The summer wind.

The Summer Wind: It was a contemplative summer. Here are a few of the things that passed through my mind, as well as this "your mileage may vary" disclaimer:

The thoughts, convictions, sentiments, observations, judgments, and theories I'm presenting here permeate and illuminate my personal music listening. They impact my attitude toward and reactions to the audio gear that supports such listening. You may have significantly different outlooks on these topics. Your personal views are effective and authentic for you. Mine are effective and authentic for me.

Also, I'm not going use phrases like "in my opinion," "it's my view that," or "it seems to me that" very often in what follows. Please understand that everything I'm about to say fits under those rubrics.

First, last, and always: It's the music. If not for music, all our marvelous audio assemblies of metal, glass, wood, plastic, and silicon would never have happened. Let's keep the focus where it belongs.

Music is a creative communicative act, a shared artistic experience. Yet for audiophiles, music is commonly treated as little more than a handy, non-technical test signal. Music listening is indeed the ultimate test for audio gear, but in a totality of involvement. Nitpicking isn't listening.

The goal of an ideal audio system is not to reproduce in the listening room the same motion of atmospheric molecules that would have been present at a musical performance. The goal of an ideal audio system is to create in the listener the same emotional intellectual, and spiritual reactions that would have occurred in a witness to actual musical performance.

The listener's cerebral cortex, not the listening room, is the final component in the audio chain. And the recording-reproducing chain is an attempt to create a veritable bond between the listeners and the artists. That's one reason I treasure 78 rpm recordings.

I feel a closer link to Lester Young or Adolf Busch or Stokowski or Ellington on 78 than I do when listening to, for instance, LP dubs of the same music. I get almost the same sense of closeness from 78 to CD issues. I think it's because there's no LP nature imposed on that of the 78. Another reason could be that in transferring from 78 to CD, there's less need to compress the huge dynamic swing of a well recorded 78 so that the music can fit into a groove about one-third the width and moving at less than half the rotational speed.

Many music lovers in the late '40s decried the loss of fidelity when LP versions of 78 rpm originals hit the market. The terms used were quite similar to those that people use these days when they compare CDs with LPs.

And that brings me to the analog vs. digital, or more specifically, the LP vs. CD argument. That controversy is at least 99 percent lacking in practicality. I'm proposing that number because I doubt that even one percent of current recordings are offered in a choice of LP or CD formats.

The sad thing is that there's a lot of wonderful music that was put out on LP that may never be issued on CD. For that matter, there's a lot of wonderful music that was recorded for 78 rpm issue that was never reissued in LP form. Those of us who want the greatest possible access to recorded music need to have gear that can handle at least the three major analog disc formats as well as CDs. And it wouldn't hurt to have large tip stylus in a cross-wired stereo cartridge to play hill-and-dale mono shellac discs.

There are two other controversies that resist settlement because they are ultimately fraudulent. One is pits objective measurement against subjective listening. The other squabbles over blind testing and open evaluation.

The apparent objective-subjective is little more than a semantic problem. Certainly technical measurements can be described as objective. But so can listening observations. The Bose Corporation has come up with a list of listening terms that seems to have great validity across great numbers of both trained and casual listeners. Floyd Toole did similar research on listener perceptions and successfully related them to technical measurements.

Applying the word "subjective" to perception is faulty. Perceptions are, or can be, just as objective as measurements. Subjectivity enters when we express our opinions, whether those opinions are based on technical measurements or personal perceptions.

Let me give an example from a Consumer Reports evaluation of orange juice brands. The Florida's Natural brand received a lowered rating because of a prominent orange oil component to its flavor. The testers who reported on the orange oil taste were making objective observations. The person who decided that the orange oil taste was a problem and downrated that brand was the one who added subjectivity to the report. When I read the report, I agreed with the objective observation about the orange oil taste. I liked the extra zip from that taste and disagreed with the subjective placement of Florida's

Natural on the list.

Objective technical measurements of audio gear are useful, particularly for manufacturers. They help assure consistency, reliability, and confidence. Objective listening observations are also helpful to manufacturers, but even more so to consumers since they allow listeners to make judgments on the suitability and desirability of products.

Subjective commentary is helpful and interesting because it puts the objective measurements and observations in the context of human experience, even though the experience is filtered through one person's ideas of rightness or appropriateness.

What about the other ongoing controversy of blind vs. open listening evaluations? Carefully designed and conducted blind testing eliminates all except auditory cues. They are, or should be, the classic scientific tests that hold everything constant except for a single isolated variable. As such, they hold very little interest for me.

I do not listen under blind conditions. I know what the brands and models are of every item in my stereo system. I also know how much they cost, how reliable they have been, and how visually appealing they may be. I know whether I bought my top choice or settled for something different for one reason or another. All those things will affect my listening enjoyment. And that's because, as I said above, I am the final component in the listening chain.

To put it succinctly: What I hear is all in my head. The same rule applies to you and to everybody else.

I participated in a discussion of this some time ago on the CompuServe Audio Forum. What I posted then states the situation as clearly as I can. (The posting elicited an "astute comments" response from Nelson Pass, by the way.) Here's some of the exchange, starting with a comment from Mr.

Charles P. Tomes.

CPT: " ... lately I have been listening to my system without worrying about its quality and working on motorcycles instead of trying to figure out how ferrite blocks placed on the outside of a steel-enclosed amplifier can change the sound of my system."

TK: "That's an easy one. The blocks you mention (and assorted other tweaks) can change the sound of a system by causing certain electrochemical changes to take place within the central nervous system of the user/purchaser/listener. Because of those changes, the person involved enjoys listening to his or her system more and reports that as "It sounds better.'

"When I go to a Chinese restaurant, I always feed myself with chopsticks rather than western implements because when I do, I enjoy the meal more. I might even say that 'It tastes better' when using chopsticks.

"The chopsticks change my experience of the food. They don't change the food itself. The ferrite blocks change certain people's experience of the sound, whether or not they change the music itself."

As I said a few paragraphs back, hearing occurs in our minds and bodies. The only way we can hear that there are differences in sound are through differences in the electrochemical states of our central nervous systems. Some of those differences are triggered by the mechanisms of the inner ear. Some are undoubtedly affected by other physical and mental stimuli.

I insist on not being at all bothered by the fact that many of the audible improvements that we report hearing are because of changes that occur in our bodies rather than someplace else. We hear them, therefore they have value to us. If the purveyors of the ferrite blocks that CPT mentioned can predict the value buyers might ascribe to their reactions to those blocks, they'll have a successful product. If they overestimate or underestimate, they're doomed.

Consider, too, the often observed issue of the sound from an audio system being more satisfying during late evening or night time hours. Many observers look to differences in air pressure or temperature for an explanation. Some suggest that it's due to reduced ambient noise. Others want to credit cleaner power from the AC line at such hours.

More likely, and I'm not the first to suggest this, the increased sensation of goodness in nighttime listening experiences is due to change in the listener. Call it attitudinal, mental, psychosomatic. The term doesn't matter much. The day's work is over, the possibility of interruptions is minimal, the listener is relaxed, content, and more open to the music's message. The listener is also less inclined to fuss about technical minutiae and get involved with the aesthetic experience.

And don't forget the lower light level that's probably present in evening hours. Dimming lights is a time-honored method for increasing musical awareness. Stories abound of musicians who have asked for darkened studios when recording certain performances. I recall attending a dark room demo of a pair of Wilson Audio speakers in a hi-fi shop in Miami some years ago. The owner of the shop would always douse the lights for listening evaluations.

So let's be aware not only of the way music affects our mental and physical states (a tingling from the little hairs on the back of my neck commonly tips me off that I'm listening to something special), but also on the complementary effects that our mental and physical states have on our appreciation of music and, of course, our audio gear.

Above all, remember that we're seeking joy and enlightenment.

Monomaniacal: I'm getting the impression that monaural sound is becoming oddly cool. I mean no disrespect toward the first 75 years or so of recorded sound by putting the pejorative qualifier in the first sentence. Mono itself isn't odd. Current developments surrounding it are.

Certainly one of the oddest is the Helikon mono phono cartridge--designed, priced, and promoted to attract the attention of the well-heeled audiophilia nervosa crowd. I'm certain that it's well built and carefully designed, but ultimately its goal is to do marvelously for $2000 what could be done quite nicely for $2 in the form of a mono/stereo switch on a phono stage. No manufacturer is willing to take that simple, obvious, beneficial, and inexpensive step. But I'll bet that in the wake of the Helikon introduction, we see a few who decide to follow with competing three and four figure mono cartridges.

Happily, adding a stereo/mono switch to a phono stage is an easy do-it-yourself project. Pick up a toggle switch at Radio Shack or other electronic parts outlet, drill an appropriate hole somewhere in the enclosure of the phono stage, and run jumpers from the Left and Right signal inputs to the switch so that they will connect together when you throw the toggle.

This will instantly clean up any extraneous "stereo" noise on your mono LPs, 45s, and 78s. It will also instantly void any manufacturer's warranty.

Such a switch will, of course, work only for the phono input. That's the most important place to have that function available, but having the ability to parallel the channels for other inputs can also be useful on occasion. For instance, I've run across a few CDs that were dubbed directly from mono LPs without paralleling the channels. To listen those CDs properly, I switch to mono mode and correct the mastering engineer's oversight.

Tuners may benefit from manual mono switching, too. Sometimes the automatic stereo control doesn't revert to mono mode soon enough when the stereo FM reception starts to degrade.

One way to mono out the channels on a receiver, preamp, or amplifier on all inputs is to put a jumper across the tape outputs. You can do that by plugging one end of a single audio cable into the Left tape out jack and the other end into the Right.

If you do that often, it's going to be a bother. So you can consider another DIY project. Wire a switch into the cable so you can break the connection and leave the cable in place. You could put the switch in a small project box to fancy it up a bit. This cable solution--with or without the convenience switch--will deal with all inputs. Do the monoing this way and you would not need an additional mono switch for the phono input.

Whatever mono method you use, be sure to put things back to stereo mode when you want to listen to stereo recordings or stereo FM. And that brings up another odd mono matter.

In the past couple of years I've often thought I'd forgotten to switch the system back to stereo when listening to a new CD. But when I walked over to the preamp to throw the switch, I'd find that it wasn't in mono mode at all. The music had been recorded without much stereo information.

I confirmed this by using the switches on my preamp that let me listen to left channel only through both speakers or right channel only. Switching between those would disclose practically no difference between the stereo channels. In fact, running the gamut from Stereo to Mono to Left only to Right only often produces minimal changes in listening experience.

In the early days of stereo recording, the ability to separate channels was regularly used to excess. Crazed engineers and producers would record hard left and hard right signals, leaving a hole in the middle of the soundstage. (These days, crazed engineers and producers do nothing but fill that hole in the middle and ignore the fact that they have two discrete channels to work with. Correction: with the arrival of SACD and DVD-Audio, they've been suddenly given a multiplicity of channels. If they've forgotten how to use two, what are they going to do with four or six?) While I have no use for those producers and engineers who cavalierly ignore the fact that stereo recording involves creating two differing channels of musical information, I appreciate, respect, and enjoy "real" mono recordings. That includes those produced in mono during the stereo era.

If you check the credits on LPs made at that time, you will often find that companies employed two different engineers for the sessions--one for recording the stereo version and one for the mono. And I've read claims that it took stereo recording a couple of years to catch up to the quality of what mono could capture. Some of this, presumably, had to do with the years of experience of the engineers who were used to doing marvelous things in mono and the high level of development of the mono cutting lathes. Jazz collectors, in particular, commonly pay a premium for original mono LPs as compared to the stereo equivalents.

If you'd like to check out how fine mono recording was at about the time of the stereo explosion, here are a few good examples. Most are currently available on CD. All have been issued on CD at one time or another:

Roy Eldridge: Little Jazz (Verve)

Shorty Rogers: Wherever the Five Winds Blow (RCA Victor/Fresh Sound)

John LaPorta: Theme and Variations (Fantasy)

Going back to the 78 era, you might check out these two:

Red Norvo: Improvisations (Polygram) Note in particular the sense of space around Aaron Sachs' clarinet in the sextet tracks. Ditto for the Billy Butterfield's trumpet on various tracks of the following.

Lester Young: The Savoy Master Takes (Savoy/ Muse)

Speaking of 78s, Shure is offering a "mono" cartridge for playing 78s. It's the model M78S. I put the quotes in above because the M78S is has a stereo cartridge body but there are jumpers across the Left and Right hot pins and across the Left and Right ground pins on the cartridge. Those mono out the signals and conveniently leave four pins for standard stereo cartridge holders. Cartridge companies used to pack similar jumpers in with their early stereo cartridges so that music lovers with mono systems could conveniently use their new products.

It was fairly common for a high end system in the days of mono only to sport two speakers. The dual speaker setup gave fuller sound throughout a listening area and avoided hot spots or dead spots where the sound would not be as satisfactory as elsewhere in the room.

Stereo often happened accidentally in early recordings. When acoustically cut cylinders were being produced, two or three recorders were often used simultaneously. They would have captured slightly different perspectives of the same performance resulting in a stereo pair of cylinders or even a multichannel set of more than two cylinders.

Two good quality Duke Ellington orchestra performances from the 1930s exist as a stereo pair. They are extended length medleys of Ellington classics which make some people think (I'm one of them) that they were not accidental but rather were an early stereo experiment by RCA engineers and Ellington.

The resulting combined stereo performances were issued on CD as Stereo Reflections in Ellington. They come close to putting you at a ringside table in the old Cotton Club.

Almost Here: It's been a long wait, but I have it on good authority that the Cyrus Icon speaker system will be available in the US sometime in 2004. The Icon is the NXT-based system that totally turned me around when I heard it at the 2001 CES.

If you can't wait for the official US debut of this amazing system and you live near the Canadian border, you might be able to get a pair right now. For possible outlets check www.europroductscanada.com.

I'm expecting that the Icon will show up at this year's CES. I'm very much looking forward to confirming my overwhelmingly positive impression from two years ago.

I'll let you know how it works out.--TK