Transparent in Surat, India

Transparent is pleased to announce that we have a new distributor in India called Absolute Sound! They've been making waves all the way from the city of Surat, enough so that Electronic House noticed.

Absolute Sound! had a challenge on their hands. At 15-by-23 feet, it was a small theater room with brightness and bass issues. Jignesh Khatiwala took charge of the installation and got some amazing results. Click the link below to read more about it.
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/sound_solutions_home_theater_in_busy
_surat/

Noted Concert Pianist Lorin Hollander Writes About His Recent Experience in the Transparent Sound Room

Concert pianist and conductor Lorin Hollander recently visited Transparent Audio's sound room to listen to high resolution digital copies of archival tapes of Portland Symphony concert performances. Lorin Hollander made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 11 and performed on the Bell Television Hour on national television during his teenage years. He made recordings for RCA Victor and has performed with most of the world's great orchestras during his nearly 60 year career as a pianist and conductor. See his website www.lorinhollander.com for more details about his remarkable career.


A New Dimension in Sound Reproduction, by Lorin Hollander

Recently I heard sound reproduction at a level unprecedented in my experience. Not only did it exceed in orders of magnitude anything I have previously experienced in audio reproduction, it went beyond reproducing the sound of a live performance, for a series of important and unique reasons.

I was already familiar with the sound room in which I heard these recordings. I believe the room must equal or surpass anything that exists in the world. It uses the highest quality audio components and speakers, which are joined together into an organic synergistic whole by cables created and manufactured by Transparent Audio. These cables are a major dynamic generating force in the quality of sound and they are essential, but are not the full story. My several previous listening experiences in this room have been astounding. What made my recent experience even more extraordinary was due, in part at least, to the source material used, which were open reel tapes made for radio broadcasts of the Portland Symphony for many years. How they were originally created and the long history of their existence is a fascinating story in itself, which I will leave to Carl Smith who restored and transferred many of the best of them to high resolution digital files that are virtually indistinguishable sonically from the original tapes.

It is very difficult to find words that can describe such powerful and astounding musical reproduction. "Flabbergasting", "mind blowing", and "awe-inspiring" are descriptions I use rarely. Part of what made this a life enhancing experience was that it went beyond in many ways what I have heard in actual live performances. I have played in, and/or heard, more than 2500 concert performances, over nearly 60 years as a professional concert pianist and conductor. I have spent a lifetime being physically enveloped within live symphonic and instrumental music. I have listened to rehearsals and concerts in great and important concert halls. What makes these Portland Symphony recordings unique is, in part, the extraordinary microphone placement, 2 mikes set perfectly above the orchestra in the "line of fire" of the instruments, and therefore above the heads of most of the seated audience. These mikes pick up the instrumental sounds at their most pure, resulting in rich, vibrant, and breathtaking realism. Every timbre, partial, and harmonic component of each instrument is chiseled, sculpted, or painted in its individual sonic character, personality and contour, yet blended into a symphonic oceanic ambience, wave upon wave, which is quite frankly often overwhelming.

Part of the answer as to how all of this is possible can be found when understanding the scientific, artistic, and even spiritual process and mission of Carl Smith, Transparent Audio and its team of visionaries. The audio cables themselves apparently assure that every link in the audio reproduction chain is matched in impedance to the next and each link is fine-tuned to realize the highest potential of the unique source material. I realize there are schools of thought which debate the merits of the exact reproduction of the actual live sound of the musicians being recorded versus a more rich and "satisfying" sound, which may not be as pure as the original performance but can at times be somewhat more sensually pleasing. In the present case the sonic end result both reconciles and transcends these distinctions. The sound is more palpably sensual than what I have heard when sitting in fine seats in some of the great concert halls with which I'm familiar and there is a sense of intimacy and profound clarity enveloped within a vast spaciousness when hearing music reproduced in this way that is apparently not available when one is separated from the musicians in a concert hall or even when playing with them.

I will leave it to Carl to explain the history and the technical details of how this miracle came about. It is the latest step in his lifelong passion to bring sound reproduction to the highest possible level. For me and my wife Tara I am sure that all experience of musical sound, whether live or recorded, will be heard and evaluated based on what we heard in the Transparent Audio sound room---an unforgettable peak experience in my lifetime of performing and listening to music.

Lorin Hollander

Classical Music Course

Carl Smith, one of Transparent's founders, is teaching a classical music course in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine. A unique feature of this course is that all the musical examples are from recordings of Portland (Maine) Symphony concerts made over the past 50 years. Carl restored and transferred to multiple digital formats tapes of more than 300 concerts featuring world famous soloists such as Van Cliburn, Emmanuel Ax, Byron Janis, Lorin Hollander, and Martha Argerich, pops concerts under the direction of Arthur Fiedler, and guest jazz and popular music artists like George Shearing and Peter Nero.


For use in his class Carl transferred many of the open reel tapes to a Tascam digital recorder in 192k/24 bit resolution and the resulting recordings are virtually indistinguishable from the original master tapes. The original tapes were made using Neumann microphones connected directly to top quality tape recorders without compression or processing of any kind. World famous mastering engineer, Bob Ludwig, whose Gateway Mastering Studio is located in Portland, worked with Carl on a 2 CD set of highlights from the collection and gave high praise to the sound quality of the best of these recordings.


The sound equipment used in the classroom must be stored in a small closet between class sessions, which ruled out the use of large speakers. Using very high quality amplifiers, Transparent cables, and a surprisingly synergistic combination of easily portable B & W speakers with a compact REL T9 subwoofer, the sound quality far exceeds what is customary in the typical classroom environment and the 31 students in the class have responded very enthusiastically. Many of them have said they have never heard such realistic sound outside of the concert hall and some have expressed interest in pursuing high quality audio themselves as a result of this experience.


The course has given Carl, who has also taught jazz music appreciation courses, an opportunity to combine his twin passions of sharing the music he loves and the experience of high quality sound reproduction.