stereophile.com n August2019 33
stserophritliartisans. The consensus: both.To the plane!
I ran back to the hotel and cabbed
it to grubby Schönefeld airport on
Berlin’s outskirts, which looked like
what it was: something out of the old
GDR. As we taxied to the
runway, the new airport
set to open next year came
into view.
In Geneva, I was greeted
by Mr. Pasche and CH
Precision co-founder
Florian Cossey. I quipped,
“What would this encoun-
ter be like had I panned the
amplifier?”
We had an enjoyable late
dinner in a nearby town,
after which they depos-
ited me at a small, cozylakefront hotel that I wished I’d had
more time to enjoy. The next morning
it was up the mountain to visit CH’s
CNC machine shop/anodizing/chassis
building factory and then back down
to its assembly site, offices, and listen-
ing room.
Despite the company’s many prod-
ucts, including the P1 phono preamprecord pressing business.
In the afternoon, I ran “Mastering
& Cutting Masterclass” with cutting
engineers Rainer Maillard, Loop-O’s
Andreas Lubich, and Gearbox Records’
Casper Sutton-Jones. We talked about
whether vinyl is “accurate” to the origi-nal source, whether tape or digital. The
consensus was that accuracy is an “over-
rated” and essentially meaningless term,
since recordings are, by definition, not
accurate to the live event but if done
correctly can end up sounding pleasing
and good enough to suspend disbelief.
The mastering engineers talked about
what must be done to a recording in
order to cut a lacquer and whether
they are best regarded as technicians orWonneberg was also on the panel.
Naturally, I stressed vinyl’s resurgence
and the downward CD trend as well
as the importance of high-resolution
streaming both for its own sake and
as a way of finding music to buy on
vinyl. I’m sure I annoyed some, since
do, or to do what vinyl enthusiasts did:
lead people to what was better—and
succeed!
On Day 2, I ran a morning panel,
“In the Right Place at the Right Time,”
featuring GZ Media’s Michal Sterba,
MPO’s Alban Pingeot, Optimal Me-
dia’s Peter Runge, Record Industry’s
Ton Vermeulen, and URP’s Mark
Michaels. Each had an interesting story
to tell about how they ended up in the
Day 1 was not supposed to
be about vinyl—or stream-
ing for that matter. I had the
last word, and I stressed the
importance of high quality
over quantity—something
Sony Music Entertainment’s
Gerhard Blum spoke about
the next day in his vinyl-
centric keynote speech.^2
Not everyone was an-
noyed by what I said. Timo
Hagemeister, the administra-
tor of Berliner Philharmoni-
ker Recordings, later sent me
a note. “Thank you for your
inspiring and refreshingly
controversial insights at the
conference,” he wrote. He
may have been referring to
my reaction to something
a major label executive said
during another panel. After
the SACD/DVD-A debacle,
he said, labels have given up
trying to educate consumers.
If they want MP3s, we’ll give
them to them. Forget about
giving consumers higher
quality. He didn’t acknowl-
edge the industry’s foolish-
ness in introducing two
competing formats and the
confusion it caused, or DVD-
A’s menu disaster, or the
“closed” nature of SACDs,
which didn’t allow consum-
ers to make copies, among
other roll-out mistakes.
When I had my oppor-
tunity onstage, I went on a
controlled tirade suggesting
that the choice was either
to “follow the crumbs” off
the cliff, as the executive had
suggested the record industry
Left:AnNHB-458monoblock
beingupgradedtoanNHB-468.
Below:TheentrancetoOptimal
Media.2 See youtu.be/Nf1txzdN1Ms9.