I got the tour & demonstration at this place yesterday...
DJ Golf
Big house in north Raleigh with a mini-concert hall containing 4
concert grand pianos rigged with their hardware & connected to laptops
- I got to basically sit in a room and hear Rachmaninoff, Glenn Gould
and Art Tatum play piano live. Read this review for a better
explanation of what they do than I can give...
http://www.zenph.com/pdf/Zenph%20-%20The%20Audiophile%20Voice%20Oct%202007.pdf
What really made my jaw drop to the floor was the demo of their new
"upright bass" - a thing that looks like "V...GER" from the first Star
Trek movie (geek check) and was made by somebody in Germany. They
played me an old Oscar Peterson recording with the piano & drums in a
pair of Magnepans and the bass separately reproduced on the gadget -
if you didn't look you'd bet money that Ray Brown was standing there
playing bass.
Fun stuff. They told me sax & drums are next. When they figure out
how to do this with acoustic guitar, I want to hear Robert Johnson.
jim.br...@gmail.com
ask me, this seems straight out of Star Trek. Why bother with high
fidelity speakers, etc. when you can purchase an ultra-premium
Bosendorfer player piano. The ultimate tool for audiophile one-
upsmanship.
In all seriousness, the business model they're proposing - providing
ultra-high fidelity recordings of "re-performances" of classic
performances to labels - is the most innovative "new format" idea I've
seen yet (wax cylinder -> vinyl record -> tape -> CD -> mp3?). How the
labels can manage to monetize the new recordings in today's music
business ecosystem is another matter, but brilliantly, that's not this
company's problem.
I am skeptical of their ability to mechanically replicate the
recordings of more tactile instruments like drums and guitars - for
example, I'd love to stand in the room with a giant Marshall stack as
Jimi Hendrix's performance at Monterrey is "re-performed", but I'm not
sure how they would re-perform the guitar burning, etc. However, if
these folks are smart enough to have come up with what they already
have, I'm fascinated to see what they do come up with. I'd love to see
that stand-up bass gadget in action.
On Apr 9, 10:24 pm, DJ Golf <djg...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> www.zenph.com
>
> Big house in north Raleigh with a mini-concert hall containing 4
> concert grand pianos rigged with their hardware & connected to laptops
> - I got to basically sit in a room and hear Rachmaninoff, Glenn Gould
> and Art Tatum play piano live. Read this review for a better
> explanation of what they do than I can give...
>
> http://www.zenph.com/pdf/Zenph%20-%20The%20Audiophile%20Voice%20Oct%2...
DJ Golf
Yamaha and another I didn't look at. You can watch the keys move,
which is pretty mind-blowing when Art Tatum is knocking off a 45-
second volley of 64th and 128th notes.
The "bass" had no visible moving parts - just sound coming out.
> > how to do this with acoustic guitar, I want to hear Robert Johnson.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -