind that, and where the drum set was behind that, and where that is, that's magic that you want. And I love it. And speakers can do that, you know, good ones. Plainer speakers do it in a different way, but not to a way that satisfies my sense of expectation. Not anymore. Not anymore.

Well, actually the quads, even the early quads did it. Because, again, having the bass panels outside, the mid-range inside, then the tweeter in the middle, it was pretty much time aligned. And there was a speaker version of that that I made in conjunction with Mark Levinson in the late 70s and early 80s where we took two of those quad 57s, stacked them. And then in between we added a ribbon tweeter. And then on the bottom we added a 24-inch Hartley woofer. Wow. We called it the H-QD, Hartley Quad-Deca, because the ribbon was made by Deca.

Yeah. And that was triplified. And I established a reputation back in the day of selling those. I sold over 30 pairs of those around the world. And I flew all around. Do they sound good? They were spectacular. Yeah.

To this day, I continue to run into people at events, whether it be in Europe or they said, I wanted it to your store and I heard the HQD and that's what got me addicted to music reproduction. I've never forgotten that experience. Today, that experience we convey with a speaker from Wilson called The Wham. And when people hear that, they'll never forget that experience of listening to music through something that does that. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class template.

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This, I think, was performed in 1992. Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. the conductor was James Judd, who was the music director and remains to this day one of our closest friends. And I recorded it in one of my early recordings in Surround.

You won't be able to experience that, but what James had done was he had put the brass section up in the balcony, part of the brass, children's chorus on the two sides, and the main chorus on the front along with the orchestra and the soloist. Wow.

And when you hear it on my system at home, played back of the way it was recorded in the 4.0, you're in the hall, and these things come at you as if you were there in that sense. But nonetheless, it's a beautiful, beautiful music. I'll just give a few seconds of it. So that was 1992. Now we'll jump to 2025.

There's a group called Seraphic Fire, which is based in Miami. They've released many commercial recordings, which I've not recorded. I just do their concerts. It's a choral group. Well, they actually mentioned the name of the organization. This is sort of their premier piece, and it was performed in their 25th anniversary concert.

It's just beautiful. How many people were on stage? I think there was probably 25, and obviously the guitarist. That was it. This is a lot of fun, and what I'm about to play. This is an excerpt from the Copeland Clarinet Concerto. And he's studying with Nadia Boulanger. Moulanger in France, as many American composers did

in that early part of that century. And her advice to him was go back and sort of focus on music of your country and so forth. And specifically, she was advising him to do jazz. So he wrote to a clarinet concert and it was dedicated to Betty Goodman. It was the bleeding guy. So I'm just going to go into a little bit where

he has this long cadenza. The clarinetist is a fellow by the name of Alex Fitterstein, who is a major musician. And thank God, he stepped up after my friend Julian passed, and he's now become president of the Friends of Chamber Music, and he's going to help us keep it alive. The orchestra, in this case, is a Russian orchestra that was on the tour, and he performed this with them.

What an incredible recording. Oh, thank you. It really does sound beautiful. It's a Russian orchestra, an Israeli Jew on the clarinet, doing the music of an American Jew, Copeland, reproducing blues in American blues. It is such a coherently beautiful way. I mean, talk about universality of music.

So beautiful. Yeah. Wow. It's breathtaking. Yeah, it's a great, great performance. There's a long tradition of reading sacred text, slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo, and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection, listening, and attention.

For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom, not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as Lectio Divina. Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements, reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage, is read. A single phrase is held. Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief, guided, scriptural reflections throughout the day, to begin with intention, pause at midday and wind down at night.

The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there, now and always. Learn more at Lectio365.com.

Next is something, sort of strange. This is a group led by Michael Tilson Thomas, small group from the New World Symphony, which is based in Miami. And I recorded them for the first, 15 years of their existence. I was on their board. In fact, I was on the committee

that helped bring MTT to Miami many years ago. But this was recorded in the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, because I flew down there with them one year to be with a strange piece. So cool. The composer is Doherty, I think, Michael Doherty. But the idea that you've got this American orchestra comprised of music students,

there are people who completed their graduate, studies, but then they come together and join this ensemble in Miami called the New World Symphony. They sign up for three years, and Michael leads them, and he brings in guest conductors, principles from all over the world to teach them. And right now, it's interesting, and I'm proud to be a part of the New World Symphony. I don't know if the statistic, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of all members of American orchestras that are under the age of 50 came from this ensemble. Wow.

Great lineage. So the idea is that you go here, you get polished, you've got your doctor, you've got your masters, but then you come into this so that you can get a job. So it's really quite a beautiful thing. So beautiful. I love it. Here's another thing, very recent. It's just a Psalm by Frank La Roca.

It's just a classic Psalm 22. Just recorded in a beautiful church in Miami. There's a famous folk song, I think it's Carrie Fergus, Irish Folkaw. And Benjamin Britton did a variation on it called Oh Wally Wally. And the singer Paul Appleby, he's accompanied by Ken Noda as a pianist. But the singer, Paul, after he performed this, he came back stage. I was practically in tears because it brought back memories. When Elizabeth and I were coming together years ago, we'd been listening to a lot of variations on this particular song. And he said,

You know what, Peter? You know why I performed it? He said, my wife now of 10 years, I sang this at Juilliard, and she was at cellist, and she walked in while I was singing it, and she started crying, and we're now married. Wow. But his voice is just beautiful. His name is Paul. Appleby, he's now part of the Met Opera. Beautiful. They're lovely. This I recorded 30 years ago, more in 1990. It was a Christmas concert in Miami, in a cathedral.

And the brass ensemble was the then Empire Brass, which were at the time, one of the best of the world. And Rolf Smedving, the principal trumpet, There are a couple of things that are interesting about this. Rolf, before they started this track, he went down to the audience and he said, I need a percussionist. From the audience. From the audience.

I need a percussionist. And there was this beautiful, cute little maybe eight or ten-year-old girl sitting on the edge of the aisle. I'll take you. So he brought her up and he handed her a triangle. So that was a percussionist. So the timing is not exactly perfect, but it's just so the spontaneity of it. And then in the middle of the piece, he was fairly far back, and then he walked up and stood where the microphone was and then blew into it. And these speakers could probably handle it, but let it be loud because it's just amazing what the consequences of that are.

Then it goes into an organ and then it goes into a chorus. It's really quite a fun adventure. Percussionist. That's Rolfs Medving, the best trumpeter at the time in the world. Now he walks down, stands next to the mic. This is fun. I'm going to now go to, we're back to the Hermitage. Again, it's the same intensity of beauty,

especially in the cello. That's fabulous. There's an interesting story on the next one. Possibly the greatest gamba player in the world is Jordi Seval. And he's the leader of a group called Hesperion 21. He was married to a great, great singer. And he came and performed in Miami. And I recorded him two or three times in different concerts.

Then he came one time. I had my mic set up and he was going to perform a solo gamba recital. And he saw the mics as he walked in. And he saw me and he walked over to me. He said, you know, Peter, I'm so sorry. but there are some things going on in my life. I really don't want this concert recorded. I don't want to explain it,

but I just don't want this concert to read. And I said, okay, you know. But he said, please stay. I want you to hear what I have to say in music, but I don't want it recorded. And it was at a new hall that had just been open in Miami, designed by Frank Gehry. And Michael Tilson Thomas was there

because it's his hall for the New World Symphony. And he was sitting there with his part, And so Elizabeth and I went up and sat with him. And during the performance, I saw Michael almost crying. Again, tears coming down. And when he was finished, he said, it's a pity, Peter. You did record it because that's some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard in my life. I said, well, next time.

And so we're walking out and he's there greeting people. And he turns to me, is Peter, I promise you, the next time we're together, you will record. Well, two weeks later, his wife passed. She was dying of cancer. So he was going through this. About eight months later, he's back in Miami with his big group, the Esperion, 21.

And it's a big event because there's percussionists from Latin America, there's singers, there's all kinds of early music. Andrew Lawrence King was on the harp was one of the great rogue harpists in the world. I mean, it was a stellar star. event and I'd set up, I've been setting it for two to half hours, you know, anticipating where I had to put things.

And finally, just as I'm finishing up, the manager comes over and says, who are you? I said, I'm here with the tropical borough of society, I'm commissioned to record. It's not in our writer, not in our contract. You cannot record. You know, I said, well, I'm here to do that. And at that point, Yordi comes in carrying his gab, but, He sees me, puts Gamba down, walks over and embraces me with tears in his eyes. I said, it's so great to see him.

And, of course, I knew what he'd gone through and everything. And the name of the manager's name is Pedro. He said, but, you already, I have a problem. Pedro says, I cannot record this. He stares at me. He said, come with me. Put his armor on my shoulder and the two of those walk up. Pedro, this is my friend Peter.

If he doesn't record, I don't play. There's so many things that I've had happen like that, where it's about the relationship. It's about whatever you can establish. I mean, I recorded a wonderful pianist circuit, Rudolph Circuit, one of the last recitals he gave in Miami. He came to play the last three Beethoven sonatas. And I went over the previous afternoon while he was rehearsing.

I introduced myself. I record concert events in Miami, and I said to him, I'd like to record your recital tomorrow night. He said, why? I said, well, I think it should be recorded. He smiled and he said, I do too. Do it. That was it.

So I'm addicted to that, you know, more so in the past, because it's a lot of work. But back then I had a little stella, Vox 15 IPS machine and 2B and K. Mike's and I got it. And it was really beautiful. I've never done anything with those recordings. They exist. I don't know what to do with them, but it was some spectacular play.

One of the great, great Beethoven pianists of all time, doing three of the great sonatas of Beethoven. So anyway, I've been blessed, you know, to capture. Let me give you a little excerpt of Yorti's concert. It sounds like your mics are inside the kick drum. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Actually, it was sort of this flat thing. He was holding it like this, and bang it with a... Wow.

It was amazing. This would get back to Michael Tilsen Thomas with a brass ensemble of New World Symphony. Also, the Teatro Colon, wonderful. And the Teatro Colon, to do that, to bring kind of a blues thing there. Interesting that those are classical musicians playing jazz. Young classical musicians. Whereas in its day, that music, was played by people who only played that music.

Exactly. And this is classical musicians interpreting a foreign thing. There's so many crazy mixes of it going on. There's this whole world of music going on beyond the mainstream. So much of what we hear in the mainstream is all the same. Yeah. You know, it's also interesting. And I don't know where to what to attribute this.

But as I mentioned, I was involved from the very beginning with an organization called the New World Symphony. And the idea was, is that when we first started, we'd go out and audition people. And again, the groups were anything from people either freshly out of undergraduate or even those that have already just completed their PhDs as trained musicians. And every field, whether be violist, pianists, a few pianists, but mostly strings and brass and so forth. In the first year or two, we had to struggle to find. enough because we'd have a hundred people.

And the idea is that they'd lived in the institution, a hotel on South Beach, for three years. And every year, a third of them would move on, and another third would come in. In the beginning, I can't remember what the number was, but we had to recruit. Today, to audition those 33, I think we have over 5,000 applicants.

Wow. Every year. Every year. And, you know, what that speaks to in the classical world, there is no shortage of qualified, trained musicians who've chosen to make this their profession. Irrespective of the reality that, you know, that there isn't music trained in the schools and so forth. Rick, you see as I'm sure, in every field of music is that there's more people who desire to make it a profession. and their opportunities to make a living at it, you know.

But it's a good thing that despite the fact that it's not a part of the curriculum as much as I would like it to be, it's still a part of life. And there's no shortage of people who aspire to it. And that's a great thing. Whether they get jobs doing it or not, they will always have a passion. They will always have a need. and there will always be an audience at the very least, if not the creators and makers of it.

Has the model of that orchestra been adopted by any other places around the world? There are other youth orchestras, but very successful ones. Claudio Abado, my dear friend James Judd, managed that orchestra for many years. And there are music institutions, but none that have quite what the knowledge

New World Symphony does. Michael has retired from it. He has unfortunately a progressive cancer, which may take him any time. And we have a French conductor who's world-class, who's the head of it now. But there has been no one else, anywhere else, that modeled it, to my knowledge, I may be wrong. It's so interesting, though, because it sounds like it's a new model that's working. Yep. It does work. Fortunately, it's also funded well. I think the principal is

Ted Harrison, who's a friend of mine, who was the founder of it, he had his wife, Carnival Cruz, which is based in Miami. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that would have been the kind of sponsor it would have. Yeah, but it is. And along with a lot of local sponsors in Miami,

I'm not on the board anymore because I just don't have the time. And I don't have the money. Board members, you know, what I contributed as a board member was recording. Yeah. Services in which gets me to another stage of my life in terms of what I've been involved in. For 15 years, I recorded the Florida Philharmonic,

for 10 years I recorded the New World Symphony, for the Friends of Chamber Music, I recorded for the last 20. What I'm getting to, Rick, is that I have an archive of digital recordings. All my analogs were lost because they vacated the world. warehouse where they were stored, which resulted in a lawsuit, which we fought with for years.

But the reality is that I now have, and Elizabeth could attest to this, our house is a storage facility. But the problem is that all of the recordings that I made were made when you recorded to tape. Whether it was on a dat, whether it was on an alias, ADAT, whether it was on my Nagra, which I recorded for over a decade, more than a decade and a half, I have master tapes, which are on tape. And at my age now, and I'm still working, I don't know when or how I'll ever get them transferred to a file. Because, as you know, tape can only be transferred to a file in real time. Plus, you have to have the working machine that can do it, which Nagra no longer repairs the Nagradi, and mine is aging. It's a conundrum because by age, I don't know if I'll live

long enough, and yet they represent a legacy of classical music reasonably well recorded, in some cases very well recorded, in some cases not, but, and not only of the orchestras that I worked with, but, for example, I have a recording on play next, Gergev, the conductor, doing pictures when he brought the orchestra from St. Petersburg to Miami. And those are things that I recorded. I recorded all of the visiting orchestras, the LSO, the Orchestra Nacional de Paris, all of the visiting orchestras where they came in.

And if I wasn't traveling and I was in town, I'd record it. In many cases, for National Public Radio, for broadcast. I was kind of the stringer back then. But again, those recordings of which I have probably a couple of thousand, Wow. And I have no interest in monetizing it in any way. I just wanted to continue to be accessible. Of course.

To people who might have interest in experiencing some of what, almost everything I play there is on a tape that I have personally already done. And they're good. They're good recordings. I mean, I've listened to a lot of the archives that orchestras have had. You know, it is done with two mics on a grubby machine and limitors or whatever. But these are good recordings. Yeah, yeah.

They're probably better than anyone else's recordings. of these groups. I would say, in all honesty, I'd say you're right. So somehow, I hope someday to find a way to achieve that goal. For sure. You said you were going to play Gurgief? Valerie Gergev. He's a conductor.

I was supposed to record him in Palm Beach, then he's going to perform in Fort Lauderdale, then he's going to perform in Miami at our new concert hall. And I said, NPR has asked me to do just one. Oh, Peter, can you do all three? I'd love what you do. And I did. Great.

So it was very interesting because I recorded all three using the same mic technique in surround. So that you have one of the great orchestras in the world performing the same music in three different venues with the same technique. So that what you're hearing is the difference in the hall with the surround. Yeah, I have those files. So this is really a big orchestra. Isn't that amazing? Single point bike, that's it.

Amazing. You don't need 20 bikes to do it, I mean, if you can do it, you can capture it. One of the issues I do have with digital is not the sound, but how the technology is implemented. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So you use it the same way you would record on tape.

Yeah. It's a storage device. That's all it is to me is story. Yeah. And the techniques that I adopt are what I always did. So no digital manipulation. I honestly find that the minute I engage in equalizer, the minute I engage a compressor, the minute I manipulate the digital data, even reverb destroys it.

Yeah. All I want is ones and zeros, ones and zeros, and everything analog, this end and that end. Yeah. That's it. Nothing else. that there aren't, there's good equipment out there, what it probably speaks more to is my ignorance of how to use those tools.

But if someone had... It works in your favor. I think so, because if someone had in me, Rick, a compressor or an equalizer, I wouldn't know the first thing to do with it. Often the limitations end up being a real benefit. Well, thank you. And I think that's it. And it allows me to focus on trying to do my best to not feel I need it.

If I could correct the problems by not allowing to have occurred in the first place, then I think I'm better off. Now, admittedly, there are halls that I've in that are so dry. I wish that I could sweeten it, but every attempt I've tried with reverb, but it just makes it sound artificial to be. I'd never use them in the analog world anyway, so I found that they work for me in the digital world.

When did you first come in contact with Anonymous Four? That was with Harmonia Mundi, and we made their first recording it was called a Lady Mass and you know what at the time, I don't know the figures now but you may remember the three tenors album that came out

our sales of that recording were second only to that recording which single-handedly and sold more than any other classical recording of the history of time. I had the number two record of all time. That's where I first learned of you. I bought that recording when it came out.

Oh, really? Absolutely. I love it. That was done again with just the Shep's Fear, Two-Channel Mike. Another really fabulous recording that I'm so proud of is the Mozart Horn Concertos with Nicholas McGeech and then the Philharmonia Baroque. We did that session and it was in a church in San Francisco and we had just completed it. Thank God we got the last takes. when the head priest of the church came rushing it, why are you all still here? I've got a mass.

Never am I going to allow you back in here. That was it. We'd done like four records in that venue over the years. We loved it. So I'm back in my office in Florida, and I get a phone call, one of my salesmen, who was a deadhead of all things. As to say, hi, sound components.

Who's calling? Mickey Hart? I know. Who are you? Who's really calling? And the guy said, my name is Mickey Hart. I'm in Miami. I'm on tour, and I have a vital pressing.

And I was told to go to Peter's store to hear it so that I get an idea what it sounds like. Oh, oh, I'll get Peter. So it turns out it was Mickey Hart. So Mickey comes to the store. We played on a turntable, and it was one of his percussion drum things. He saw my studer in the office.

I said, oh, you record? I said, yeah, let me hear some of your stuff. And so then I played him, I said, but we were just chased out of that church. So that's the last thing I'll ever make in that church. Really? He said, you know, I've got this new studios, Lucas, Skywalker, and I'm very close to George.

Let me put in a good word for you, you know, to see if I can get you in there. And he did, and he followed up. You know, you never believe that's going to happen. And he called back, and he got to. us in. Great. And René and Robina dropped everything. They flew up there to see it. They said, Peter, this is heaven. So we don't need that church anymore. And from then on, we did about 15 recordings at Lucas. Fantastic. And we were the first classical group to ever do anything

in that place. Thanks to Mickey Hart of all people. Amazing. The world is, you know, so full of these wonderful chances that you get. Tell me a little bit about the changes you've witnessed in audio playback from those days till now? The sound has not improved or changed all that much. The means by which the sound at its best has indeed changed dramatically. I was not involved pre-serio. So I've always been in the stereo now. And by the way, for the last two decades,

I've been recording in 4.0 Surround. Because my goal is to capture not just what's in front, the sense of behind, not putting instruments behind, but the hall. That's part of the experience of being in it. But the big changes, well, obviously the technical shift was going from analog to digital. How big of a change is that?

And what's good about each? Well, I think up until the early 80s, I was recording with the state of the art analog. And by that, I mean it was a highly modified, studer tape recorder, 30 inches per second, half inch and quarter inch, two tracks. The machine was designed and developed by the Mark Levinson company. In fact, Mark trained me in that machine, and he trained me in the microphones that I used. And I actually accompanied him for years on different projects he was doing, and typically two microphones. That's kind of where I got my

dogmatic training from him and a lot of other engineers that I've had the privilege of knowing and loving. Anyway, I started actually for Harmonia Mundi when I was still recording in analog when I work with them. But I started using digital as backup, started carrying around dat machines. Also, back then we had recorders that would record straight to a CD. You know, you could bring the analog signal you're feeding to your analog machine and then straight into that. And clearly they were not the equal of what I was getting out of the analog machine. But as the technology started to evolve and the digital started getting better, there were some areas that I felt that the digital recorders, whether it be a Sony PCMF1

or whether it be devices that would allow me to go beyond 16-bit. My first serious digital recorder was a machine made by Nagra. It's called a Nagra D. It was a four-track recorder, although you could use two tracks to double the sample rate, and so you could record up to 2496. And this is in early, I think, 92. Does that mainly used for film originally?

Well, the original analog nagras were. I see. But they came out with a digital recorder, which was for field music recording. And by far, it was the best thing at the time. It was a bit expensive. But I bought one of the very first that came into the U.S., along with a lot of my people that I knew. My mentor, Jerry Brooke, actually brought that one to my attention. He's regarded by many.

He's one of the greatest recording engineers of our time. And Jerry is, thank God, still with us. But I started with the Nagra, and there were tradeoffs still with the best of analog. But one of the things that really impressed me, you know, and back then, what was the end result going to be? Was the end result going to be a record, or was it going to be a CD? You know, and at that point, I was mastering all my records with Bob Ludwig, who to this day were still very very. very, very close friends. And in fact, a funny story about that

is when I brought my first in 1980, it might have been 1981. Bob was at MasterDisc in Manhattan, and I brought my tapes up, analog tapes, to cut our first records for audio fun, my label. And I listened to his stouter, playing the tapes back, and I thought, this doesn't sound right.

I'm not sure what it was, I can't remember. I said, Bob, what I really want to hear is what my tape sound like played on my machine because that's what I heard. And I said, yes, I'm going to come back. And I brought my machine up from Florida. And we listened, and indeed it sounded different through the playback. But how are we going to cut this?

Well, Bob came up with a crazy, insane idea, which is we put the feed reel by my tape through his machine. and then have it go over to my machine, running continuously. And we'd adjust the variable speed on his machine so that they were precisely the same. So his machine would provide what's called the preview for the mastering. My machine provided the signal

that was actually cutting the record. Had that ever been done before? Never. Or since that I'm aware of. So all of my records were actually mastered off of the same machine. that was used to make the recording. Beautiful.

It was unique. And unfortunately, those LPs are, well, people are paying over $200 or $300 a copy for the LPs, you know, if you could find them. And we did them for over 10 years that way. I was a bit difficult to work with because I was a bit of a fanatic. But what I did note was, and one of the things that helped me transition from analog to digital was that I don't claim to have perfect pitch, but I do think I have very, very successful. sensitive to wavering pitches.

And I specialized in piano. And one of the things that bothered me, not so much in the tape, but certainly in the LPs, was that LPs were adding a vibrato that didn't exist. There was wavering and pitch, particularly on long, sustained chords, like you hold a list chord where it just drops for 10 seconds down to it. Well, that wasn't in the recording.

That wasn't the piano doing that. When you'd listen to that backup tape on digital, none of that was there. The pitch was right, steady, and constant. Number two, Bob, on my recordings, on analog, I was recording at 73 dB dynamic range. 73 dB signal the noise ratio reference to 3% third harmonic distortion. Well, that's great.

But you can't cut that. Too dynamic. And so Bob would very graciously sit there with the score at his hand on the level control, they're writing the game. Yeah. But when we took those analog tapes and cut CDs from them, none of that was necessary. We had the dynamic rage.

So arguably, I already started to see the daylight. Of course, there is this world that's still very much. much infatuated with analog. But the reality for me is that at best it's a compromise of the original recording. And I'm finding now that with the quality of digital playback, even the little DAC in that Hegel is spectacular. And the DCS is, I mean, the technology has moved so fast. As a person involved in recording, I would have to say that I do have a big problem with much of what's being done today in terms of digital versus analog. When people say they love vital, well, I do too, but only if it's a true analog vital. I see no value, no matter how much you

spend on a turntable or a cartridge or a tone arm, and taking an LP that was cut from a a digital master. I see no value in that. I'd rather listen to the file on a really good deck. I haven't been convinced that playing an LP cut, it may sound more pleasurable to somebody, but my brain can't accept it. Yeah, less accurate.

That's it. Because what gives me pleasure is fulfilling what the microphone captured. Tell me about solid state versus tubes. I adore tubes and solid state. At home, I listen with a tube design pre-amplifier, I have solid-state amplification, and have had that sort of combination for years. And the reason I love what tubes do is that they are accurate,

but the harmonic structure just is to be more pleasurable. And what you need then is the accuracy of the solid state to provide horsepower to that beauty. What about tube microphones versus... A good question. Again, it comes down to the design of the capsule and the electronics. But by and large, I use solid state. One of the issues that a lot of engineers have told me is that it's a valid one.

When you have 100 people up on stage and you're paying for that session and suddenly the tube microphone starts to develop a hiss because the tube is failing, you're doomed. So that really is one of the justifications of the, going to FETS and various, it's essentially reliability. I mean, a good case and point is that Neumann offers their vintage tube mics. You can still get the tube, but they make the solid-state version. And I like both.

The microphones that I use predominantly, though, were made by Joseph Grado, the fellow that developed cartridges and headphones. And Joseph, in his later years, well, I knew him from the 70s, but in his later years, after he sold a company to his nephew, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, I think it was, and he called me and said, I've got a microphone, I developed, I want you to hear it, and I went up, I heard it, and I acquired six of them. Wow. And they account for about 90% of what I record today. It's an omnibike. It just doesn't sound like anything. It just sounds like the sound that's going into it. Period. Period. That's all I want.

So I'm wedded to them. And they're Omnis. And using Omnis presents challenges because of the nature of how they gathered the sound. I remember there's a wonderful engineer by name of Tom Jung, one of my heroes. And he also embraced the microphone the same way I did. And I remember setting up for a string quartet

using those mics. And my phone was buzzing, and I answered, Hi, Peter, it's Tom. calling to tell you that Joe just passed at 91 or something like that. And it just hit me like a, and then I was thinking, I couldn't be doing a finer tribute to him and to be using his microphones today. In this moment. In this moment.

It was perfect. Yeah. You know, it was devastating, but it was what I do and what he did. And he enabled me to continue doing what I did. Tell me a little bit about Mike placement. Does it start with you walking around the space and listening, or is it more of a mathematical equation? I'm fortunate in that the halls that I'm privileged to work in,

I've been using for decades. So I pretty much know what I want to get out of that and the instrument that's in it. And it's mostly a mechanical formula that I've worked out in terms of spacing of the omnis, if I'm recording a piano, if I'm recording a street quartet, if I'm recording a choral ensemble.

The biggest challenge I'm having and enjoying very much is I'm recording that large choral ensembles with orchestra and soloists and different churches. I'm really loving that. That gets a bit more complex. Yes. Going from old analog recordings to making a high-res today,

are there any best practices or things that you would do to get the best version of an older recording. Wow. Now, when you say analog, are you talking about tape? Yes. Tape. Absolutely, yes. Get a really good, properly calibrated tape recorder and get the very, they play at line level, not through a console,

the straight out of the machine, into the analog input of the very, best A to D converter there is. This cleanest possible single-fad. What are the choices today? Wow. I'd avoid workstations. I just, we're talking two channels, so we don't need anything more complicated than that. There'll be one coming very soon. Tell up my name of Bob Stewart. He's developing a new A-to-D converter. He should have it in a few months. And it's chip-based. Do they keep getting better and better? Yeah, yeah. But he said, and he's right, A to D. People have been pushing the D-DAs because of the consumer market.

But the A to Ds have been pretty much static for years. Right now, I think merging technologies make some of the better ones. They're very popular. But take straight a signal path out of the output of the analog to that and do it whatever you're poisoned, whether it be DXD or 19224 bid. Well, tell me about the different resolutions available in high-res. Yeah, I think that the higher the bit rate, obviously, the better is going to be. So DXD, I used to be a big fan of DSD.

But the problem with one bit is, in my view, is it's impossible to work with. You know, if you want to do, even splicing, editing, you can't edit. It has to be converted to PCM and then back again. That's my primitive understanding. I'm not gospel on that. And I found that PCM with higher bit rates have gotten better. I mentioned my friend Jim Clark. You know what he got his Ph.D.?

He studied with Tom Stockham, the guy that invented digital recording at the University of Utah. Wow. And Jim maintains to this day that Stockham made a big mistake. He should have gone to one bit. And so Jim will listen to nothing but DST. But it's crazy. Anyway, no, but I think today, to this day, I think that the high-rate PCM is a way to go.

It can be processed if you have to. Have you ABD 88 versus 92 versus 190, whatever the different options are? Yeah. Is more always better? No. No. Back in the day, I recorded principally at 882

only because the end product would be a CD. and it's easy to do the math, but at 192, it's very complicated. I see. And I thought that the end result might not be as good. But if I'm not making anything that's going to go into that medium, I would prefer either 96 or 192. And the difference between 96 and 192,

I honestly, my ears are old. I can't hear that at this point. I think there's a little more fluidity, people that I trust, Morton, who's from 2L records, he's possibly the best recording engineer alive today. He claims that he can hear

all the way up to 356 as a difference, you know, or whatever that top is happening right. And he records everything at DXT. He insists that it sounds better. Who might argue with that? I don't know. But in terms of what the tools I have, also given the bandwidth of the mics I use, you know, that presumes he had microphones

and have bandwidth of 200 kilohertz, you know, to get a benefit, I don't know. Although the allegation is the higher you get the glassy filters more out of the way of the audible, you're better off. But I think for home music lovers, you're hard pressed to hear much beyond 2496. Maybe I'm wrong. It could be sacrilegious, but...

Tell me about the electronics in speakers. Uh-huh. We as a company, Wilson Audio, all our speakers are passive. But we do make everything that's in the speaker, including we wind our own coils, we wind our own inductors, and most importantly, we fabricate in-house our own capacitors.

Wow. Darrell got a call about six, eight years ago from the company that was making our capacitors in California, and the guy says, I'm 84 years old. I'm ready to close it out. I'm ready to retire. Darrell said, do you mind if I come with a couple of my guys

and take a look at your factory? And he did, we bought it and moved everything to Utah. And we've since developed what they were doing and taken it to levels beyond. So we make all our capacitors in-house. What are our first-order crossovers?

The first order is typically 6 dB slope per octave. Second order, I think, is 12. Third order is 18. I'm not sure. I may have that wrong. But the higher the number of the order, the steeper the slope of the crossover,

the means the cut up, both up going and downgoing. First order is considered the easiest to get the phase correctly. At Wilson, we don't have a specific order. I mean, we basically... Whatever's needed for the...

Whatever works. You know, it's all about listening, not just measuring, but actually hearing, because the nature of the slope can alter the timbre of things. And Daryl's view is a continuation of his father. Basically, we refer to our tweeters a coherent synergy, tweeter, meaning that it's not what it does as a tweeter, but how well it mates with the driver below it.

I see. That's synergy. This is what we're looking for, is the blending of the drivers. And then we can move them in the time domain. We can correct that physically, but it's the timbre we can't change. And that's a big, big thing, is getting that sort of synergy between the drivers. And I'm really pleased that we do that. And it comes from, you know, I started, like I say, with quad,

electrostatic panels that had no enclosure, so the enclosure material was irrelevant because it did need it. But that planar diaphragm was about as light as air. and it was really quick. And so it's a question of getting pistons connected to paper or plastic or, for example, we still don't use diamond. We don't use beryllium. We don't use any of those things. The reason being is, as David said, I listen to them.

And our highest grade technology at the present time is still something that's been around for 30, 40 years, soft domed silk. You know, for example, in Twitter technology, the obsession is, particularly going to to diamond or beryllium is how far up it'll go. But David's concern is look at the tweeters' dynamic capability at its lowest frequency. How loud can it play at the bottom point? And since we're using essentially one tweeter, it has to be a tweeter. And David always believes that Daryl continues that our crossover point from the tweeters typically in the one-killerhertz rage, which is used.

usually an octave and a half lower than anybody that would use a diamond or beryllium. Why do we do it? Because it allows us to get a better transition to where the meat of the music is, you know, in the mid-range. Hence the term coherent synergy tweeter. It's not how high it'll go, but how beautifully it blends. And our high-frequency resonance with our current tweeters around 24, 25-killerhertz. So it's adequate to say the least. Covers what you. How different do the speakers sound depending on the electronics driving them? Well, I'll answer that question by saying this. When I was a retailer and I was not involved in manufacturing with loudspeakers,

the best advice I always gave to any client was make as big an investment you can in the speaker because it is ultimately the foundation. to the extent you can make the room good, do what you can. But I'm opposed to room treatment in the classical set. For example, there's not a stitch of it. This room is fabulous. You don't need no sneaking room treatment in here. You've got that bookcase that acts as a diffuser.

You've got these beams on the ceiling. You've got solid walls. Equally important, you have openings that allow the base to not build up. If you went into my living room, it would be more like this one. than any so-called sound room would be. Tell me about speaker placement in a room. That is really a critical component. My mantra to people who sell our product is

they're only as good as the guy that installed them. The reality is that when you're dealing with a speaker that has essentially minimal cabinet resonances is as pure as can be with no coloration in the loudspeaker, then the real big remaining challenge is what is the room doing to it in terms of the residences of the room? And you want to find the spot where the speaker engages the very least the gremlins of the room, the room residences.

Yeah. And that's really the argument. So typically further away from any wall? Sometimes, sometimes, though, but sometimes you go into other components of the room where further away from the wall, the room has all kinds of echoing effects. I see. That could be more color. That can be mitigated by moving the speaker closer to the primary boundary.

There's no given answer. You know, we have not a technology, just a methodology called the WASP, Wilson Audio Speakerplace, that we've even published, but we trade all of our salesmen stringically on how to do it. It's harder for the consumer to use the wasp because they don't know what they're looking for. They don't know the extent to which the speaker can be pure.

Someone who knows what the speakers are supposed to sound like can determine how much the room is affecting and detracting from its purity. And so we contractually, Wilson Audio, demands that all our dealers deliver and install them. Otherwise, we feel the customer is paying a lot of money for something they're not getting. We talked about planers.

We talked about traditional cones. We didn't talk about horn speakers. Right. Tell me about horn speakers. They can be devastatingly wonderful. They're effortless. Their level of distortion, if properly designed, is a fraction because they're so bloody efficient.

So the amplifiers are typically just coasting them. I mean, two watts could drive horn speakers louder than anything we hurt today. The issue for horns are usually related to timing. You've got various large things that can't be adjusted. So therefore, there's a time smear in most of them. There's one model out there that does have apparently some adjustment made by Avant Gau.

in Germany. There are people who like those a great deal. I've listened to them, I think at their best, in the best room I know of that exists for music playback. And they're very exciting. I, however, don't feel I could mix a recording on them.

And the tonality, there is still a signature to that sound. They have a sound that can be very pleasing to people. And certainly their dynamics are very exciting, but that signature that is there to varying degrees, depending on the brand and the designer or the preferences, that signature is always to my ear prevalent. What's the purpose of a rear-firing speaker?

That can be a very powerful thing because it just adds more ambience into the room. And most good rear-firing speakers should be adjustable to the point where they can be turned off entirely or turned up as much, you just set it as you like it. The idea is just to create more of a sense of space. For example, Bob Ludwig was adamantly opposed to the speakers that I sold him.

They were the biggest Egglesons because that was a period between what Joy Wilson and I came up there and he bought the biggest ones he, William and I went up there and visited with him. And he had them from the day he opened gateway to the day he closed it. Wow. But it was considered, in my view, the premium mastering facility in North America. Have you ever heard good-sounding omnidirectional speakers? No. Can it be done?

The closest I've heard it being done by far are the MBL speakers from Germany. The soundstage can be wonderful, but it lacks specificity. It lacks believability. And I'm cursed by that because when you're involved in making the recording, your expectations are built, and when they're not fulfilled, no matter how beautiful it is, can't say it's bad,

you just say it's not for me. Yes. And they're not for me. They can be very exciting. Regrettably, from what I understand, MBL is they went into insolvency. Wow. Just recently.

I'm going to be a little bit critical, if I could be, of what the state of our industry, the industry, by that, I don't mean the recording industry, I think the recording industry is doing well, but as a consumer of music, that's a $30,000, $50,000 high-fi system

in the mid-70s. The client would then turn to me and say, all right, now what do I listen to? These five demo discs that you played? What else is there? And that was a legitimate question. You have to go on an Odyssey, try to find music of quality and performance

that would justify the expense. We're living in an era now, in my opinion, where the limitation is time. We're overloaded with incredible access to incredible music. And audiophiles, for the most part, they don't realize how good it actually is. And there's so much that's out there. And my big regret is I just don't have time to explore everything that I'd love to. Obviously, I don't listen to my record. I listened to everything.

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