Rick's Articles

Sound Australasia - Volume 1 : Issue 2

It’s just the brand of phase I’m going through Summertime in Sydney and my studio's cooling system was having trouble coping with the heat. Some bright spark left the window open, letting in fresh air, dust and anything else that's airborne in Kings Cross (don't even ask...). I was looking up at a very pleased pigeon who reckoned my studio was a cool place to sleep off the afternoon heat, when I remembered a story about a guy whose cat could tell the difference between analogue and digital.

The basic premise of the story was that his cat would stay and listen to sound effects recorded on high quality analogue tape, but it would get bored and leave when the same sounds were played off DAT. Hmm...

Anyone who knows me will accept that I have the smartest, most screwed up cat in town. He's a Black Oriental, an absolute testimony to the complete range of pedigree problems. Black Orientals are bred from Siamese, but have recessive mutant genes. From two white Siamese with blue eyes, you get a pure black cat with green eyes, huge ears and neurosis ad nauseam. He can't see too well but his hearing is way past amazing.

Why am I prattling on about my cat? Because I figured that if any cat could tell the difference between analogue or digital, my Black Oriental could. The problem was, how could I record the pigeon in my studio onto analogue and digital mediums to take home as a fair A-B test for my cat? I've got two analogue tape recorders, but they're both too heavy and expensive to take home. Getting the cat into the studio is out of the question - he doesn't like driving into the Cross.

To see if the whole test was going to be worth the hassle, I started with some really good digital — you do believe in good and bad digital, don't you? I set up a couple of Neumann KM84’s in a standard stereo spread, plugged them into the mic preamps of my 20-bit Apogee A-D converter with UV22 Super CD encoding, and connected its output to my Sonic Solutions hard disk recorder. I chased the pigeon around for about 20 minutes, until it got smart and flew out the window. Then I edited the highlights of its flight, moving from left to right and right to left. I also included a few cool variations, just to make sure the cat got the right idea.

So I put the DAT in the home stereo, which has some my stuff and some of my flatmate's stuff-well actually, just his JBL speakers. I called the cat in, rolled the DAT and, bingo, his ears pricked up. He couldn't care less about Apogee UV22 conversion, but was determined to catch that bird. After a while I noticed that when the bird flew left, the cat flew left, but when the bird flew right the cat lost it. I swapped the speakers around, and the opposite happened. Now these speakers never sounded awesome to me, but for a JBL system they sounded OK; a little honky, but cool enough. JBL enjoy a great reputation, and these ones cost heaps. I put the DAT in mono and listened carefully to each speaker, but I couldn't hear what my cat could hear. He definitely did not believe the electronic phantom bird through one speaker but he positively wanted to maul the bird in the other speaker. My flatmate said it couldn't possibly be his speakers, because they cost him heaps.

I pulled the speakers apart and guess what I found? All the drivers, in both boxes, were wired in phase except for the midrange driver in the offending speaker. When I corrected the problem, the imaging instantly improved and the speakers sounded less honky. But it was the cat who got really excited. His phantom bird now went from one side to the other in a steady flight. He started making noises only a Black Oriental could make. My flatmate made another kind of noise altogether.

It took a cat who can't see too good and is more interested in birds than brand names to show me the error of my ways. Perhaps it's time you believed more than your own ears or brand beliefs. Perhaps someone is trying to tell you something you don't want to know about. I'm sick of hearing about the best brand of speakers or the best brand of anything, really. Look, listen, check. Look, listen, check. How hard can it be?

Want to hire my cat to check out your speaker system? He's busy this summer making sure the lizards in the backyard are faster then he is. Then he's booked throughout autumn doing low jitter clock tests. Give us a call next winter...

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