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F :;, ii.;:, : ::1,",* il: T. 3::,,',1:test disc Sound Check might prove a realitycheck. Not that there's necessarily anythingwrong with your audio gear-it's just that yoursystem might not be set up correctly. Eitherway, you'll find the answers on this CD of sig-nals and sounds from the producer-performerAlan Parsons and the renowned acoustics designerStephen Court. Released in Europe on theirown label three years ago, Sound Check hasbeen reissued in the States on a 24-karat goldCD courtesy of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs.

Parsons made his mark as the recording engineeron the legendary Pink Floyd album Dark Side o_l'the Moon. He went on to engineer such albums asThe Beatles' Itt It Be and Al Stewart's Year of tlrcCat. From 1976-84, his-and partner Eric \Woolf-son's-band, Alan Parsons Project, scored with thehit albums I, Robot; The Tim ttf the Friendly Card;and Eye in the Sky, as well as eight top-40 singlesincluding "Time," "Cames People Play,""Damned if I Do" and "Can't Take it with You."

Today, the 47-year-old Parsons retains his rep-utation as one of the most techno-sawy of pro-ducers. Vith a forthcoming solo album and a U.S.tour in support, the London-based musicsmith

candidly criticizes current technology, sketches acouple of future trends, and talks up the test discthat is his latest Alan Parsons project.

Auoro Vnro INrEnlons, It seems kind of oddto me-aJamous rock/pop performer puttittg oLtt someteclmical product like a test disc.

Alan Parsons' You'd be surprised. \i/hen youmake 'a record for a record company, you'reprobably paid about a dollar a record, if you'relucky. \i/hereas this thing didn't take six monthsto make, as an album does, and was done throughour own label until Mobile Fidelity becameinvolved-and so we stand to make possibly tentimes as much. And I think also it was to fulfilla need; the fact is, luse it all the time, which isas good a reason as any for doing it! (Chuckles)There are other test discs around, but it's sort ofdesigned around my needs, which it turns outseems to be the needs of other people as well.Of course, l'm not an acoustics expert, whichStephen ICourt] is, and between the two of us,we seem to'have filled some niches.

AYL Yet with all these test tones and sine wauere;ferences and other signals that need pro;fessional

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Parsons: Vell, hi-fi enthusiasts are always intomaking comparisons. And you are unable to makecomparisons until you're certain all the equipmentyou've got hooked up is behaving in rhe sameway as the thing you're comparing it to.

AYf Orantcd. So let\ say I put it irtttt myCD playcr artd ltcar thc one-kiltthertz totrc thatstarts it o.ff. Wlnt do I do then?

Parsons; (Chuckles) Vell, if you don't haveany meters in your system, there's not a lot youmrr do.l would say it's not for the average homelistener, but for anybody who's seriously intostereos and hl-fi and has a system that goes intolots of different places. If for nothing else, hemight want to identify the left and right chan-nels and make sure thty\t, correct.

AYL And, t()0, an autliofuidcrt tlcsigucr scttirrgup a lutrttc tlrcater ruight indecd lmuc nrctcringequipntcnt, so test discs nny turll becttntc nrttreand more d standard tool. What other rtrrentaudio techttttlttgy do you likt,?

Parsons: I think hard-disc [e.g., computer hard-drive] studio-recoFding technology is exciting, butit has a long way to go. The great thing about it isinstant access fto recorded sounds and music]. Theproblern is, they're computer controlled and notvery safe, They crash, they go wrong, they havebugs. Vhereas you record a piece of sound ontape, short of the tape breaking or the wrong but-ton being pressed, there's very little that can gowrong. The wave of the future is to be recordingonto a computer rather than onto a tape recorder.But I think tape will be around, if only as a backr-rpmedium, even ten, fifteen years from now.

AVI: Horl do yttrr yoursclf' prcJcr to rcatrtl?

Parsons: ['m currently doing my basic trackslof recorded musicl onto tape, and then manip-ulating on computer-disc.

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AYlz Civcrr your loilgtime technological ha&-grttttnd, uas tltdt ilt easy trausitiorr to nrake?

Parsons: No, l'm still in the throes of it!(Laughs) I'm actually qr-rite new to it. Br.rtI am pleased that I went from [working with theold standard] reel-to-reel tape system to using aneight-track digital cassette system. I have a bankof five of those, giving me 40 tracks.

AVI: In terms of comparison-and sinceyou worked for a time at the Beatles' studio,Abbey Road-wasn't The Beatles' Sgt, Pepper\album made using eight-track recording?

Parsons: No, four-track! The first eight-trackBeatles album was "The Vhite Album." And alot of that was done four-track.

AVI: Didn't they r,rse two four-track machinesfor S{rt. Pcppcr's?

Parsons: Yes, although they were not oftensynchronized to each other, because it waspretty difficrrlt to do in those days.

AVI: Switching to the future, where do yousee cLrrrent audio-technology trends going,like recordable Cl)s?

Parsons: I think recordable CDs are verymuch something that will be in every con-sumer's home in a very short time. The prob-lem, of course, is piracy: If you can copy anaudio disc, presumably you can copy a comprrterdisc as well. But I feel the current 5%-inch CI)format is not the wave of the future.

AVI: Riqgcr? Nrr/ r/rc MiniDisc?

Parsons: Oh, it won't be the MiniDisc.(Chuckles) That should never have beeninvented. lt just sounds awftrl.

SOIJI\ItrD CHECKln 1973, Pink Floyd's Dark Side 0f the M00n

permanently changed my ad0lescent musicaltaste buds. lt still resides in my disc collec-tion-on Mobile Fidelity zl-karaI gold-platedCD-as a testament t0 the genius of RogerWaters, David Gilmore and Alan Parsons. the

album's sound engineer.Seven years later, when I attended The Wall concertin

Los Angeles, I was amazed by three things: the gigantic Sty-rofoam wall that ultimately came tumbling down, the fan-tastic video-projection show, and the incredible sound sys-tem that enveloped L.A.s "Fabulous Forum" with Waters'morOse vocals and Gilmore's sympathetic Strat0caster.

Today, I find myself exercising my hi-fi system with atest disc produced by two of the men responsible for thosemem0rable events: Pars0ns and ac0ustics designerStephen Court, who built the sound rigs for r;any of Pink'Floyd's spectacular gigs. Parsons and Court first releaspdSound Check in Europe in 1993; it's now available in theUnited States on a Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab gold-platedCD for $39.95. The disc contains 92 tracks-including pinkn0ise test t0nes ,lt-oclave spectrum analysis, sweep t0nes,sine- and square-wave frequencies, maximum level tones,

20 instrumental and vocal samples, four music tracks, fivesound effects samples and four utility tracks.

Court-whose labrwork ranges from early training withthe BBC t0 designing/spectrum analyzers and graphic equal-izersjreports that the test CD represents the culmination of30 years worth of experience in the recording industry. Someof the recordings date back t0 '1974, but it was the "intro-duction of the compact disc," Court states, that "made it pos-sible to combine allthese sound tests into a single format...."

"The final element in Sound Checks creation was to mixtogether all these items with m0re state-of-the-art, dry instru-ment recordings, which required both technical and afiisticskill," Court writes in Sound Check's liner notes. He creditsParsons-whom he met during their "Pink Floyd days"-withmaking the disc a reality. "The final recording, made on Akaioptical recorders [and digital mastering computersl at Alan sstudios, was completed after two years of work."

The end result includes pink noise tones from 20Hz to20kHz that are invaluable for testing loudspeaker frequencyresponse. The nost impressive tracks, however-the tracksthat set Sound Check apart from most test discs-are thec0ntemp0rary instrumental and vocal samples. These con-tain "subtle transients, which define true high fidelity and

22 Auoro VrDEo lNre nrons

AYlz ThLtt a.qnirr, thdt's rultnt tltty said aborttt t t t t s i t t'u t d i ttca-s-sclfc-r rry'rt', t l t t' )t crt t t t t: tt t t t .

Parsons: Vell, and they were right,weren't they?

AY L I44 r n t ttb o t t t n r t d i tt m-r.rcflr,-r 1 rr r i r?

Parsons: Oh, they sLrck! They're the second-worst invention. No, I'd say they were //tc worstinvention and the second-worst invention wasthe Minil)rsc. It's the obsession wc have withmicro-miniatunzation. But the tape wrdth andthe tape speed are just too low to expect to getany decent results out of it. And the Minil)isc,likewrse, rs too small a format to contain the nec-essary information withor,rt it being shrLrnk andcompressed or,rt of recognition. \i/e're hungry formedra such as video games, rnteractive technol-ogy and str-rff like that, and the worry is always,"How are wc going to squeeze all this informa-

which are often lost in the reverberation and processing 0fcommercial records," accOrding to the liner notes.

lnstruments range from acoustic steel-string, nylon andelectric guitars {"clean sound" and "distorted rock") to flute,sax and bonqos. lf your music tastes run the gamut from clas-

sical to hard rock, Sound Checkwtll give your speakers aworkout, with kick and snare drums in mono and the wholedrum kit enchilada in stereo. The final two instrumental tracks

include violins, cellos and violas, panned from left t0 right.For home theater purposes, the "Sound Fffects" section

"provides extreme tests of dynamic and frequency range." ltincludes steam trains, submachine guns and a thunderstorm.

While acknowledging the abundance of test CDs onthe market today, Parsons states that he and Court cre-ated Sound Check "wilh the intention 0f getting awayfrom the laboratory test bench type of product andinstead, aimed to introduce a universal tool which any-one with a serious interest in s0und, whether amateur 0rprofessional, would find beneficial and easy tQ use."

The combination of ParsOn s sterling studi0 track record,Court's acoustic sensibilities and Mobile Fidelitys goldenreproduction values makes Sound Checkan investmentthatwill pay dividends for many m00ns t0 come.-Eric K. Gill

tion onto this 5Z-inch Cl)?" For that reason Ithink we {r11' lookin!l towards either removablehard-disk technology or optical discs of a largersize, where space will not be a problem.

AVI: Yi'r./irr ntdio trlotrt', thc OD.fitnttat sL'n,td1t1111 11,(:ll .l(tr Sound Check.

Parsons: Indeed, yes. I'm jirst saying thatrnayhe in ten ycars' time-when everything isinteractive and wc have the need for huge mem-ory resotrrces-that even with compressiontechnologies and the doLrble-speed drives andthe double-sided drscs that we're working onnow, I jLrst don't think it has a long-term futr-rre.

AYI: Iltltnt do ),ttrt thilk o.f tficst'rtcrt,"L'rtltatrccd" CI)s rplrt'rc y()tt cdu pla1, 7l1r' CI) in),our CD-ROAI drivr: tlnd trdtdt .qrapltirc arrtll),rir artd sttdr ort l,ttrtr rrrtrtritctr.?

Parsons: All the more reason for backing r-rpmy argument abor-rt the fact that there's jLrst notenor,rgh spacc on there. I mean, everybody'shr-rr.rgry for the nrcmory: The video people wantmore, so the sor-rnd has to strffer, or vice-versa.Vru can't sqlleeze an hour of video and an hor-rrof audio onro a regular-sized CI). Everybodywor-rld be happier with a full-sized, 12-inchdisc-particularly the artwork people.

AVI: Brrt dtr dllilutt ruitlr, s,ty, 15 rrtirtrrtr:s o-l'rttrrsic, corrld -rfor'(' rr zilliort still piilrtrcs irt tltL'ru t t t1i t 1 i t t.q ilt ( tt t ot')1.

Parsons: Yeah-but who wants stills?Everybody wants to put a feature film on adisc, with full-scale [20-bit] digltal sound.That's not currently possible.

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Parsons: No, I think they're a stepping-stone.There're a lot of hr-rrdles to go before we'll reallybe doing something exciting with that. It's a verysort of third-ratc excLrse for the vrsr-rals that mightbe going onto Imtrsic discs] in a few years' time.

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AYlz Tlrur a.qairt, rilttt trattts t() Iistert ttt utrrsicttrr tirrrtlt c()tnputcr spcakers?

Parsons: There's that too. Ve have to get togrips with the fact that either we've got to makethe computer the center of our stereo system,or else we keep the computer on a desk and theaudio remains secondary.

AVI: Brrr as -far as re.qtlar audio cqttipntent

artd rccordirtg is cttrta'nrcd, Ray Dolby told nrcirt tlris colrtrrtrr that tltosc tccltrrttlogies hauc rcaclrcda plateart arrd ruc\'e prctty niltdt at tlu, lirnits o-l'u,lrat lrttrrratr lrcarirrg carr disrcnt.

Parsons: I agree with that up to a point. ButI think our ears are becoming tuned-in to theimprovements. lf you played a film sor-rndtrackfrom the 1920s, when it was miraculous for amovie to have sound, and told them it'll get bet-ter, peopie would have said, "Naw, this is great,this is as good as it gets."

AVI:Jrrst as we rnigltt today listur to digitalTHX rrrttt,ic sttritdtracks arrd tltink, "This is grcattlt