| Meetings and other Notices |
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| The
April
Live
and Zoom Meeting |
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Date:
Tuesday,
April 28, 2026
Time:
1:30 – 3:30 pm
EST
Where:
Live
And
Zoom
Featured
Guest:
Daniel
Ozick,
Maker,
Engineer,
Musician
Place:
Lexington
Community
Center,
39
Marrett
Road,
Lexington,
MA 02421
Topic:
The
Making
of Zoot:
Building
an
Expressive,
Easy-to-Play
Electronic
Wind
Instrument
Daniel Ozick is
a maker
and
engineer
who has
been
tinkering
with
electronics
and
software
since
third
grade,
when he
became
obsessed
with
blinking
small
neon
lamps.
At
iRobot,
he led
software
development
for the
second-generation
Roomba
robotic
vacuum
and is
named on
multiple
patents.
As the
founder
of Computing
Explorations,
LLC,
he has
helped
startups
bring
new
ideas to
life,
run
maker
workshops,
and
developed
and
marketed
his own
product: Zoot,
a simple
electronic
wind
instrument.
You can
often
find him
playing
the Zoot
as an
“approximate
clarinet”
at informal
music
jams in
the
Boston
area.
And a description of the talk:
Hear
the
story
of a
curious
and
self-motivated
maker
who
wanted
to
create
a
highly
expressive
yet
easy-to-play
electronic
wind
instrument. Daniel Ozick will
demonstrate
the Zoot and
answer
your
questions
about
the
instrument
as
he
shows
its
evolution
from
first
working
proof
of
concept
through
multiple
prototype
iterations
to
polished
product.
You
can
even
try
playing
a
Zoot
yourself!
The Boston Audio Society is a
gathering
place
for
audio
and
video
hobbyists.
For 53
years,
we have
worked
diligently
to
create
an
atmosphere
of
consumer,
audio
education
at its
best.
The Lexington Community Center has
parking.
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Hope to see you
there.
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THE BAS MESSAGE
April 2026 |
Miscellaneous News
1.
If you stand in the
center of a Greek
amphitheater you
will hear every word
perfectly, no
microphones no
speakers.
The
scientists at
Georgia Tech found
that the limestone
seats act as
acoustic filters,
absorbing low
frequency background
noise, wind,
rustling and crowd
murmurs,
but reflecting high
frequency noise and
human speech.
The
reflections focus
sounds towards the
audience in
calculated angles.
It’s
basically a
frequency equalizer,
made of stone.
The theater
of Epidaurus, 2500
years old,
seats 14,000
people, a coin
dropped on stage can
be heard in the last
row.
https://youtube.com/shorts/UV0m_NUR8Gk?si=W9N9jVOJUHPqzMtS
Join the ZOOM
Meeting
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Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86530168861?pwd=ibtWPYYHWj1x80pMswaw6vklevfeaP.1
Meeting ID: 865 3016
8861, Passcode:
867871
You can ALSO click on this link and simply DIAL IN to
participate:
https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcgU8tvYvR
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Directions to the Lexington Recreation Center
Click on the
Google Map Link
Below
https://maps.app.goo.gl/M8JJijGUsWRx36jKA
Boston
Audio
Society
PO BOX
260211
BOSTON,
MA 02126
978-944-6481
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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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