Meetings and other Notices |
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The
October Zoom Only Meeting |
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Date: Saturday,
October
11, 2025, 2:00 PM EST
Featured Guest: Tomlinson
Holman
Topic:
Career(s)
of
Tom
Holman
An
Exciting
Event
for
BAS
Members
and
Guests
BAS
members
and
guests
will
have
the
opportunity
to
attend
a
remarkable
presentation
at
our
October
meeting.
The
featured
speaker
will
be
Tom
Holman.
If I
chose
to
list
only
Toms
awards
it
would
take
up
multiple
pages.
Instead,
I
will
post
only
a
few
of
the
companies
in
which
he
was
the
owner
or
employee.
Curriculum
Vitae
of
(Professional
Background)
Apple
Inc.,
Distinguished
Engineer
and
Director,
2011
2021.
Audyssey
Labs,
Chief
Scientist,
2002
2011.
TMH
Corporation,
President,
Founder,
1995
2022.
Later
became
Tomlinson
Holman
Company
2022
Lucasfilm
Ltd.,
Corporate
Technical
Director.
1980
1995.
Apt
Corporation,
President,
Founder,
1977
1980
Advent
Corporation
Chief
Electrical
Engineer,
197377.
A
listing
of a
few
of
his
many
scientific
achievements
and
awards:
Education
-
Tom
received
from
the
University
of
Illinois
at
Urbana-Champaign
a
B.S.
Communications
1968.
He
wrote
the
THX
Sound
System
Instruction
Manual,
Lucasfilm
Ltd,
1987,
Facilities
Development
and
Engineering
for
Motion-Picture
Production,
Television,
and
Performing
Arts
1994,
etc.
Boston Audio Society
PO BOX 260211
BOSTON MA 02126
617.271.6588
Join Zoom Meeting
Ken Schwarz is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic:
Career(s)
of Tom
Holman
Time:
October
11, 2025 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83920146976?pwd=XsGcO7rV8SUOlBi2dUQUtDQTrK1C7K.1
Meeting
ID: 839
2014
6976
Passcode:
630220
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tap
mobile
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US
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Join
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Hope to see you then.
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THE BAS MESSAGE
October 2025 |
Miscellaneous News
1. New Pipe
Organ Shakes the
Pews At Trinity
Church
Trinity Church in
Lower Manhattan
survived the attacks
that destroyed the
nearby towers. But
its aging organ, a
5,000-pipe Aeolian
Skinner, which had
been in service
since 1923 and had
already seen better
days, was deemed
beyond repair.
Now, its replacement
has been unveiled
with a recent
concert by the
organist Anna
Lapwood that filled
the church with
sound and a message
of hope. ''It's an
amazing
instrument,''
Lapwood said. ''You
can really feel you
are playing the
building as well as
the organ itself.''
The new instrument,
10 years in the
making and costing
nearly $17 million,
including the price
of woodwork and
casing, boasts 8,041
pipes, some as high
as 32 feet. In 2003,
still without an
organ, Trinity
installed a digital
one called the Opus,
built by Marshall &
Ogletree of Needham,
Mass. The notes from
the ''organ'' came
not through pipes,
but from 74 speakers
hidden behind fake
pipes in the choir
loft.
Not surprisingly,
this did not go down
particularly well,
at least in some
corners of the
Trinity music
community. In 2018,
the church underwent
a renovation and
ended its use of the
digital organ.
Unlike its
predecessor, it
produces no sound
electronically, but
the mechanism tying
it all together is
mostly electronic.
On the front
console, plucking a
key sends an
electric signal
through an Ethernet
network, resulting
in a blast of air
through the pipes.
(A technician uses
an old iPod to tune
the instrument.)
It reached higher
than any other
building in the
United States when
it was completed in
1846. That is no
longer the case, but
Trinity remains by
any measure a very
big church. And
after 24 years, it
once again has an
organ that fills
that space. ''You
feel it all through
your body,'' said
Melissa Attebury,
Trinity's director
of music. ''It is
magnificent.''
Nagourney, Adam;Etheredge,
George. NYT
Oct 5, 25
2. The BAS is
looking for a new
webmaster. The
current webmaster
will train you and
hand it over to you,
and provide support
as necessary. The
website is written
in simple HTML. You
will need a computer
and a high speed
internet connection
(you will need to
download a 6GB
backup in a
reasonable amount of
time). The annual
payment is $300. You
may be asked to
support
administration of
the BAS Facebook
pages as well.
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Below, other meetings and notices which
may be of interest to BAS members |
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JUST RELEASED !
A fantastic historical video!
Ken Berger and Kenton Forsythe are the founders of EAW (Eastern Acoustics Works) and they discuss, with terrific overlaid graphics, the history of, well, pretty much every audio thing Boston from the early 70's.
18 minutes and right here: https://youtu.be/fPfQEK0b0mI
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A Boston issue - As MIX magazine reports:
Sound Museum owners cry foul as their tenants likely secure new spaces without them
While the headline sounds like someone has sour grapes, the complete story of how the closure of this crucial Boston rehearsal studio is being handled is far more nuanced and complicated -- particularly since it brings up issues of gentrification, government support of the arts, non-profits' ethics and more. Full Story HERE (WBUR-FM Boston (1/11/23)
And here's an update:
www.wbur.org/news/2023/01/25/charlestown-rehearsal-studios-musicians-boston
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MAHLER 3
In the recent (April 2022) performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony at Boston's Symphony Hall by Ben Zander and his Boston Philharmonic, the recording was done with the three main spaced omnis with two more farther back. No accent mikes or chorus microphones were used nor, it turns out, were they needed. Remarkably, this produced a recording that is as close to the Symphony Hall experience as may be possible.
The info is here: www.bostonphil.org/concerts/2021-2022/bpo4-mahler3
Here is the recording in its entirety as a single .WAV file; 44k / 16 bit; 1hr 47 min
Mahler Sym 3 CD.wav 1.1GB
(For those of you with editing software note that the .wav file HAS markers to denote the movements.)
Here is the exact same Symphony 3 with the movements separated as FLAC files, 48k / 24 bit as a ZIPped file: Mahler 3 Zander as FLAC.zip 1GB
IF you'd like further Gustav Mahler info... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler
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Shop Talk
Shop Talk was a WBUR program about Hi Fidelity, music, speakers, tape recorders, etc. Enjoyed by many during the 1970s, the program's format was ‘talk’ and interviewing major audio luminaries. It was a forerunner of the popular program Car Talk!
Peter Mitchell and Dr. Richard Goldwater were the original hosts. They were later joined by Brad Meyer. Here, John Allen interviews Scott Kent:
Shop Talk John Allen talks to Scott Kent on SPEAKERS.mp3 (81Mb 1:27)
Shop Talk John Allen talks to Scott Kent on TAPE RECORDERS.mp3 (79Mb 1:26)
There is also an episode track on the BAS CD and here is that Description:
Track 12. "Shop Talk", WHRB-FM, November 5, 1984.
Peter Mitchell (on the left), Richard Goldwater, MD (center) and E. Brad Meyer (right) introduce the show with a 1932 stereo recording and prepare to talk with guests Mark Davis and David Moran, both then of dbx corporation.
Shop Talk, which through most of its ten-year life on WBUR featured just Mitchell and Goldwater, was the precursor of Tom and Ray Magliozzi's "Car Talk". As we finished our 9:00-10:30 stint every Saturday morning, Tom and Ray would take our places and begin joking with each other. Eventually the station manager figured out that they were funnier than we were, and that more people drove cars than owned hi-fi equipment, and fired us. Until then, the show publicized the Boston Audio Society, vastly increasing attendance at our monthly meetings. The show came back for a time during the '80's on the Harvard station WHRB, where we appeared once a month as guests of HRB stalwart David Elliott. [EBM]
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BAS MICROPHONE CLINIC REPORT ! |
In September 2009 the B A S held a microphone clinic, testing 37 different microphone models. The ambitious nature of the clinic effort, the extent of data collection, the number of individuals involved in microphone testing and in writing various sections of the report, and the complexity in determining how to construct the clinic report and make it available to members resulted it not being published until now. The dataset is extensive.
Representative samples were included in the abbreviated report in "The B A S Speaker"
(Fall 2015; v37n3)
Go to the MICROPHONE CLINIC PAGE for more...
...and don't forget, here is the master list of microphones in the world
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When collecting and plotting "noisy" data it is often useful to have Microsoft Excel plot a Trend Line through it. If that data is to be used for further work, it may be necessary to have an X-Y table of the Trend Line. That is not easy to get and this paper will show how to do it.
Joseph DeMarinis has an article here: Extracting Numerical Data from an Excel Trend Line
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Foster's Test Bench !
by Alvin Foster ! Click the logo: —> |
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The rapidly-becoming-famous BAS Headphone Test Article is now available in the BASS VOLUME 25, ISSUE 4, on Page 17, available HERE PDF 3mb |
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Visit our PODCAST PAGE for:
The LIVE video podcast of our meetings,
Archived video of past meetings (only one so far!),
and Audio Podcast interviews by Alvin Foster |
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There is a supplemental and further explanation addendum paper to the E. Brad Meyer / David Moran paper published in the September, 2007 issue of the AES Journal. That page, which documents the experimental protocol and audio systems/source material is here:
www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm |
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There is a Power Point Presentation of the lecture given by Dr. Barry Blesser at the March 2007 Meeting. The Meeting page synopsis is HERE; the Power Point Presentation (as a web page) is HERE |
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Some earlier BASS issues, previously available only directly by mail, are now available online, on the BAS SPEAKER page, HERE
Show your appreciation for the immense amount of dedicated work that went into both the original writing, gathering, editing and printing, PLUS the more recent scanning and conversion to PDF format, by joining the Society, HERE !
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A L L O F F S I T E L I N K S O P E N I N T O A N E W T A B O R W I N D O W
- AND FOR CONVENIENCE -
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