June 2007 Meeting

Date: Sunday, June 24, 2007
Time: 6:00 PM

Place: Boston University, Life Science & Engineering Bldg, 24 Cummington St, 1st Floor Conference Room (room 203), Boston, MA 02215, (617) 271-6588

Featured Guests: Bob Miller + Ryles Recording Engineers

Topics: Victor Campos Archive + Ryles Recording Results

PART 1 – A discussion led by BAS member Bob Miller. His talk will cover the potentially historic role BAS can play in the cataloging of the 6,000+ LP recordings and 3,000+ master tapes collected over many years by Victor Campos. Victor Campos is currently a consultant with NAD Int'l and many other corporations. In 1976, however, Victor was in charge of creating one of AR's most ambitious live vs. recorded demonstrations. The AR-10Pi loudspeaker was pitted against a well known drummer by the name of Neil Grover. We were asked to identify the 'real' thing.

Victor launched ‘Adventures in Sound’ in 1973 over WGBH FM Radio. For program material he culled selections from his vast tape collection. His tape collection consists of copies of master tapes given to him by major recording engineers. Many of his tapes became the source for LP recordings which later morphed into major CDs.

Victor’s collection of select tapes and Lps are in dire need of cataloging in order to ‘rest’ in the museum achives of universities, collectors, and orchestras that have expressed an interest in obtaining his classical performance of many well known conductors and orchestras. The BAS can help and become a conduit in maintaining a small piece of classical music history.

PART 2 – A playback of our acoustical recordings made at the Ryles Jazz Club, Inman Sq, Cambridge on July 2006. Each recording engineer used his own equipment and microphone setup. Some of the microphones used by the engineers - SoundField 250; Neumann USM 69i; 4 hand-made, custom ribbons; and Brüel & Kjaer microphones.

Each engineer will display photos of their microphone setup, explain why they chose it and what they would do 'better' next time. Excerpts from each engineer's 'take' will be played. The playbacks you hear on Sunday will NOT employ the 'purist' approach as we did at our BAS meeting in September 2006. Equalization will be employed at this playback session. Each engineer has added to their recorded sound whatever equalization and sound modifications they choose. Their sound alterations will be designed to enhance the playback listening experience in the home environment. Help us decide the ‘best’ sound.