On Sound And Music
Playing Texas Hold 'em with Von Schweikert LC-R 15 Monitors
Jim Merod
07/05

VR LCR-15
Virtual Reality (Left, Center, or Right Channel Speaker)

[note : typography & punctuation / orthography are accurate indices of design reference]

The Flop

The tsunami of bad sounding CDs produced in the current Dark Age of high-resolution digital audio desecration cannot be rationalized by reference to the prevalence of tube recording gear in the Golden Era of Recording from roughly 1954 to 1972. Never before has so much extraordinary equipment been available to so many professional and amateur recording engineers. We live with technological masterpieces everywhere around us. The problem is not digital grunge versus analog sweetness, the sterility of numbers versus the liquidity of 'tube' warmth. The problem is how equipment is used, the aesthetic taste and sonic (as well as musical) values that frame the choice of musical soundscapes.

Nothing inhibits the arrival of useful sonic information in the crafting of recorded music than inferior monitoring. A random visit to a variety of recording studios across North America would reveal, on the whole, less commitment to transparent playback than to the appearance of recording and mixing currency. In sum, a successful studio needs to look like its fitted for success. Its flagship mixing console grabs attention while its 'tried and true' two-way mix-down monitors, relics from the early post-Second World War era of bullet-proof sound rooms, remain in their traditional pride of place.

My irony is only exaggerated a jot. Longstanding studio engineers often become comfortable with their monitors. The ear, once acclimated to a certain sonic presentation, is on familiar musical turf. An engineer's past success largely conditions, or predicts, future triumphs. And so it's not out of the realm of understanding or professional expectation to find many well-regarded studio veterans relying on the tried-and-true. Which of us desires to have every variable in our professional lives tossed up in the air perpetually? In a technological environment in which change is rapid and unending, most audio engineers need a degree of stability of sonic reference, in particular - to 'ground' recording and mastering work.

Against all that, one recognizes that there are a few 'classics' in the world of recording and if one owns a lovingly refurbished Neve board, or a well maintained pair of U84s or Beyer ribbons, or any number of other semi-antique beauties . . . well, only the fool without good ears would walk away from subtle advantages such vintage pieces can lend to a well-staged studio set up.

LCR-15s: "Aperiodic Cabinet Loading"

The River

Enter the world of small footprint studio monitors. Tannoy has been making professional-grade dynamos for a long while. And the Wilson Sophias have a clarity, integrity and charm all their own. Ditto the Wilson Cubs. Richard Vandersteen's "4s" and "5s" earn rightful plaudits, though they do not conform to the notion of monitors with small paws. For years, I've used Tetra Manhattans because they own a sonic rightness and sound stage transparency without sacrificing dynamic slam and harmonic truthfulness. Recent aspersions about Tetra to the absolute contrary, I must say that Tetra does many things right that more prestigious, expensive monitors cannot wholly emulate. My point here is that finding, choosing and nurturing high quality studio monitors is not an idle adventure. Nor is it a task to be left to the end on one's studio budget. Your monitors are your sonic world. They create the truth (or its incompleteness) that declares what you've done and need to do. Monitors deliver the news. They express what the music "says" and what musicians have accomplished. Monitors are your other ears. They are extensions of yourself, your perception. In the emerging debate about the coming age of human-techno partnership - an ever more intimate "interface" of flesh and mind with nano-scale technologies, bio-alterations, and cyber implants, one might allude to the partnership of ear and monitor as an early instance of humanity's friendly bondedness to technological appendages.

Enter serious card shark drama. A year or so ago, Albert Von Schweikert invited me to audition his LCR-15 small footprint monitors. Since Albert is a very enthusiastic man as well as an extremely able and imaginative (adventurous) speaker designer, I was engaged immediately but concerned about the inevitability of full scale monitor break-in time. I've found over a long span of experience with monitors that recommendations for pink noise assistance during break in periods is understated. Like good single malt scotch, great monitors begin with their design and breeding. They are perfected in the use they're given -- with the maturing (the "curing" period) that allows them to fully settle, open up, and finally express with relaxation all those sonic nuances of timbre, tone, pace, pitch, harmony, and wide band width dynamics that reside in well recorded music.

In sum, you don't merely un-box your new monitors and throw them in the mix without care and caution. You nurture them, bring them along . . . worry them a little, a horse trainer might say. Monitors need sonic massaging, but great monitors well-massaged become rare devices not to be parted with. Thus, for months I put the LCR-15s in and out of my central mastering location, depending upon my need for familiar sonic comfort. Like an aging curmudgeon, I relied on the tried-and-true to get me through this or that important project. But, between moments of need for old fashioned traditional comfort (old habits of familiarity and conformity), I eased the LCR-15s into the slot awaiting their curing . . . and I watched them bloom. In truth, I heard them open up and slowly sing songs seldom heard in their specific acoustical location.

All In

I've never been attracted to the rhetoric of "this over that" -- McSorley's Doomsday Boom Box outblasts Dorkwad's Thunderblot Blunderbuss and so on. The universe of high end audio, both on the complicated recording/mastering side and with the audiophile search for infinitesimal discriminations is much too vast, too rapidly innovating, for anyone to be sure that measurements or impressions own the final word on any piece of gear. When I come across a microphone or a monitor with a rare quality, that je ne sais quoi, I pay attention. Let's say my motto is simple: "listen up."

I've been listening up, down, and sideways to Albert Von Schweikert's LCR-15s for the best part of a year. I've heard them move from a respectful, delightful well-honed sonic partner to a take-no-prisoners monitoring behemoth. Remember. These three way monitors are not large. Their footprint is a skosh more than 7" across x 10" deep and a discrete 17.5" in height. Great things do arrive in small boxes. The LCR-15s are a case in point.

As a sidebar before you push your chips across the green felt, I've noted on occasion the noise audio bloggers sometimes make accusing professional reviewers of refusing to give bad marks to audio gear. Overlooked in their hyperventilation is the consistent fact that reviewing lousy gear has all the allure of kissing your sister. Or worse. I have noted on occasion that some audio reviewers enjoy being wet blankets. Perhaps for them the thrill of it all is the negative joy of dispensing bad news. On occasion any reviewer of longstanding inevitabIy inherits pieces that fall short. I suspect, however, some scribblers feel they take on new authority by dumping. No doubt human nature sometimes imitates our canine pals who lift a leg to re-initiate old fireplugs. The politics of any professional field needs continuous drainage.

Minutiae aside, my awareness of the LCR-15s coming into their own occurred in spades one day during a semi-rush job thrown at me (almost literally) by a Hollywood veteran who wanted, first, my opinion on the mix he'd paid for at an expensive Los Angeles recording studio and, next, an instant recommendation for "fixes" if my opinion matched his own - namely his concern that he'd gotten hosed on his project.

We listened to the mix together and I tried not to burden him with bad news. I asked for an afternoon alone with his project to be sure of what I thought. When I put the demoted mix through the LCR-15s, all its partial strengths and substantial liabilities were evident. I took patient notes, listened to it all on another system (not, as it turned out, as revealing as the LCR-15 set up), and called my worried colleague, and broke the bad news. There were no fixes to be had. Adjustments were possible. Did he want to go that way? The next day I dug in, LCR-15s at the ready.

The simple fact is that there's no better feeling when you seek sonic precision than knowing exactly what you're hearing - what it is, what it means, and how to address its complex of sonic nuances. In evaluation, such things are not subtle, though assembled from accumulated audio subtleties. What I discovered that unforgettable day with a sad musician's less than viable set of discs was the unmistakable truth-telling function of Albert Von Schweikert's small LCR-15 monitor.

The Pay Out

Have I junked my previous monitoring rig? No, not in the least, because you need to listen to any recording, mix and/or mastering on more than one monitor set up. Am I sold on the viability of the LCR-15s to get me through the travails of careful sonic work? Absolutely, yes.

Let me go a step further: the pay out. For the bread, it's hard to find monitor-grade speakers at this level of finesse and transparency. In fact, it may be impossible. The sonic delicacy and refinement the LCR-15s bring to close listening is a story in its own right, but that fact stops short of naming the power these speakers carry with them. You can play big band ensembles recorded at maximum gain, with minimum recording head room, compressed in ways that make a soundstage pop and leap and soar high and wide. You'll seldom find any degree of "squeeze" or effort on the part of the LCR-15s. They stay relaxed through it all, no matter what "it" is. And that relaxation factor is a huge part of their truthfulness and monitoring magic.

I've been in studios where it's taken considerable restraint not to mention that the poor old battered work horse monitors, sitting like tired companions on an expensive recording console, ought to be junked. A candidate for placement would be these LCR-15 monitors that take up small work space but give up enormous musical speech -- the sort of speech that whispers when it's right and roars, cursing or happy, when celebration is in order.

I respect these speakers. They are first class "monitor grade" speakers, but they are also extraordinary listening partners in any audio context: home theater surround sound set ups; New York apartment two channel stereo intimacy; and everything in between. I'd have never imagined my heart would be so taken by the LCR-15s innate musical discretion, a virtue akin to dreamlike waking cheer. Music at its best transports the mind and heart elsewhere. Music under close scrutiny focuses the mind absolutely. Either way, music (as Duke Ellington said) is our mistress.

With the LCR-15s, my cold dead fingers. Remember that. Try 'em out. You got the guts? Maybe you got the dough. TEXAS HOLD 'em, dude. Are you prepared? Doesn't take a huge stake in this game. Only intuitive musical card sharks allowed. Or, after hours, those with superior sonic intuition. Don't tell Tony Bennett how good he sounds on these mighty earthquakes. San Francisco has suffered enough. The anniversary of that momentous day is almost here.

No need to believe me or anyone else. Find a pair of the Von Schweikert LCR-15s. Spend quality time with them. Remember that, as good as they are at the outset, with sonic curing over time these monitors become your second pair of ears. Who'd think that technology had such charm to rival nature's most elegant awareness? Albert Von Schweikert must have thought so. He's done a terrific job making that happen here.