An Interview With Mr. Bell

  Our very first interview is NOT of some well known, hugely famous throughout the audiophile or music loving community person. Though if you read on, you will see why he was the first person i chose to have on my www sight interviewed. Graciously, he accepted my request to interview him. Many thanks go out to him for sharing his time, knowledge and experience with us all.

Steven Rochlin: What originally got you interested in music 
and reproduced music?

Mr. Bell: That goes back quite a long ways.  On the farm
That I lived on north of Gainesville (Florida) we did not
have electricity.  We did have a spring-wound phonograph.
Our total record collection was possibly a dozen discs.  They
were shellac records of course.  They were all country music 
which I did not particularly care for.  We didn't have a radio
there so I built a crystal radio set i could get WRUF on it.

SR: Were they playing classical music back then like they
do today?

MB: Every morning they had a classical hour or two and it was
the practice at the East side grammar school in the assemblies
where all the students went to an auditorium for a program. The
Principal would play this classical program from WRUF on
a console model radio that was the sound system that the
Eastside grammar school was equipped with.

SR: And so they mainly played classical music or did you also
enjoy jazz at the time?

MB: There was no jazz.

SR: What year are we going back to might i ask?

MB: 1928.  

SR: Wow!

MB: The only opportunity that I had at home to hear the music 
that I liked was on weekends.  To listen to my crystal set
with earphones.  Later on after I finished the sixth grade I
enrolled into the PK Young Laboratory school.  There we
had classical music for all of the students in the school.  It
was a different class for each grade.  Cleavelr J Carson was 
the instructor and what was taught was Carl Ziggy.  She was
strictly classical.  She would get indicative if anyone
mentioned anything other than classical.  She didn't care
for folk music. I still listen to WRUF using a crystal set
I built myself.

SR:How old is that unit?  When was it built?

MB: Well, I have built several.  The first one I built was around
1930-1932.  The crystal set I listen to now is a Grundig.

SR: Ah yes!  i have a Grundig world band tube radio i enjoy 
immensely.

MB: This one covers all frequencies from shortwave to FM, FM 
stereo, and even single side band.  I'm not too successful with
getting music I enjoy through the radio.

SR: So you're a musician yourself obviously.  What instrument 
did you play?

MB: Clarinet.

SR: For how many years?

MB: Oh, for about a total of six.

SR: So you chose a different path from there?

MB: Yes.  I couldn't continue on with the clarinet.  For one thing I
rented a premises and that sort of thing was frowned upon so i gave
it up.

SR: So as time has moved forward from your early days of
crystal radio and eventually you did get electricity, you moved 
up north and actually knew of Mr Fisher in the early days
of what we call Hi-Fi.

MB: I didn't actually know Avery Fisher.  I had stopped and 
talked with him at his store.  He had a store on Third Avenue.
That was at the time when the elevated train was still running there.
He had a relatively small retail store where he was selling the
products of his own design there.  I don't think that he was 
manufacturing the first ones he was selling.  I would walk by there 
a number of times and I would see him standing at the door hoping
to stop one of the passer buys to sell them something.  He wasn't
doing at all well financially in those days.

SR:And this is going back to ???

MB: The 1940's.

SR: That was obviously when mono recordings were available.

MB: Yes, on shellac.  That was before the days of the long playing 
record.  It was in the later 40's that the long playing records came 
to being.

SR: Did you see any of Mr Fishers progress with the music 
reproduction abilities?

MB: I saw his equipment at other retailers.  He closed up that
shop and started in just the manufacture of the equipment.

SR: So Avery chose to have his products sold through other
retailers?

MB: Yes.

SR: What other products were available at that time that you 
remember?

MB: Well those were the days when speakers were beginning to
be developed that could reproduce sound better.

SR: How so?

MB: Paul Klipsch with the Klipschorn.  I don't remember all of the 
earlier ones, I remember the one that first really got my attention 
and made me take notice.  It was in a dealers showroom.  It was
a Lowther-Voight.  It was installed, um, he had two of them installed 
in the corners.

SR: And was this stereo or still mono with two speakers?

MB: That was still mono in those days.  There was some stereo in 
those days but it wasn't really commercially developed.  The first 
stereo that I ever encountered in my own home was on radio station
WQXR that was owned by the New York Times.  They would transmit
one channel on their FM station and the other channel on the
AM station.

SR: And how did that work?

MB: It was better than nothing.

 (Laughter)

MB: You had to set up two receivers. Tune in one on FM band
and the other on the AM band.

SR: So this was in the 50's?

MB: I believe this was towards the end of the 40's.  I remember
VERY distinctly the first recording that got my attention.  It was
played on the Lowther-Voight speaker.

SR: Which recording was that?

MB: Ernest Ansermet "Petrouchka" London ffrr (LLP 130).

SR: Do you know the London ffrr is still considered by some to be 
among of the best recordings even to this day?

MB: The Ernest Ansermet recording was copyrighted in 1949.
That's how i can place the time of this.  It was at this time I first
heard this in the dealers showroom.

SR: So the first time music really impressed you was at this time.

MB: Yes, using the Lowther-Vioght.  The other speaker that 
greatly impressed me was the Hartley-Luth.  Luth was an acoustic
engineer and he designed the enclosure.  The
speaker itself was designed by Hartley.  The Hartley speaker 
departed from the usual mechanical suspension to a magnetic
suspension where the peak of the resonance was tremendously
flattened.  In the early days of speakers the bass reflex cabinet
was the one that was standard.  It was designed to sort of 
flatten out the lower frequency resonance of the speaker so
that you'd have to design the cabinet to resonate at a lower
frequency than the speaker would resonate at.  There would be
two peaks produced and each one would be lowered somewhat
from what the speaker would be without the resonant cabinet.
But the Hartley speaker was designed for an infinite baffle.

SR: And that worked out well at the time?

MB: Yes.  The infinite baffle was accomplished by putting a lot of
sound absorbing material inside the cabinet.

SR: I see.  So as time has progressed slowly but surely since then,
what else have you heard and been impressed with?  I know
currently you own some classic speakers now.

MB: I have the Hartley speakers.

SR: So have there been time since getting those where you have
heard a system that's impressed you more?

MB: Uh, not really.  I have been impressed with the Tannoy speakers.

SR: Those are the same speakers my father has in fact!  He 
bought them in the early 70's late 60's. He still loves them to 
this day.  What impressed you about the Tannoys?

MB: The cleanness of the bass through midrange response on them.
There again I'm sure that the cabinet had a great deal to do with
the way the speakers sounded.  It was designed for a ported, vented
enclosure.

SR: Exactly.

MB: In New York one of the things that I ran across was every 
year there would be an audio fair.  Different manufacturers would
rent space together, or each one would have it's own separate space 
in one of the local hotels.  Sometimes they would have two or 
three floors.  They would be renting all of the rooms there and
having their equipment demonstrated.

SR: And who sponsored this?  Was it a magazine who sponsored it
or was this just a understood let's get together and show our wears?

MB: I don't know who the sponsor was.  It was, I believe, an audio
engineering society.  I would spend as much time as I could going
through from one exhibit to another.

SR: Did you se anything that really impressed you there or did
you see anything that appeared, how shall i say it, crazy?

MB: Oh, there were some of them that were weird.  Oh, I do remember 
one particular manufacturer of a tape recorder who had a room set up.
They had one of their units on display.  It wasn't plugged in.  They
had some literature, a water cooler, some cups, and large, VERY
large bottles of aspirin.

SR: Why the aspirin?

MB: For people who got headaches from going to the other exhibits.

(Much laughter)

SR: Do you remember who the manufacture was who sponsored that
room?

MB: No, they're not in business anymore.  I remember a comment I
had to a friend of mine I was going through with.  The cabinet was
enameled bright green sheet metal.  I commented to a friend of
mine as we went into this room that this was the company that
has tape recorder in a tin can.

(Laughter)

MB: I was overheard and almost ejected for that.  It was at the 
audio fair that I also saw my first demonstration of the video tape
recorder.

SR: And what year was this?

MB: The late 50's.  It was Sony who had the exhibit.

SR: So as time has progressed, what has kept you interested
in music so much?  Why do you feel that you enjoy music so
much that you not only listen to it but to also try to analyze
why the things are the way they are?  Why do you devote so much
time trying to reproduce and understand how to reproduce music?

MB: I derive so much pleasure from listening to Mozart, Beethoven,
Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, and Bach.  It makes me feel elated. 
It relaxes me.  It is, I think, if you want to use the terminology
that a person using drugs uses, it produces the best high that can
be experienced.

(i now start glowing from ear to ear.  We then start discussing the
internet for a few minutes)

SR: So back to audio, have you heard that vinyl is not as prevalent
as the digital compact disc?

MB: I'm well aware of that.  It causes me to think back to the days of
Shellac.  Because the first records in my collection were shellac.
I remember the first album I bought was an RCA Victor album of
Alfred Corteu playing the 24 Preludes of Chopin.  It was in the
very early 40's that I bought that album.  Of course there was a lot
of hissing and the high frequencies were not reproduced.  The 
very low frequencies were not reproduced.  There was a lot of wow 
and flutter.

SR: You were using a Victrola for playback or...?

MB: No, it was a cheap electric phonograph motor with a crystal
cartridge not a magnetic cartridge.  It was a Rochelle salt crystal.
Later on I got a magnetic cartridge.  And then when the long playing
records came out I started collecting those.  A person listening to a
long playing record would expect to hear a high pitched hiss throughout 
the playback.  If that high pitched hiss was not there you knew that
you were not getting your high frequencies reproduced as in
the original.

SR: Why was the high frequency pitch there?  Was it an artifact of 
the recording?

MB: It's the characteristic of the medium at the time.  In the vinyl 
there was a filler that provided body.  I don't know to what extent 
carbon was part  of the filler.  I don't know exactly what the 
fillers consisted  of but it wasn't 100% pure vinyl.

SR: And that, you feel, caused the constant high pitch.

MB: Yes.  I have always been able to hear surface noise from vinyl.

SR: Have you heard any of the more modern record players that 
are available today using moving coil cartridges?

MB: Yes.

SR: What turntable do you own as a reference?

MB: A Technics direct drive turntable.  The surface noise disappears
at the same time that the wow and flutter disappears.  That's when
you go into the digital reproduction of the compact disc.  The 
compact disc is short of perfection because they made a 
compromise with the sampling of it.  If you double the sampling rate 
from what it is now you would get much better fidelity from the 
original recording.

SR: So in today's technology let's say CD vs. vinyl, which is an old
argument between some music lovers, which do you find preferable
and why?

MB: For my own use at the moment is the compact disc.  I find that
some of them that I've listened to sound harsh.  They don't sound like
musical instruments to me.  More like it's, um, a synthesizer.

SR: Ah yes.  So there are times where the CD though is better than
vinyl in your opinion.

MB: Oh yes.  Particularly in the way it completely eliminates wow 
and flutter.  I've heard some piano music on equipment that
sounded more like a Hawaiian guitar than a piano because of the 
wow and flutter.

SR: Are you familiar with the next generation of technology called DVD?

MB: Yes.

SR: The industry seems it's not going to choose and audio only
standard though a lot of people are pushing for a 24 bit 96kHz rate 
of sampling.  How does that make you feel?  What's your opinion
on this situation?

MB: Well, the industry is concerned with the amount of money that
they get, not the quality of their product (in general).  The industry
is really not concerned with producing the ultimate in quality of a
product.  Take for instance in video when you had Sony with
their Beta system and JVC with their video home system competing
with each other for the format.  JVC was willing to go for a bit lower
quality for the picture.  The horizontal resolution in the JVC is not
as great as it is in the Sony Beta.

SR: Yes.

MB: But the public decided that they wanted the JVC.

SR: Because?

MB: Because (laughing)  you get two hours on one cassette where
Beta only gave you one hour.  That's where Sony made their mistake.
They had a smaller cassette and so their camera could be designed
more compact and smaller.  And now what are they (the public) going
for?  The video home system compact VHSC.

SR: Where you only get 30 minutes per tape in the high quality mode.

(Laughter)

SR: Is there anything else you feel i should know about you love
of music as we come to the end of this interview?  How do you calibrate
your ears for analyzing a music reproduction system?

MB: Oh I did go to some performances of live live music.  I never went 
to an opera at the Metropolitan Opera House but I did get season 
tickets for the ballet which was performed in the Metropolitan Opera
house for years.  That, of course, was live music and very well 
played. One of the first I saw was Widow with Jan Pierce and 
Marta Eckard.  I also saw Oklahoma on Broadway and went to 
some performances of Gilbert and Sullivan.  I'm also a Savoyard.  
Not sure how it originated but it's someone who's a aficionado of 
Gilbert and Sullivan.

SR: Thanks for your time.

MB: My pleasure.