For a couple of years, my main CD source has been my Theta Data Universal Transport — a laserdisk/CD player from the early 90s. Fed through a Meridian 518 for dejittering and upsampling to 24-bit, it has always sounded good through my Yamaha DSP-AX1 amp. But recently, I’ve started to feel it’s been missing something at the top end. Conversely, CDs played on my Arcam FMJ DV27 have sounded mechanical, with a lack of warmth in the bass, and overbright, unrefined treble. Assuming that the Theta’s failings at the top were probably simply masking the limitations of the Yamaha’s power amps, I decided to try a different, discrete, power amp, to see if it would make any improvement, keeping the Yamaha patched in for surround decoding and DSP.

I’ve had a Bryston 9B SST THX surround power amp on loan from the Cornflake Shop for the past few days. What a difference. Fed through the Bryston, via the 518, the Arcam delivers clarity at the top (hihats sound like cymbals, rather than a mash of noise), and warmth at the bottom. Bass is relaxed and tight, and the whole soundstage is wider and deeper. I’m sure it sounds even better fed from a better decoder than the Yamaha, but for now, I love it. I’ve even (finally) bothered to tweak the Yamaha’s ridiculously complex DSP settings to tune things a bit better. Shame about the 9B’s price, but I’ve ordered one anyway. Sigh.

The whole setup is a long way from my first ‘surround system’, which I built back in the 70s for about five Australian dollars —an ‘ambience recovery’ system based on David Hafler’s OOPS (Out Of Phase Stereo) hack. Nice to see that there are still cheap commerical implementations of this kicking around.

From 13 to 29 February this year, UK physicist and artist Richard Box is exhibiting his Field — a nice riff on Lightning Field — under (and powered by) the power pylons of the National Grid, somewhere near Bristol. Makes me want to re-read Keith Roberts’s High Eight.

I first saw Rybczynski’s Tango, I Can’t Stop and some of Orchestra on the ABC’s Sunday Spectrum strand on TV back in the 80s in Tasmania (the original Sunday Spectrum doesn’t even rate a mention on the ABC website, but it was really important at the time. I seem to remember the work of Rybczynski, Michael Snow and Ed Emshwiller all being shown within the same month. Revelations.)

I’ve been hunting The Fourth Dimension since Tokyo. Tim saw it at (I may be wrong) Image Forum, and made it sound a thing worth tracking down. That was probably 13 years ago. The DVD set, including all the above and many more, arrived over the weekend.

So far, The Fourth Dimension is the treasure. It looks rendered, but given that it was made in 1988, I guess it’s most likely built using exquisite compositing, anamorphic lenses and motion control damped with several hundred tonnes of concrete. Unfortunately, the transfer suffers from streaky video artifacts and a washed-out palette, suggesting that the DVD was dubbed from laserdisk rather than digital or cine master. It’s also a shame the DVDs come with no notes other than a ‘making of’ for Orchestra. In fact, the whole package feels a bit thrown together. But given that these films seem to have been unavailable for years, it’s nice to have them in any form. Can’t help wondering if the ones originated in Hi-Vision will be rereleased in a more modern HD format sometime soon.

Zbig is quoted as having a systems approach to his film-making:

“l am only an observer”, Rybczynski explained, “I planned the operation and watch what would come out of it”.

All the films, to my eye, are much improved by watching them patiently, settling into the mood with the sound off, as ambient video art.

Compressed digital formats (mp3 and its ilk) are expedient: they save storage space and download time.

But there’s something rather disingenuous about MusicMatch — the software accompanying iPod on the Windows platform — misrepresenting 128kbps mp3 as ‘cd quality’!

There is a certain aesthetic to degraded digital audio — classic 12-bit samplers sell at inflated prices on eBay for their ‘authentic hip hop sound’ — but the post-Napster generation is being sold a lie by the music industry about the quality of the music they’re being offered by the ‘legal online music revolution’. It’s certainly quicker to download a compressed music track from the iTunes Music Store than a 16-bit uncompressed soundfile, but shouldn’t consumers be given the choice?

The hidden agenda for the music companies seems to be that uncompressed audio can still be sold as a premium product, and the more the punters accept degraded audio as normal, the higher the margin can be on that premium. Witness the delays on release of SACD and DVD-A decks with digital out: the industry is very paranoid about giving (paying) consumers access to ‘master-quality’ content (and fair-usage rights to copy those tracks to any other format they want). But they’re happy enough to sell distorted mp3s to the kids at a buck each. Depressing.

Me. Think I need to write something which spiders that into a desktop slideshow.

A selection of Zbig Rybczynski’s early films and his HDTV work from the 80s is now available on DVD. Shame it isn’t HD-DVD. And shame I don’t have an HD-DVD player. Oh well. Really wish I could find this stuff on Japanese HD laserdisc (and that I had one of those ancient MUSE HI-Vision decks to play them on…)
Oh and Happy New Year. I’ve been very busy with work and thinking, and this is the first thing I’ve seen this year that I’ve wanted to post. More to come soon…