Not An Audiophile – The Podcast featuring David Spargo, master acoustician. His pursuit of knowledge led him to Sydney University, where he studied audio acoustics under famous Neville Thiele. Under Thiele’s mentorship, David explored the theoretical aspects of sound reproduction, eventually co-presenting Thiele’s loudspeaker design course at the University. This experience highlights the importance of acoustics in creating the perfect listening environment and starts our fascinating story of David Spargo.
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 008 and Coming Soon Episode 014
TRANSCRIPT
S1 EP008 David Spargo, Acoustician working with Musicians, Neville Thiele & room acoustics
David Spargo is a highly accomplished acoustician
David Spargo: They’re just sort of, we’re all sitting there relaxing and just, you know, watching harbor go pie. And next thing there’s a police launch screaming sirens and lights and everything screaming towards the boat. And these guys are going, what’s going on here?
Andrew Hutchison: Hello, folks. Not an audiophile, the podcast. This is episode eight, season one. And today our very special guest is Mister David Spargo, a highly accomplished acoustician. Very interesting stuff. David has also worked in the recording and music, industry. So he has, not just knowledge, of the technical aspects of that, but some fairly good stories as well. Your background, in acoustics is extensive. where did you get your start with that?
David Spargo: well, I didn’t originally start in acoustics as such. I was always very early on, I was always fascinated with music and sound and so that’s what I wanted to be involved in as a career. And I played classical guitars, studied classical guitar as I was going through school. But I also started getting really interested in sound reproduction and things like that. I was setting up little pa systems in pubsden when I was in high school at night as a job, just because that sort of thing interested me. And then I studied. After, after high school I studied electronics because I thought that was the, you know, a good related business, you know, way into music and sound. And after I finished studying, I got my first job was with what was then CBS records in Australia. And I was the maintenance technician in the recording department at the record factory.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, wow.
David Spargo: so I was servicing, you.
Andrew Hutchison: Know, taped, you know, 24 track two inch machines or something. Or,
David Spargo: no, it was all the two track material, so.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: Because it was the, the record factory. We were just dealing with the mastering.
Andrew Hutchison: I just doing mastering? Yes. Okay.
David Spargo: Yeah, so the clue is in the.
Andrew Hutchison: In the title, really. Record factory. Yep. I wasn’t really listening. Okay, so, yeah, so you, you’ve got a good grounding in the mastering side of things there, obviously.
David Spargo: Yeah. So I was maintaining all the playback equipment, two track tape machines, lots and lots of different types of tape machines there. and all the cutting lathes.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, well, all right.
David Spargo: we were also doing tape, you know, cassette tape, mastering as well. So there was a couple of different machines there for, for cassette tapes. But yeah, it was mostly the vinyl mastering that I was maintaining that chain. And then later I started doing the mastering myself.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay, wow. So you skipped floor sweeping and you jumped straight into servicing what now would be the most collectible tape machines on the planet, I guess, because the. The two track mastery machines were pretty special, weren’t they? Like serious machines?
David Spargo: Oh, yeah, yeah, they were. There were some pretty. Pretty, impressive machines there.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: and so they required constant, constant care. So, yeah, I think we probably had about a dozen different two track machines there, that, you know, and you had to align them all at least once a week.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
David Spargo: It was like, you know, you had to constantly work on them.
Andrew Hutchison: And so the tapes. Okay, so what. What’s. Where’s the tape coming from? That. Now we’re going sideways here, but, just this always. I always wonder about this.
David Spargo: Where does the tape come from?
Andrew Hutchison: Where does the tape come from? Is the tape coming from the recording studio? They do a. They do a two channel or two track mix or something onto half, inch tape or something or what’s.
David Spargo: No, generally it was onto quarter inch.
Andrew Hutchison: Just quarter. Okay. Yeah, but two track only, like, divided up the quarter inches. Divided into two tracks only, obviously.
David Spargo: Yep, yep, yep. And, you know, we were
00:05:00
David Spargo: getting local stuff, plus all the international.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay stuff.
David Spargo: So they would, you know, we receive lots and lots of tapes every week from. From all over the world, for records that we were going to release.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
David Spargo: and they’d all be duplicates. So they’d be, you know, wherever the. The original masters were created. they would. They would do a whole lot of duplicates and then send them all out to the. To the various factories around the world.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay, so it’s, So effectively.
The art when mastering is to get the levels right, I guess
So it’s interesting, isn’t it? So we. We used to talk about, oh, ah, this is an australian pressing. This is a UK pressing, this is a japanese pressing. I mean, this is how all that comes about.
David Spargo: Right?
Andrew Hutchison: So there’s all these different tapes and then effectively different tape machines, which we hope are all, It was your job to maintain to perfection to some degree. And then. And then there’s the interpretation of how to deal with that tape and get that into, I don’t know if the word I’m going to use is correct, but a lacquer or. What are you cutting on the, On the lathe? On the record? Cutting lathe, yeah.
David Spargo: So it goes the. The tape plays through the electronics of the lathe that, like the drive system for the, For the stylus on the lathe.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: And, Yeah, cuts and cuts. Say a lacquer disc. It’s a. It’s a. Basically, it’s a. Ah, an aluminium plate. Yeah, a lacquer coated aluminium plate. And that goes on the lathe. And then you get the cutting head cuts that groove into the lacquer.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. And the art when mastering, then, is to get the levels right, I guess. But there’s an EQ aspect, and obviously, then. Yeah.
David Spargo: What’s that?
Andrew Hutchison: What’s. There’s obviously. It’s a real. It’s a real. There’s a real knack to it, I guess. But,
What is mastering and how does it differ from masking
Do you want to throw some color on that a little bit?
Brad Serhan: What’s the point of mastering? David, what could you explain? Sorry, Andrew, but explain to us what. What the mastering does.
David Spargo: Well, there’s a number of different aspects to mastering, and I guess that sort of, over the years, it’s the. The emphasis on certain aspects has changed. I mean, mastering now is different to what you would have considered mask during to be, you know, back when. When we’re making vinyl, you know, a lot of vinyl. so when you make a vinyl record, there’s a lot of losses involved. There’s a lot of, changes that happen to the sound just due to the physical, components. So you’re doing. There are a lot of physical processes that have to be done in order to get to that point where you’ve got a vinyl record.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
David Spargo: And so part of that mastering process is trying compensate for the, sort of peculiarities of that transferring sound to that medium. So, for example, the whole reason that we have an Ria curve is to. It’s a big part is about how the, How the sound excites the, stylus in the lacquer, you know, low frequency components if it wasn’t filtered. So if you had a flat, frequency response, then the grooves would be. The way the grooves move around would be too extreme. So you have to roll out the bottom end, to reduce the amount of movement in the grooves. And at the top end, you increase the top end because it gives you some degree of noise reduction, because the lacquer is not necessarily completely smooth. So you get a lot of noise in there as well. so it’s both a way of managing the amount of space that the grooves take up in the low frequency and the amount of noise that they pick up in the high frequency.
Brad Serhan: Right.
David Spargo: So that’s. That’s one way. So you’ve got that Rra double a curve is really just there as a. As a way of managing the medium, and you still got to do a lot of work. So when you’re mastering, doing a vinyl master, you’re looking for you’re watching it in a microscope while it’s been cut.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. Okay. Right.
David Spargo: To make sure that the. That there’s enough space for the low frequency content. So you’re watching the. That the grooves don’t cross over, for example.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Oh.
Brad Serhan: Ah, right.
David Spargo: Or that. Or that the, stylus doesn’t go so deep
00:10:00
David Spargo: that it hits the aluminium base.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. so when you say lacquer, the actual. It’s so that the disc. The lacquer is aluminium. The lacquer is what you’re cutting, though. You’re not cutting. You’re trying to avoid cutting through into the aluminium. Like the.
David Spargo: Yeah, the aluminium just holds the lacquer.
Andrew Hutchison: And how. How thick is that lacquer, approximately, do you think? Not very thick, obviously.
David Spargo: I don’t remember, but it’s not.
Andrew Hutchison: Come on. It was only the other day.
Brad Serhan: Don’t forget he’s called methuselah.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, we haven’t really told people, I mean, that this was all happening in the sixties. No, it’s not true. I guess this was, Was this late seventies, early eighties or early eighties?
David Spargo: Early eighties, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. And, I’m gonna guess and say it’s, I don’t know, 0.25 of a mil, if that. I guess is that. I mean, it’s. It’s pretty. It would appear to be thick when you looked at it, I guess. but you. The care that you must use to handle these things, because any damage in handling on the lacquer is, I guess, potentially,
David Spargo: Yeah, it’s pretty exacting. And you spend a lot of time inspecting it, there’s a bit of guesswork.
The level and nature of the audio program dictates how long
So one of the things that was always a challenge is that the, The level and nature of the audio program dictates how long.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: The side can be. So you have to kind of make some adjustments. So if you think that the, You know, if you think. If you think it’s, You know, if you think the program length is too long, then you have to reduce the level.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: So that you can fit it in the available space.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
David Spargo: Or if. If the. If the low frequency is, you know, if there’s too much low frequency, then you have to use some management tools to sort of reduce the amount of space that it takes up. So one of the things that we commonly did was, we had a, what’s called an elliptical filter that, progressively reduces the out of phase, low frequency content.
David Spargo: because out of, you know, out of phase content’s really difficult to deal.
Andrew Hutchison: With mono, the bass a bit kind of.
David Spargo: Yeah, that’s right. It monos that progressively monos the bass as you. As you go lower in frequency.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: so, yeah, sometimes you get towards the end of the record and go, it’s not gonna fit.
Brad Serhan: No shit.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s a. That’s a sinking feeling, I guess.
David Spargo: So you throw that lacquer away and start again.
Andrew Hutchison: And what. I mean, any thoughts on what a lacquer might have been worth? I mean, I get. I think it’s not like there’s people not cutting records now, but I have no idea what a lacquer cost today.
David Spargo: I really don’t know. I mean, I never got involved in the accounting side of it. No, no, I really don’t know. But did you, did throw.
Andrew Hutchison: Did you get berated for chucking a few away or was that, you know.
David Spargo: No, usually, you get pretty good at judging this stuff. M and you can make adjustments on the way through. So you’re watching in the microscope to see how much land you’ve got between the. Between the grooves. And, you know, you’ve got adjustments like you can change the pitch as you run through. So you think, oh, I’ve got a quiet track here. I can make up a bit of. Bit of room. So you squeeze the pitch up a bit of.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: And then, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yes. So literally. Yeah. In classical works, you’d quiet passages, you’d move the tracks closer together.
David Spargo: You can do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: On the fly kind of thing.
David Spargo: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. As you’re cutting.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Spargo: but of course, a lot of. A lot of the, EQ that we used to apply. Oh, yes. Was to compensate for the losses in the electroplating process that came afterwards. Because things changed during that process.
David Spargo: So we would do a lot of, you know, listening to the final product and comparing it to the. To, the masters.
David Spargo: And trying to work out what. What EQ we needed to apply to compensate for those changes that always occurred. because you’ve got, you know, several. Several electroplating stages between the lacquer and.
Brad Serhan: See, that’s a lot of subjective evaluation going on there, just going through that stage. And that’s not even the mastering stage.
Andrew Hutchison: Correct?
Brad Serhan: Or is that what you call mastery?
David Spargo: Well, that’s kind of what we call mastering for that process. But I guess, you know, another part of mastering is to. Which is probably more what people refer to mastering now is to, you know, create a two track program.
David Spargo: That is loud enough
00:15:00
David Spargo: or, you know, has the right, spectral balance, you know. So, a lot of the time, you know, people might be concerned with how it sounds on how a particular track sounds on radio, for example. So if you’ve got some reference for how you think that should sound, then you can change whatever program you’re presented with to better conform with what you think is the desired, sound for radio, for example.
Brad Serhan: But sorry to interrupt and want to come back to it. So I wanted.
David: I think mastering is even more important today than it used to be
But so back in eighties, seventies, eighties or nineties, when they were doing the mastering then, were they still obviously looking at from a radio point of view for a hi fi system at home? And, you know, is it different from now? Would it be lp to say, digital?
David Spargo: it’s probably not that different, really. I think that, when we were cutting vinyl, for example, particularly, the local material would come in straight from the studio and then we would make, kind of, I guess, artistic adjustments to the way it sounds to, our ears. We were the final stop before people, got to listen to that program material. so we were applying compression and EQ and sometimes, as new pieces of equipment came out, like oral exciters, for example, we were applying those types of effects in that, in that mastering stage as well. not so much in the international stuff that was coming through because that was. That had already gone through that stage, in another mastering, room somewhere. But I think the whole concept of mastering is that when you do a mix in a studio, and it’s probably even much more important today because studios are not as standard as they used to be. It’s very rare these days to get a really good sounding studio, a really good sounding control room because people just don’t seem to understand or care about, dare I say, the importance of a, really good sounding control room. I don’t think a lot of people are producing stuff in their living rooms or bedrooms as well. You know, they don’t have less than optimal, reference capability in those rooms. So, you know, once you’ve finished your mix, you send it off to a mastering engineer who theoretically is listening in a, you know, a, highly refined listening room and can make critical judgments about how it sounds, you know, final judgments about how it sounds and how it’s going to be presented to, to the audience. Yeah. So I think in a way, mastering is probably even more important today than it was, you know, when I started doing it in the mid, in the early eighties. Right. because we just don’t have so many great studios around anymore. And those. So those mixes are Not finished to the same degree that they might be. Might have been in a. In a better sounding studio.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I feel like, I feel like in the mid eighties that which maybe is the Peak of the analog era, That you. The tapes you received to turn into records would be pretty close. I would. Yeah. I mean I mean the local product. I mean the ones that were created locally. But I mean obviously the imports that as you say the tapes were largely already an optimized Well that was the sound they wanted anyhow, I guess. And just, just turn this into a record, if you could, please sir. I think is what they were I guess asking you to do. But obviously was a little bit more creative control locally. But you’re saying that they were pretty good.
David Spargo: Well we had, we used to have in just in Australia we used to have quite a lot of quite good quality studios. Certainly all of the record companies had had very good studios.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Spargo: So you had. You know Castle Ray street was Emi’s sort of flagship. His festival records had a really good studio in Piermont.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Now There were a lot of really good studios around. Sony.
Brad Serhan: Was this Sony as well?
David Spargo: Yeah, Sony, well Sony was this studio that I ended up managing and running. It was a demo studio so, but it was a very good quality demo studio. So we had a lot of really Important acts coming through
00:20:00
David Spargo: that studio. But we generally didn’t do album ah. Work in there. It was more of a writing studio.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: Okay. So in my festival those guys did.
David Spargo: Yeah. They were all finished. You know, finished, finished product. So Some pretty. Some pretty good recordings came out of those places. But I’m pretty sure you don’t, you just don’t have that quality of studio around anymore. Very few.
Andrew Hutchison: Why is that, do you think, David? What’s is it. I mean obviously the music businesses I guess not got as much money washing through it as it used to have. But what
David Spargo: That’s certainly a big factor.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. That’s a big factor. Okay.
David Spargo: Yeah. Yeah. But also people don’t feel it’s necessary. I
Andrew Hutchison: It’s.
David Spargo: It’s very difficult for me to say whether this is, you know, a good or bad thing because I’m. I’m a bit biased towards the. You know, what I’ve. What I kind of grew up with.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Of course.
David Spargo: But I certainly hear it in the recordings. You hear recordings from the seventies and eighties where you know, the recordings are immaculate. M.
Digital recordings have a different quality from analogue recordings, says M
And you really just don’t hear that anymore or very, very seldom. they have a different quality. I mean I still enjoy recordings, contemporary recordings, but they just don’t sound the same. They just do, they sound different, sound.
Andrew Hutchison: More digital or something or what, what, how would you describe it, do you think, characterize it?
David Spargo: I don’t know actually. I haven’t really thought about how I would characterize it. Perhaps.
Brad Serhan: Well you, if you’re talking about from that period there was quoting from the seventies and sixties, seventies and eighties or fifties, then you also potentially would have been listening to it on, on a turntable as well. Or can you tell, or can you tell, say if you’re listening to a CD or via streaming that something’s been done a certain way, back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and you can still hear that quality through a CD player.
David Spargo: Yeah, I don’t think it matters what the medium is. I think you can hear the quality agreed with that. Some of it could have been like how clean everything was. You know, recording engineers were very focused on you know, getting, getting the recordings right. So you had very good, you know, clean signals and there was often a lot of space. Everyone was really careful to sort of like, you know, allow everything to have its space, particularly where you’re dealing with effects and you know, not layering effects too much.
Brad Serhan: M right.
David Spargo: So you can hear the essence of what’s being recorded and reproduced rather than, you know, a mash of everything. M giving an impression.
Andrew Hutchison: I guess to some degree it’s fashion has changed, I guess, to some degree.
David Spargo: Well certainly there is an oral fashion and there was an interesting study done in the states some years back wherever I, where university, students were given two recordings of, or you know, two recordings of the same material. So it was like some pieces of music that were presented in an analog format.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, one.
David Spargo: And in a you know, an MP3 perceptually encoded format.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: And the question was just simply which one do you prefer?
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Spargo: And most of the college age students preferred the mp3 because that’s what they’re used to.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
David Spargo: It wasn’t anything to do with the quality of the recording or anything, it was simply what they were used to. so if you were doomed. Yeah. So it’s just a different aesthetic, oral aesthetic, that people are looking for. So you know, mastering is really catering for that as well. Apart from the other obvious technical aspects. Like if you’re going particularly with digital, you want everything to be as loud as possible without without distortion.
David Spargo: because you know, digital is the resolution, at high levels is much better than the resolution at low levels, which is back to front from analogue. so, you know, you want everything as loud as it possibly can be without actually exceeding the limits. So that’s one of the functions of modern, nar string is just to make sure that that’s
00:25:00
David Spargo: the case.
Andrew Hutchison: And does that involve maybe applying a bit of compression to keep everything up there in the higher resolution levels?
David Spargo: Yeah, well that. And of course, the more compression you have, the louder it sounds.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: So yes, compression, but often you’ll go through the whole recording. and you know, pick the, pick the loudest spot and then adjust the, level just so that that loudest part fits into the available data, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Just wind back for a sec. So you’ve got the. I just want to clarify something. I’m not sure everyone kind of understands the process. So you. The lathe cuts, the lacquer. The lacquer is then electroplated in some way, like chrome plated or effectively, generally it’s silver.
David Spargo: You do a layer of silver and then, A layer of nickel.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Right here. Yep.
David Spargo: which gives it the integrity. So the silver layer is very thin. And then you, and then you put nickel, on that. So that’s the first process. And you get, what’s called a father off the lacquer.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: And it’s. It’s a negative.
David Spargo: M then you do another process. We more or less do the same thing again. But, you develop a mother, which is a playable positive copy. So generally we will play, we would play the mother just to make sure that there are no, faults in it.
Andrew Hutchison: Mm
David Spargo: and then you make off the mother. You make stampers. So you’ll make a bunch of copies off the mother.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: and then those stampers, which are negative parts, go into the presses.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Literally squashing the vinyl. Yep. That’s. Yeah. Thanks for laying that out because I think I knew that once, but I long forgotten.
Brad Serhan: No, that’s a really good pricey.
You say mastering is more about availability of good quality listening rooms
Andrew Hutchison: And what do you think? I know this is. Yeah, this is the loaded, old guys question. But, you know these new guys that make records any good?
David Spargo: I wouldn’t presume to cruise and criticize people like that. I think, as I said before, there’s still a valid, mastering, you know, still a valid reason for mastering. and that to me, I mean, I don’t work in mastering these days, but, to me that’s more about the availability of good quality listening rooms. Yeah, I think you really need to. You need as a final, stage in any, sound, production, you need to go through some sort of standard, listening room where you’ve got a, You know, a pretty good reference for.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: For what things are going to sound like.
Andrew Hutchison: Kind of makes sense.
David Spargo: I mean, I. I did a. I did an album once in a. I mixed. I recorded and mixed an album in a room that I didn’t know very well, on a system that I didn’t know very well. And it was a kind of a rush job, so I didn’t get a lot of sort of luxury time to fiddle around with it. But, I mixed to two track and then took it into a mastering room, to check it. And it was. The whole recording was pervaded with a. It was just muddy. The whole thing was muddy.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: And, it. I couldn’t hear that in the studio that I was working in. I just couldn’t hear it at all.
Andrew Hutchison: No, because you were using those bloody jbls.
David Spargo: I think. I think we were using some sort of small.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah, okay. Little near field type thing.
David Spargo: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Pair of those. Yamaha.
David Spargo: I wouldn’t have minded Yamahas, but, Because I. Because I know them in those days, I knew them quite well. But, No, it was something. It was something that I wasn’t familiar with. And, I missed it in the mix process. I just mixed the fact that the sound that I was mixing was quite muddy. So, it had to be compensated in the. In mastering. And I simply wasn’t aware of it until it went into mastering. And that’s a. You know, that’s a perfect example of what mastering’s really there for.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. And, I guess putting the. Putting the oomph back into it. It’s not great for the noise floor or something. I mean, it’d be. I mean, you didn’t. You weren’t in a position to go back and remix it or.
David Spargo: No, I wasn’t.
Andrew Hutchison: Because you said it was a bit of a rush job. Yeah.
David Spargo: Yeah. And it. And it’s less than ideal to have to try and compensate for that sort of thing because you’re actually cutting. You end up cutting stuff that you actually part of what you want as well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah.
David Spargo: So. But, you know, it turned out okay in the end, but, you know, it was a. Was a really good example, of why you need good reference listing rooms.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I mean, really want you.
David Spargo: You want those control rooms. To be as good as possible.
Andrew Hutchison: It was only a split ends al many hours. That didn’t really matter. So just kiwi.
Andrew Hutchison: What?
CB’s records was bought by Sony. So I ended up working for Sony Music
So you must have So who the hell did you work with? You must have. You must be able to impress us with a couple of salubrious bands, characters.
David Spargo: Well I. Celebrities during my time at CBS records it was bought by Sony. So I ended up working for Sony Music. and I progressed from the record plant to the head office and built and ran the studio there.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: So we had it. We had a writing studio. So as I said I used to get a lot of artists coming in and writing there. So they would often would spend quite a bit of time in the studio preparing for album recordings. For example. I worked with quite a lot of people. I’ve worked. I did a lot of work with midnight oil.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: So they came in and did writing. So it was like about three months at a time for three albums. So I ended up Jesus, web. Just spending a lot of time.
David Spargo: With those guys. we did, we actually did an album with eurogliders.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah.
David Spargo: In the studio. They wanted to record the album in the studio so we did that.
Andrew Hutchison: Which, which album was that as a matter of interest?
David Spargo: That was
Andrew Hutchison: Not the one with heaven on it. The one after.
David Spargo: No, no, the one after.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. That’s good recording. That wasn’t called.
David Spargo: What was it called?
Andrew Hutchison: I’ve forgotten what it’s called but it’s a security.
David Spargo: Yeah, I’m sorry. Bernie and Grace. I can’t remember.
Andrew Hutchison: And I can’t remember. I’ve got a copy but Yeah, that’s a, that was a, that’s a good album. Pretty lively sort of recording, but sounds, sounds nice. And anyone else you care to?
David Spargo: Look, there were lots of people I had
David Spargo: You know, I can’t remember. Noiseworks. We used to have noiseworks. Ah. Were in there a lot. Did quite a lot of session work too. We used to do quite a lot of advertising work in downtime because they were quick, quick jobs.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: but used to get some amazing session musicians come in for those jobs. So that was really good.
Brad Serhan: So were you doing the margarine ad? So you ought to be. Congrats. or you know, come on, Ozzy, come on.
David Spargo: Yeah. We used to do stuff that. So we used just to hire out to, to advertising agencies and they would bring in their own production people and just, just run through. But they were usually only you know, two, three day jobs because they’d be recording, you know, 62nd. Yeah, jingle. Jingle or something like that. Yeah. But I used to do, I don’t know, there was some spoken word stuff actually, recorded. So we’ve spoken about, neville thiele a bit.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, well, I was gonna, I was going to give, I was gonna have a quick break and we were gonna, well, we were gonna, we were gonna have a quick break and get on to Neville thiele, but I thought I’d.
Brad Serhan: Oh, but you.
David Spargo: Hold on, hold on.
Brad Serhan: Sorry, Andrew, but I wanted, I wanted.
Andrew Hutchison: To hear celebrity sightings first. I really.
Both of Neville Thiele’s brothers started in acting
Brad Serhan: One thing. Well, you gotta mention Neville Thiele’s acting brother.
David Spargo: Yes, I was.
Brad Serhan: Go ahead.
David Spargo: so Leonard, I think it’s Leonard Teale It is.
Brad Serhan: Leonard Hill.
Andrew Hutchison: Hang on a minute. So you’re telling me Neville teale was the brother of Leonard?
David Spargo: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Homicide actor.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, I’m an idiot. That’s right.
David Spargo: That’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m an idiot. Really?
David Spargo: That’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s amazing. Wow, what a voice.
David Spargo: Both of them started in acting. Neville was an actor as well in his early days.
Andrew Hutchison: Was that a fact?
David Spargo: And, But he be, but Neville became more interested in, in the engineering side of it, so he sort of left it. But, but Leonard just went on, you know, continue doing it to the, you know, his whole life. But, he used to come in and do poetry.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Recordings. So I recorded quite a lot of.
Andrew Hutchison: The man from Snowy river, etcetera.
David Spargo: That’s right, that’s right.
Brad Serhan: And that is sort of a sunbird country. yeah, that was his. Yep.
David Spargo: So he used to do those kinds of things as well. He was, he was great.
You say you had two brothers, which one did you meet first
you say you had two.
Brad Serhan: Rubs of the Thiele’s, so to speak.
David Spargo: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Not sure what that means, but, Yeah, it’s, it’s. And which brother did you, even though we’re going to come back to Neville. But which brother did you. I guess you met Neville first or new Neville?
David Spargo: No, actually met Leonard first.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, that. Right, okay.
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah. So I met Leonard quite early on in my career and
00:35:00
David Spargo: did a bit of work with him and it wasn’t till much later that I met Neville.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: Geez, that family kicking some goals, weren’t they?
David Spargo: Yeah. Jesus.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
David: You have to give us one hot story celebrity
David Spargo: so look, I can’t, I think.
Andrew Hutchison: You gotta give us, okay, you just, okay, we’re gonna move on from the recording studio stuff, but you have to give us one hot story celebrity. Gotta, you gotta give us. Or even a couple, maybe you can leave a name out or something to make it. But,
Brad Serhan: Can we pixelate it?
Andrew Hutchison: We might pixelate audio pixelated, but,
Brad Serhan: Pixelated? Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean there’s, I mean, there’s It doesn’t, I don’t know. I mean, there must be rampant.
Brad Serhan: You must be rampant. There must be rampant stories.
Andrew Hutchison: The last time I was talking to someone in the music industry, I asked them about, I asked them the same question. They said, look, I really, I can’t really say, but, and it was someone who worked at EMI and they, and it, and it was really just someone who he had to hold up in the lift as they went down after a session because it was so off his, tits, basically.
David Spargo: M too much.
Andrew Hutchison: He had worn himself out, I guess.
Brad Serhan: So he’s proof of. Right.
Andrew Hutchison: And there, of course, that story becomes much more interesting when you know who it was, which we’re not saying, but, you, you may have you may have something juicy. David, fire away.
David Spargo: Look, there’s lots of stories, but I, you know, when you put me on the spot, it’s sort of, I don’t know which ones I could tell and which ones I can’t, sort of.
David: There was a time on a harbour cruise when a child punched an artist
Brad Serhan: David, is it okay to prompt the new sort of swat it to the side or say, no, you’ve regaled one or two without names?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, there was that time on that boat, on that harbour cruise.
Brad Serhan: But we’re not talking about that cruise or something. Yes, well, we don’t have to name the.
David Spargo: What happened? The one on the boat.
Andrew Hutchison: The one on the boat, yeah.
David Spargo: So we had a very prominent international act to Australia at one stage.
Andrew Hutchison: And, what style of music did this prominent act?
Brad Serhan: Oh, do we need to go there? The russian symphony or something like that. They like to go off.
David Spargo: Let’s just say it was an extremely famous entertainer.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: often when international, because I was working at the head office at Sony, we would often do parties and, you know, functions for the visiting artists. And, because I was on the technical side, I would, was always really heavily involved in, you know, getting everything happening. So I was always, you know, in the, in the organizing group. And so this one particular artist had, we were taking them out on a harbor cruise and which was a, was a favorite one because it, you know, good looking harbor in Sydney. And, you know, people like doing that. So, anyway, but they wouldn’t get on the boat with everyone else. They had to have a special stop where we went and picked them up.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: And.
Andrew Hutchison: All right, was there sort of a.
Brad Serhan: Grand, the grand entry.
David Spargo: The grand entry, yeah. And everyone had to be there. But the interesting thing with this one was it usually was just executives and people like that that would go on this. But this particular artist had a. Said that it would be nice to have. For people to bring their kids along.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, he wanted. He.
Brad Serhan: Oh, that’s nice.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s lovely. He wanted them to. He wanted everyone to bring the children along. Okay.
David Spargo: Bring their children along. Yeah. Let’s make it a family. So everyone brought their little kids along now. So there was a boat full of, you know, parents and children, basically. And, so anyway, when, when this person got on the boat, they came down to the boy where everyone was at the. On a lower deck in the boat, and there was a stairway. So, this artist got on the boat on an upper deck and walked down the stairs, and there was a big entrance, and everyone was standing around waiting. And then one of the kids, that was one of the executive’s little boys who was about, I don’t know, must have been about five or six, was a particularly precocious little fellow.
Brad Serhan: Fellow ahead of his time.
David Spargo: ran up to the. To this, poor bloke at the bottom of the stairs and then stood there with his hands on his hips, staring him in, you know, eyeballing him.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Spargo: And so he’s bent down to go, oh, hello, who are you? And he’s just punched him in the stomach.
Andrew Hutchison: Just a clarification.
David Spargo: This little kid child
00:40:00
David Spargo: punched him in the stomach?
Andrew Hutchison: Punched the, very important musical celebrity in the stomach.
Brad Serhan: Lucky it wasn’t any lower. I mean, that would be. But he must have hit him in the soul of plexus. What. What happened then?
Andrew Hutchison: Can you.
David Spargo: Well, he, he doubled over and kind of. Everyone just. There was just this gasp. Silence from everybody, you know. And I was standing right beside him. Standing right beside the stairs, because that was my kind of technical position. Was it?
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah. Can you do an impression of the musician, that we’re speaking of? When he. When he lent. When he bent over to ask the little boy what he was up to.
David Spargo: Can you.
Andrew Hutchison: Can you do the voice a little bit?
David Spargo: No, no. But anyway, he handled it very graciously and, you know, too much to everyone’s relief. He was.
Andrew Hutchison: He was alive.
David Spargo: But it was. Yeah, it was.
Brad Serhan: He handled it with a plumb. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: As an, as an aside. Was he. Was he quite a, Was he like to get along with. For those that can guess who it might have been, was he. Was he I. Because he seemed. He seemed quite aloof. But, But you were standing next to him and I guess you.
David Crash tackled the little boy. The parents stepped in and kind of apologized
Did you help him up? Did you dare?
David Spargo: No, I didn’t. For me, it was a bit of a dilemma with.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: you know, I should have done that. Or not. Anyway, he handled it.
Brad Serhan: You tell the truth. I think David Crash tackled the little boy. I think that must have happened.
David Spargo: No, no, I didn’t. The parents stepped in and kind of.
Brad Serhan: Oh, God, imagine the parent.
Andrew Hutchison: And did they, the parents apologize for the behavior of the child?
David Spargo: Oh, yeah, look, there was a lot of profuse apologies. I bet there was things like that. But it didn’t detract at all from the hilarity of the situation.
Andrew Hutchison: The hilarity, I guess, happened sometime later after the guest had once again gone to the upper deck and jumped off at another dock.
David Spargo: Well, yeah, because. Because it all ended well. It was hilarious. But, you know, I guess it could have been. I could have been different. But I’ve always found that the, you know, the biggest, almost always the biggest artists are the most humble. actually in there.
Andrew Hutchison: Mm
David Spargo: The way they deal with people.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: It’s usually the, it’s usually the smaller, sort of up and coming people who are. Can be a bit of a handful.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Oh, yeah.
Brad Serhan: A bit of pomp and circumstance.
David Spargo: Right.
Andrew Hutchison: And the, I guess that child is now, I don’t know, 30, odd years of age. And I wonder if they go around. Yeah.
David Spargo: Boasting. Boasting, basically.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. You wouldn’t believe. You wouldn’t believe what I did when I was a child.
The comments on this story are best entered on our YouTube channel
All right, well, there is a competition, folks, if you know who we’re speaking of. don’t put it in the comments, because we won’t confirm or deny. And the comments, by the way, are best entered into, on our YouTube channel. not an audiophile. There’s two YouTube channels called not an audiophile. We’re the newest one. And it’s not an audiophile podcast. But anyhow, you’ll find us. It’s the standard logo, but yeah, you could make comments there and, we may conjure up a prize, maybe a pair of Serhan and swift mewtwo speakers or something like that, if Brad’s feeling generous. Probably not. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a joke prize. But, But yeah. Thank you, David. That’s, that is. That story is. I guess I’m for Brad and I, more entertaining. We know who it is.
Brad Serhan: Isn’t there another nautical one, David, as well?
Andrew Hutchison: See, the other nautical one that you mentioned the other day, I believe you can say who that was because they don’t exist anymore. I don’t sure, but I mean, when I say that I’d exist anymore, they, they, no one cares. Jesus.
David Spargo: I don’t know. Does that.
Brad Serhan: It’s a good tail, but it just call it sort of, the, a rock band. Is that what you call, yeah, that’s a, it’s the generic rock band.
Andrew Hutchison: It kind of is a generic, generic american rock act from the eighties and, well, mostly the eighties, seventies and eighties.
Brad Serhan: And that pretty much narrows it down, doesn’t it, really? So you could pretty well guess that whatever.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah. Narrows it right down. Yeah.
David Spargo: Yeah. Well, this generic rock band, again, it was a harbor cruise, so, yeah, love a harbor cruise. A nighttime harbor cruise.
David Spargo: And it was around Christmas time, so it was a really warm night. And, we’re all standing
00:45:00
David Spargo: on the top of the boat, just above the pussycake.
Brad Serhan: I get you.
David Spargo: Yeah. There was like a, top deck and these guys were tinkering for a joint and they were asking me if it was like, okay, if they could have a joint, you know, so like, what’s, what the rules are around here and all that sort of stuff. And I said, look, you know, you know, it’s illegal right here, but, I don’t think anyone’s gonna have a problem with you if you wanted to have a joint up here on the boat.
David Spargo: It’s not, it’s not going to bother anyone. It’s all cool.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. It’s out in the harbor, isn’t it?
David Spargo: Jesus. Yeah. So, they went, oh, great.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s not like the cops are gonna, you know, be around or anything.
David Spargo: So, yeah, you’re on a boat quite isolated, right?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: So they’ve had their joint and they just sort of, we’re all sitting there relaxing and, just, you know, watching harbor go, hi. And, next thing there’s a police launch screaming, sirens and lights and everything, screaming towards the boat. And these guys are going, what’s going on here? And initially I didn’t think too much of it, but it just kept coming towards the boat.
Brad Serhan: I love the fact you were so calm.
David Spargo: and, I’m thinking this is a bit odd.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
David Spargo: And anyway, they really got scared and they just emptied their pockets over the side of the boat.
Brad Serhan: Sounds like they had a lot of stuff.
David Spargo: there was a bit, and, you know, everyone was a bit upset. And the boat and the police launch pulled up alongside the, we stopped and the police launch pulled up alongside the. Our boat.
Andrew Hutchison: Mm
David Spargo: And then a guy got off the police launch dressed as Santa Claus.
Andrew Hutchison: With.
Brad Serhan: A whole bunch of reefers. No, sorry, go ahead, Phil.
David Spargo: and it turns out it was just the. The, state manager had a couple of mates in the water police. And they were just doing a, you know, Santa Claus stunt for Christmas.
Andrew Hutchison: And I thought it would be hilarious.
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brad Serhan: Oh, Jesus.
David Spargo: And I guess it was at the end. But, you know, there was some tense moments there for a while.
Andrew Hutchison: And the, generic american rock band, were obviously in the market for some more weed at that point.
David Spargo: Yes, I think so. I don’t think they had much trouble getting it.
Andrew Hutchison: No. All righty. Thank, you, David, for that. We will, take a break and we will be back to briefly discuss or maybe at length discuss, Neville thiele and the fact that you, you replaced him, basically. So we’ll talk.
David Spargo: Well, yeah, in a very marginal way.
Andrew Hutchison: We’ll cover that. All right. don’t go anywhere, anybody. We’ll be right back.
This podcast was recorded days before the Melbourne stereo net hi fi show
Andrew here talking yet again about, various products that we might sell or services that we may perform. but most importantly, this has been recorded just days before the australian Melbourne stereo net, hi fi show held in the Pullman hotel, in next to the lake in Albert park in Melbourne. And, if I sound a little worn out, I think I have. I’ve been preparing for the show for. Feels like months, but it’s really only weeks. But, getting everything together and turning up at these shows and in our case, showing off our loudspeaker models, with, assistance from Alex from audio fix distribution with his electronics exposure. Electronics at ear Yoshino is quite a project to get it all together. And of course, there’s 30 other or more rooms, to see at the show. Some large, some small. Ours are small, but it’s good, of course. Great even. but yeah, you should come and have a look. The people who show up with their gear have actually made an enormous amount of effort. I guess coming from Queensland we make even more effort because we have to get it further, but. And get ourselves further. But be assured, the exhibitors at these shows, are trying very hard to put on a great show and it’s well worth coming and seeing what they have on offer. It’s certainly a great way to spend probably almost a weekend. I don’t think you can get around the show in a day, so do allow some time. So we’re in 2204, unsurprisingly on the second floor, I believe, judging by that number. And easy, to get to up the lift and come and have a chat, have a listen. We’ve got our new model seventy s and later in the show or whenever you finish listening, please like subscribe and follow, using whatever method is best to give some support to the podcast. And I give us the enthusiasm to continue on into well what’ll be a new year soon. So thanks again for listening. And now back to the rest of the show with David. So yeah, not an audiophile, the podcast. We’re back with David Spargo and Brad Serhan and myself Andrew Hutchison, discussing you know, the good old days
00:50:00
as usual. But we’re also going to cover some acoustic stuff now.
David, at some point you moved sideways from recording to sound reproduction
And David, at some point I guess you got or moved sideways from recording and somewhere how you, I mean we’ve already found out that you, you in fact knew Leonard Teal before you knew Neville thiele. And that Leonard Teale, unbeknownst to me, was Neville Teale’s brother. and we’re both enacting initially. And so you, how did you meet Neville, how did that all come about and why did you move sideways into the more technical theoretical aspects of sound reproduction?
David Spargo: so I did studio production and then moved into live production as well, for a long time. And then I had been working in a number of studios and I started to notice that my hearing that, well ah, in a nutshell, I was getting tinnitus.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay?
David Spargo: And at that stage it’s I compare it to like, you know, if you, when you discover that you need to start wearing glasses, it’s like you go through this period of you know, denial and you know, resistance and catastrophe and all this sort of stuff. And I did that when I started realizing that I wasn’t hearing quite the same way as I used to. And I kind of catastrophized over that and went, well, that’s the end of my production career.
Andrew Hutchison: Sounding a little petulant like one of your artists.
David Spargo: Yeah. And so I really was thinking, well, how do I move on from here? And I’d always been really interested in why different studios that I worked in had particular sounds because most studios have a, quite a distinctive signature sound.
David Spargo: Except for the very good ones which don’t have a distinctive sound. but most rooms have quite a distinctive sound. And I was always fascinated about why that was and didn’t really have the. The knowledge to. To answer that question. So I thought maybe that’s what I should be doing. so I started studying and went to Sydney University. and studied. Ah, I did a master’s degree in audio and sound. And audio acoustics.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: and, that’s where I met Neville.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: Because he was a, honorary associate professor there.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: And he was doing a loudspeaker course there, so he taught loudspeaker design.
Andrew Hutchison: What. What year? because this is. This is not that long ago, is it? This is, I mean, it is. No, I mean, if you’re 20, it’s, it’s. It’s ages ago, but if you’re a, middle aged, this is what, in the nineties or.
David Spargo: No, no, this was in the two thousands.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.
David Spargo: It’s not. Yeah, I think I would have started at. For the master’s degree. I would have started in about two. 2001, I think.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: Yeah, something like that. And, And he was still. He was teaching there. So I did. I did his loudspeaker course in, I don’t know, some. Sometime during that decade. I really can’t remember.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
David Spargo: When it was. But it might have been, you know, 2006 or something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I mean, what a. What a great thing. I mean, you know, what were you. Why weren’t you there, Brad? Oh, that’s right. You, you taught Neville. it’s,
Brad Serhan: Well.
Andrew Hutchison: Sorry, but it. No, it’s true, isn’t it? It’s. No, I mean, it’s. It’s just an amazing. I mean, the guy at this joint was, I don’t know, was he 60 or 70 or how.
David Spargo: Oh, no, he was in his late eighties.
Brad Serhan: He was in his amazing.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, hang on. Yes, I’m forgetting that he’s not been around for a few years. Yeah. So he’s in his late eighties. What a. What a. What a joy. And he was as sharp as I, guess you gotta tell us.
David Spargo: Absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: And he was still. He was still churning papers out right up until the point where he passed away.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, and when you say right up to the point, you mean like up to the day? Up to the day.
Brad Serhan: Just gobsmacking.
David Spargo: He was.
Brad Serhan: His mind was still. Oh, my,
Neville teal developed the theory for loudspeaker design during WWII
David Spargo: Yeah, he was sitting in hospital with a laptop, finished, papers off.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s.
Brad Serhan: That’s just wonderful.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Wow. Such an incredible course.
00:55:00
Brad Serhan: Sorry.
Andrew Hutchison: Humid. No, no, go back to the course, Brad. Yeah. The brunt that, you know, just so.
Brad Serhan: There was, there was no such course back in the late or seventies or eighties. But the fact that someone like Neville teal was, was there giving, doing that, doing the course of. And I know that you did it, and I know another mate of mine, James Galloway, did it. And who else do we know?
Brad Serhan: Neil, your mate, Neil rawl. there’s quite a few people that did the course. and Greg Long, a dear mate of mine who was. Owned a hi fi shop as a mechanical engineer, went and did, did that course and loved it.
Andrew Hutchison: How intense was it, David? Was it like. It was pretty weighty or.
David Spargo: Yeah, there was a lot of Well, you know, Neville was trying to explain all of his, you know, development of his theory and mathematics and.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: you know, the whole design.
Andrew Hutchison: Just everything he knew he was basically trying to pass on.
David Spargo: Yeah, he was just. That’s exactly right.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: And so it was quite, you know, there was a lot there. A lot to it. plus he was a really interesting guy too. So he was, you know, very happy to tell stories about how all this stuff came about.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. Okay.
David Spargo: probably one of the interesting things I found was that he was actually in the army for quite a long time. And he was an engineer in the army. And he said that he developed a lot of the base theory for loudspeaker design he developed while he was stationed in New guinea.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: During the second world war. And he wasn’t doing very much, a lot of the time. So he said he just sat on the beach and worked all the mathematics out.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, right.
David Spargo: And then after, you certainly have a.
Andrew Hutchison: Clear head, except there was a war going on, I guess. But
David Spargo: Yeah, but it didn’t impact him a lot at the time. So, after, when he was working for other companies after the war, he started applying a lot of that stuff in the design. So I think he worked at. Was it awa?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
David Spargo: Yeah, I don’t know. Some, some of those companies were doing designing loudspeakers for radio, radiograms and things like that.
Andrew Hutchison: judging by my experience with Awa radiograms, they obviously put a pretty tight, pretty tight budget on his his developments because,
David Spargo: Well, that might be the wrong company, but it was.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m certain not meaning that seriously. But look, he. So, Yeah, the point is that he worked in the industry as it was in this country at that point. And then he obviously started working at the uni, I guess, or, you know, obviously became well, he worked for a lot of.
David Spargo: He worked at a lot of places. He was. He was working in the R and D department with the engineering department of ABC for quite a long time as well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, right.
David Spargo: so he did a, you know, they were doing loudspeaker stuff as well. They were interested in that. But, you know, he was, he was an engineer. He was essentially an electrical engineer.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But he’s. But his personal favorite hobby, obviously, was, I guess, was loudspeakers. That was his m. Yeah. So see that. Yeah. I’m still. I’m still impressed with the fact that you could do a course under him or, you know, that’s, Got something. How long did that go for? A couple of years or so. Or is it. Or did. It was packed.
David Spargo: So it was a part time. so all of the courses in the master’s degree that I did were part time.
You ended up teaching acoustics at a university
So you could usually they were nighttime courses, but, Neville didn’t like doing the nighttime stuff. So it was always a daytime.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: and that was one of the difficulties, I think. The courses were not particularly well, attended because they were on usually on a Friday afternoon.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
David Spargo: sort of, you know, early afternoon. And most people couldn’t get time off work to.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: to attend the courses. So there were usually very small cohorts, for those courses. and, it was a one semester course. So it was like, I think we were doing 13 weeks, I think.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep. Okay. That’s pretty interesting.
Brad Serhan: Crammed in.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Yeah. And there was a lot of homework.
Andrew Hutchison: I bet there was.
David Spargo: So he would, he would, you know, try and explain as much as he could about stuff in a, you know, three hour lecture. And then we’d have, you know, massive assignments to do for the next,
01:00:00
David Spargo: week and that.
Andrew Hutchison: And some of those assignments were practical things, I guess. Were they where you get to cobble together your own design or something based on,
David Spargo: No, he did do that in a few years, but not in the year that I did, because it was. He said it always proved to be too, too difficult to manage.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: so it was all theory when I did it. It was just theory.
Andrew Hutchison: Still. what an experience, you know, that’s great stuff. And so you, ended up, as I understand it, teaching, at said university. Is that right?
David Spargo: Yeah, that’s right. So I was doing.
Andrew Hutchison: So you’ve done everything right. Like, you just. There’s no end.
Brad Serhan: I call him bam. Andrew Bam audio methuselah bam. He’s actually a thousand years of age. Good on you. Bam. Bam, bam.
Andrew Hutchison: So you did, so you did teaching. You had to do a teaching course, obviously. although if you can wrangle musicians, you probably can wrangle students, I guess, right?
David Spargo: No. When you do higher education, the level that you achieve is sort of entitles you to teach anyway, so you don’t, you don’t have to.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Excuse my lack of understanding of academia. I’m a tradesman only. so, so, okay, so, so you start teaching the acoustics that you learn under Neville and other, other lectures.
David Spargo: Yeah, I was doing. Yes, I was doing some, some teaching of acoustics and some. And I co, co presented, Neville’s course, the year after he decided that he didn’t, couldn’t do it anymore.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
David Spargo: Which was a daunting experience when you say.
Brad Serhan: Daunting.
Andrew Hutchison: So doing him justice. So he asked you. He said, well, David, you can take this course over because, you know, you’ve got the skills for this. And, by the way, I’ll be sitting up the back taking notes.
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quite intimidating.
Brad Serhan: But there was you and Denzel, doctor Denzel Cabrera as well, wasn’t it?
David Spargo: That’s right, yes.
Brad Serhan: Would he sit in Denzel’s as well?
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s good. The students must have been reassured that they had the rear guardio, rear guard there.
David Spargo: Yeah. He could interject at any time ago.
Andrew Hutchison: No, that’s not right. That’s not how you do it. And did he?
Brad Serhan: No, no, because David’s always right. M I’m happy to say that.
David Spargo: No, he’s just, he’s just very, he’s a gentleman.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Brad Serhan: Well, in a sense, he was there just to.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah.
Brad Serhan: Psychologically assist. Yeah, that’s one.
David Spargo: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: That’s.
David Spargo talks about his work on room acoustics
David Spargo: I mean, he would, sometimes we would defer, you know, ask him to contribute to the class.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Yeah.
David Spargo: but, generally it wasn’t, you know, he wouldn’t interject.
Andrew Hutchison: And.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, actually, that’s such a joy to hear that.
David Spargo: That’s wonderful.
Andrew Hutchison: We didn’t really cover this, but, I mean, he was, as a human, he was, he was a great bloke. What you’re saying, David?
David Spargo: Yeah, he was. He was a lovely man.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Wow.
David Spargo: Very humble, very, very likable character.
Andrew Hutchison: And for those, and for those listening who really are wondering who we are talking about, I mean, Neville, teal is the t in t’s parameters. So, teal small. Yeah, teal small parameters, which, you know, is all about. Well, I mean, one, that part of his work is about predicting base alignments, but he did many other. Wrote many papers, obviously.
David Spargo: Yes. I think he’s got over, I don’t know, he wrote some 40 papers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: In his lifetime about loudspeakers, crossovers, various, various other things.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Quite a incredible amount of work. So, I guess to wrap on your theoretical acoustic side and then we might pass on to some advice and how you might advise listeners to improve their room. Right. We might snip the episode there and call that the end of part one of the David Spargo interview. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it as interesting as I have. the guy is a genius and the stories are amazing. And there’s more to come in part two, mostly about room acoustics.
If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, please follow us on all our platforms
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01:05:00
the whatever way you’re listening to it, whether it be Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, what have you, and of course feel free to make comments on the YouTube, listings for the episode. But yeah, if you follow us, it just keeps whole thing rolling along. And at this stage, I can’t imagine being any more enthusiastic. It’s a joy to interview people like David who have such a broad range of knowledge and in this case, some pretty interesting experiences and obviously worked with and under some amazing people. So yeah, back with the second episode in a couple of weeks. Thanks for listening again. And that’s a wrap for today.
01:05:38
TRANSCRIPT
S1EP014 HiFi Acoustics: Big improvements in HiFi sound from small changes
Vinyl is a poor way of reproducing sound in technically
David Spargo: But there’s nothing magical about vinyl. In fact, vinyl is a pretty poor way of reproducing sound in technically. There’s a hell of a lot of stuff going on in there that people don’t really realize. so it actually makes little sense to be very anal about vinyl reproduction systems.
Andrew Hutchison: And.
David Spargo is a renowned acoustician and recording engineer
Hello, welcome to not an audiophile episode 14 season one. Today we’re back with David Spargo, a famed acoustician and recording engineer. Well more of a mastering engineer, but also someone with a vast knowledge of all things audio and acoustics. And today we discuss just that. And but you know, so you’re. So your grounding in acoustics is. Was led to some degree by Neville Thiele. So that’s a, that’s something you’d put on your CV obviously pretty proudly. And But you spent many years, experimenting, doing a bit of research. What’s your sort of. What was.
David Spargo: Yeah, I did I did a lot of research of you know, published a bit.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: my main research area was in cognitive acoustics which encompasses. Well, essentially it’s how we think we hear things. my particular area was in source sound. Source location or low frequency sound? Source location in rooms.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: which is a quite an interesting problem because often we think. Well, often, often the place we think the sound is coming from is not where it’s coming from.
Andrew Hutchison: The lower the frequency is harder to locate. Is that not necessarily.
David Spargo: Yeah, look, it can be. A lot of people think you can’t locate low frequency, but that’s not true. but certainly the room has a big effect on where you think it’s coming from. So.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: Just. It just depends on things like the pressure difference between the ears. and when you’ve got strong room modes occurring in a room, then the pressure differential can be quite great. Between.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, between that left and right ear.
David Spargo: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Or front and rear ear if you. From Taz. the. Yeah. So, yeah, between. Between your two ears, so to speak. Yeah. The fact that one. They’re receiving different pressures if you’re on the verge of standing on a node or is that.
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, and there’s lots of things that the auditory system is monitoring in terms of the sound that is presented at the ears. so it’s constantly comparing timing information, level information, spectral information. So you know, all of that. So I, I studied all of that.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: I’ve got all of the science around that.
A lot of people say that you can’t get good sound at a hi Fi show
Andrew Hutchison: I’ve got a question that’s maybe related to that. And you may or may not be able or wish to answer it. But. So a lot of people say that you can’t get good sound at a hi Fi show. And I guess there’s reasons for that. The room acoustics are not ideal and it’s a pretty noisy environment. And that doesn’t help, I suppose. But as far as achieving great or impressive sound. But I also feel there’s a, there’s a, there’s a thing, the thing that I. So for instance, I can walk around a show and go, I love that room. I love this room. And then the other person I’m having lunch with says, oh no, that room was dreadful. I like this room and that room. And you know, you hated those rooms. You found them to be awful in every way or whatever. Now is this because. Because that our, our systems at home or whatever system we listen to the most are quite different or our tastes different, our ears are different. What I mean, I have a theory that if you used to the way your system sounds, you’re kind of adjusted to that. You then go to the hi Fi show. Therefore, rooms that have a similar balance to what you have at home will be the ones that appeal most to you. is that a thing or what are your thoughts?
David Spargo: Yeah, I think that’s a fair kind of assumption. The thing with all sensory perception is that we don’t ever really perceive what we consider to be reality directly. What we’re doing is everybody has an internal model of reality that’s built up
00:05:00
from years of experience.
David Spargo: And that, that’s the thing that we base our perception on. We’re not, we’re not experiencing everything directly because our sensory system is busy filtering, you know, data, doing data reduction, for example. because we couldn’t possibly cope with all of the sensory input that our bodies collected.
Andrew Hutchison: No.
David Spargo: so we have to filter all of that and just present, you know, hopefully important information and then we fill in the gaps, based on our experience.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So does that throw subjective auditioning and reviewing of hi fi in the into some question in some ways?
David Spargo: Well, yes, in a way it does because everybody’s model of reality is different because everyone has different, accumulated experience. plus just simple things like the shape of your ears and the shape of your head.
Andrew Hutchison: well, the shape of some audio files heads clearly a handicap as far.
David Spargo: As that changes, simply changes the way we hear things as well. So plus we have other complicating factors like preferences.
David Spargo: Which might be based on Experience or they might be based on some other kind of, choice. So yes, I think you. Part of that assumption that you’re making or that the theory that you’re making is that, yeah, certain people have certain preferences for different types of, sound or different types of environments. and they’re not necessarily, you know, better or worse than other people’s. They’re just different.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s. It’s Yeah, I suppose when you think about it, it would be in the chaotic nature of life. It would be impossible or it would be highly unlikely that every single person at a hi Fi show would agree which was the best room, which was the best sound. Because. Yeah, that would be ridiculous. It would be. I mean that would be amazing considering how chaotic everything else is in both relation to humans and the planet, I guess. But,
David Spargo: But yeah, in carefully designed perceptual experiments you can isolate a lot of those biases.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: but it’s very complicated creating perceptual experiments and And it’s quite tedious to participate in them as well. so a lot of it doesn’t get done, particularly in the. In the hi Fi world. Yeah, A, Lot of perceptual experimentation that could be. Could be done, doesn’t get done potentially because. Well, because it’s very difficult and it takes a lot of resources to sort of get around those difficulties.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: But also because I don’t think people really want to know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, there’s a. There’s a possibility of that. Yeah.
David Spargo: I don’t want to know why these speakers sound better than these ones, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I guess that’s where Floyd Toole comes in. He’s done a lot of study about what humans prefer, the sound balance or, you know, the various qualities.
David Spargo: He’s a recognized, you know, world expert in this. In this area. But of course he’s always, ah, worked in the American audio industry. worked for JBL for a long time.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: so he has certain, biases in as well. Not, not. I’m saying that, you know, there’s anything wrong with the work that he does, but, you know, everybody has biases, of course, in the way they approach things.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
A lot of Floyd Toole’s research came out of commercial, uh
David Spargo: So, you know, and because he’s. A lot of his research came out of commercial, Commercial research. There are certain biases that go with that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah, well, that’s right. I guess he’s been sponsored by. I mean, most of his studies on that, I think, is when he was working for Harmon. So.
David Spargo: Yep.
Brad Serhan: Although I didn’t he worked. But did he not work, in Canada?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, well, I think. Well, I think. Yeah.
David Spargo: And separately, I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s a very good researcher and you know, he’s certainly one of the, you know, the most influential researchers that I’ve come across in my field.
Andrew Hutchison: So, you know, do you, do you have a. I feel as if you may have a slight underlying concern though. And that, but that, but is that just because he’s sort of slightly commercially tainted? Is that, you know, in, in some of his research, perhaps, or do you just not like some
00:10:00
Andrew Hutchison: of his, outcomes. Some of. Some of the. Or not agree with them, not like them, and just feel differently about some of the thoughts.
Brad Serhan: Hello?
Andrew Hutchison: Hello?
Brad Serhan: Yeah, we’ve lost David, Are you there? Can you hear.
David Spargo: back.
Brad Serhan: Oh, you’re back.
David Spargo: Okay, sorry. Can you just ask that question again? I lost you for a minute.
Andrew Hutchison: No, that’s all right, David. Yeah, basically, I think what I was saying is you seem to have an underlying, slight. You have a thought on, on his reservation. Yeah, maybe a reservation that’s. Thank you, Brad.
Brad Serhan: Reservation.
Andrew Hutchison: or. And is that because of his potentially his thoughts being slightly colored from commercial involvement, or is it that there’s something that you, you just found to be different to what he’s uncovered in his research?
David Spargo: No, I did. I didn’t sort of mean to give an impression that I sort of questioned him at all.
Andrew Hutchison: okay, sorry.
David Spargo: I think, I think the underlying issue here is that whenever you’re, researching perceptual or cognitive responses to things which have a strong, aesthetic component.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah.
David Spargo: it’s. It’s a completely fraught area. So you have to be incredibly careful about, isolating any potential, biases or, you know, external influences. M. So I don’t know. I don’t know what. I probably can’t express exactly what I meant before, but.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I mean by that statement, you’re implying that did the audience that or the test subjects that he was using, did they have visual clues about something that you. I mean, you’re implying that you.
David Spargo: Oh, no, but, but you know, if you’re doing a, if you’re doing research in an In a commercial environment. So say you’re trying to develop a commercial loudspeaker.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: usually the participants that you have, if you can, if you create a listening, A listening test for something, usually the participants will have some kind of. Potentially have a vested interest, because they might be employees, you know, of the same company.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Spargo: So. And I think that’s, you know, any loudspeaker manufacturer has the potential for that to occur. So you have, you know, and maybe these are the best, the best listeners in the world, but you know, they’re still. You still have a.
Andrew Hutchison: Everyone’s got a bias.
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah. I, I don’t ah. I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally, wrong with what Floyd Toole has done over the years. I didn’t, didn’t mean to imply that there was, but, but you know, just, Just for a, Just for context then a lot of his research was done in, In a commercial space.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep, yep. And yeah, we can always edit this and tighten it up and get rid of the
Some people prefer one loudspeaker to another, others prefer another
Any, suggestion that you thought that is.
David Spargo: Yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest that it was anything untoward going on, but.
Andrew Hutchison: There is, there is. People, don’t entirely. I mean, I, I find his work to be quite. I love the idea that can. We can have a fairly straightforward explanation about why some people prefer the sound of one loudspeaker to another. That would. Life would be a hell of a lot simpler if it was that simple. But the. My continual, And it worries me that my, that I’m losing my hearing because I walk around hi Fi shows quite often disagreeing with other people who are also experienced listeners. I mean, for instance, Brad. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever done this. Walked around a show with Brad and made notes about which rooms we prefer. But it’s highly likely that we’re going to prefer different rooms because I know that our tastes are probably slightly different. But why are our tastes different? Is it because, we have a preference or is it because we’re used to listening to a different system? Or is it just a combination of those things?
David Spargo: Well, I think our preferences are driven by what we’re used to, to a large degree.
Brad Serhan: What goes back to that MP3 comparison?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah,
00:15:00
Andrew Hutchison: I guess.
David Spargo: Yeah, that’s right.
Brad Serhan: Versus, ah, vinyl or whatever it was. Analog.
David Spargo: Yeah, I mean, you know, vinyl certainly sounds different to cd. and there’s a lot of romanticizing, that goes on with vinyl, which colors people’s opinions about it.
David Spargo: I’m not saying that, you know, one’s necessarily better than the other, but there’s nothing magical about vinyl. In fact, vinyl is a pretty poor way of reproducing sound in technically there’s, There’s a hell of a lot of stuff going on in There that, people don’t really realize. so it. It makes. Actually makes little sense to be very anal about vinyl reproduction systems. I mean, even simple things like the ra. The RIAA curve, that. That’s used, you know, in both. Both ways is not particularly well defined.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has moved over the years, I believe.
Brad Serhan: We can have a variation. You can have variations on the theme, can’t you?
Andrew Hutchison: Did we, Did we just lose someone?
Brad Serhan: I think David, consequently.
Andrew Hutchison: No, David’s still there. Yeah, I don’t know what the hell the beat was. Yep.
Brad Serhan: We just lost David momentarily.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I got a call coming in.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah, no, that’s. Do you. Do you need to take it or you.
David Spargo: No, no. So,
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, the riaa, curve
David Spargo: When people make, RIAA equalizers, the variation is actually quite wide. M. So it kind of makes no sense really, to be very, particular about that system. Because it could be anything almost. You only need something that’s close to the. Close to the response, and then it will. It will sound all right. No, because you. You don’t know. For example, nobody knows what the RIAA curve was that the. That the vinyl was mastered with.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah.
David Spargo: Uh-huh. So if you’re. If you’re spending, you know, a huge amount of effort to try and get a, you know, incredibly accurate RIAA playback equalizer, you might be just. It might be nothing like the one that was used to encode the audio in the first place.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, you’re right. Records like prehistoric in a way, but it’s. But they can sound amazingly good at times. But I do wonder.
David Spargo: I agree, and I really don’t want to. You know, I don’t mean to detract from the, overall, satisfaction of listening to a vinyl record because I still think they sound great too. And. Well, look, I. You know, the point that I was trying to make about the, RIAA curve was that there are lots of ways to interpret that, the description for those EQ curves. and there are lots of ways of building those filters and things, and they all sound different to each other.
David Spargo: plus the fact that the cut. The. Often the Cutting lathes have. I mean, although they’re very good, they’re, you know, their figures for, like, Rumble and Wow and things like that are. Are often not as good as some of the turntables that you’re playing records on. So it sort of begs the question, how good do turntables and reproduction systems really need to be? And I, think, you know, if you’ve Got a turntable that has a much lower rumble figure, for example, than a cutting lathe. Probably wasting a bit of money there.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, well, I think that’s, that’s, that.
Andrew: I’m a great believer in making it real. It’s not always sensible
That’s the high five is. Isn’t it? I mean it’s
David Spargo: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s what people feel they need or what they want to have. And it’s not always sensible, I guess.
David Spargo: It’s not always sensible. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: But then, you know, people buy Ferraris and then just drive them around town at 60 or 80 kilometers an hour, which seems.
David Spargo: Or leave. Leave them sitting in a garage.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, even worse. That’s right. Yeah. look, I, I reckon we have covered a lot of ground. Brad’s tired. He’s starting to confuse his eyes with his R’s. And which is, which is understandable.
Brad Serhan: Oh Jesus, you’re cutting that bit out.
Andrew Hutchison: According to my better half, Sharron, who was listening to an episode the other day, to transcribe or pick or correct the transcription or something. She said that. I told you, Brad, when you said just cut that
00:20:00
Andrew Hutchison: out. That I said that we don’t have the technology, so we probably do. You know, I’m a great believer in, you know, just making it real. So,
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Raw like a pineapple.
Brad Serhan: Great.
Brad Serhan: Andrew. I can feel it right now as it enters my.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no. I’ll remove all references. The ira.
Brad Serhan: You bastard. Okay, fair cop.
Andrew Hutchison: I think, I think we’re going to.
Andrew: We met in your shop in Leichardt when you were running it
Brad Serhan: David. I just want. Before we go and it’s a question Andrew seems to like to ask because he never. I normally ask. Hey, where did we meet, David? When we sort of cast our eyes across the sort of, smoke.
David Spargo: I think we met in your shop in Leica when you were, when you had that shop in Leichardt.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah.
Brad Serhan: now I do remember. We don’t have to have this in. Andrew. I can remember you looking in the window because during the.
Andrew Hutchison: Here we go.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah.
Brad Serhan: Well, I. We had a little shop, Andrew, that was part of the Leica Council’s renew Leichhardt.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah.
Brad Serhan: Because like Leichardt, Norton street had sort of basically become sort of a cultural desert. And they were, ah, getting the odd landlord, to, you know, lease their property for 100 bucks or $150 a week.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: So there was, there was something going on.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. And so we had to festoon the the front window with bits of audio equipment and as an attractor to pull people in.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Brad Serhan: And I was in that little front room area. We had an Upstairs section where we did a lot of listening tests or demos. And downstairs we sort of had sort of a, I think we had a whole lot of album covers up on the wall and etc. And system in the window and Dav. David, sort of. Now I do remember you. Your eyes glanced up as I furtively looked out the window.
David Spargo: Yeah, I was looking. I was walking up the road and I saw a loudspeaker and I went, oh, past a shop with a loudspeaker in the window?
Andrew Hutchison: Certainly not.
Brad Serhan: And David likes a nice cup of coffee, Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: And the rest is history.
Brad Serhan: And the rest is history.
David Spargo: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: And what was that, did that shop have a title, Brad? Or what was the. Like, it did have a sign hanging out a shingle.
Brad Serhan: Yes, I think I, I think we might have. That’s when we’re bigoty. Is audio.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
David Spargo: yes. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And but it should have been called the Sonic Battery or something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: I don’t know. We just had bigger’s audio and we shared the space with a creative writer, Bernard Cohen. And also we shared the space with a lady, that was teaching art at ah, an art college thing. So she would put art presentations on. so we had to share the space and there was another lady. And then it sort of was a bit like Survivor where gradually people got the shits with, you know, and left.
Andrew Hutchison: So there were, there were various tests and what have you. And as people failed, unfortunately, yeah, they got expelled. Brad expelled them.
Brad Serhan: No, no, no. I’m still Facebook friends with the all three of them.
David Spargo: Okay,
Andrew Hutchison: Well, we know that’s a true definition of friendship. So
Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great sign, isn’t it? Not that I have a post on Facebook, but definitely we survived that. And And But it was, it was a good experiment. but it was. What was really the real true value of that particular place was meeting David Spargo. That was the.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, you have a.
David Spargo: One good thing.
Andrew Hutchison: I have a sneaking suspicion that the first conversation went for many hours. So,
Brad Serhan: Yeah, we. It did actually.
David Spargo: I think it did. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: All right, well, thank you gentlemen. David, if you, if you. Yeah. If you got any closing remarks or
Good listening rooms give much greater pleasure than spending lots of money on equipment
I mean, is there any. Is there anything you really want to tell the. The audio world, the great almost said unwashed audio enthusiasts. But I don’t mean that. What I mean is the. Those that are eager for. Eager. Well exactly. Eager for information. Eager for. Eager for a trinket of you know, a jewel of inside information. Have you got something to offer? I know I’m putting you on the spot, so feel free to say no.
David Spargo: I think that in terms of listening conditions, I think, you know, good rooms are always going to. Good listening rooms are always going to give much greater pleasure than just, spending lots of money on audio equipment.
Brad Serhan: I think, you know, a good listen, you
00:25:00
David Spargo: can get really good results out of a quite a modest, equipment investment in a good room. Whereas it’s much more difficult to work the other way around. So, you know, the most expensive gear in the world’s not going to sound great in a bad room.
Andrew Hutchison: No. No. And yet you see pictures on Instagram daily that where they’ve attempted to do just that.
David Spargo: yeah, yeah, I, I’ve gone into plenty of people’s rooms over the years and just, you know, and like I said, some of them with quite modest systems, they just are really enjoyable and sound great. And others you go into and you just go, this sounds terrible. And you are insane. Because just there’s a half a million dollars worth of gear in here.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: And you cannot hear what’s going on.
Andrew Hutchison: No, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of sad in a way.
Brad Serhan: And you’ve been asked into their rooms, David, to make it.
David Spargo: Yeah, some, some people, there’s, I mean, you know, there’s, there’s all types of people, but some people who like to spend a lot of money on hi Fi. just want affirmation.
Andrew Hutchison: Mm
David Spargo: So they like to get experts in to come and tell them how fantastic their system is.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s that never goes well, does it?
David Spargo: No, I just find that a little. Right. I understand why people feel they need to do that, but I’m always surprised when that happens.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. But you still go out there. Is that.
David Spargo: Yeah. Still. I mean, I’m not, I’m not, I try not to be confrontational about these things.
Brad Serhan: No, you’re not, you’re a gentleman.
David Spargo: But but it really surprises me sometimes people’s attitude towards what they’re doing with their sound systems. And I mean it’s really up to everybody individually what they want to do with their money. But some of it just defies, completely defies logic.
Brad Serhan: Actually there’s a story, a quick story, Andrew, where David, and David can take the story over, but David asked me to come along and do some listening or evaluation in in a room that he’d sort of Spec’d, I think for this customer. And the guy had pretty expensive gear, but it hadn’t, or it didn’t sound right before the room had been fixed up. And But this particular fellow sort of let David loose, so to speak. So do you remember that one over. Looking over Pittwater almost three years ago?
David Spargo: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody approached me. they were building a new house and they, heard about what I did and they had explained to me that they had a, you know, a reasonable sound system and they were really into music and they wanted, they wanted, the, wanted to set it up in a room and they wanted to sound good. And they asked me to do an acoustic shelf of some sort because they wanted a multimedia kind of area. And I said, oh, I’m not quite sure what your, what you mean by that. Why don’t you send me, So I established that they were still at the architects, so still doing, still doing drawings I hadn’t started building. And I said, well, why don’t you send me over the drawings so that I could have a look at what you planning?
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: And he did. And when I got a look at them, I thought, oh, this is going to be terrible. I looked at the, I looked at what they were proposing for this big living room area that they were building and where he wanted to set up the sound system. And it was a cathedral basically with a living room at one end, and a, ah, kitchen at the other. And it was all hard surfaces. So it was stone floors, glass walls, gyprock ceiling.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
David Spargo: And it was a huge space. And so I rang this guy back and said, look, I understand now what you’re talking about with the acoustic cabinet. But I said, you’ve got much bigger problems than that. You are going to have much bigger problems than that. You’re not going to be able to live in this space because it’s just going to be so noisy and reverberant. And so he kind of, to his credit, you went, oh, okay, so what should I do? And I, so I designed acoustic treatment for that room
00:30:00
David Spargo: which was all integrated, highly integrated. So there was a ceiling, that went in an acoustic ceiling with a tuned, Tuned absorption.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: Really looked nice too.
David Spargo: Yeah. As well. And because, one of the things I do in my acoustic work is that I’m really concerned about the way things look. At the end of the day, I want them to sound great, but I want them to look great as well. And I really don’t want, I don’t want Rooms, to look like they’ve got acoustic treatment in them.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Because I find that kind of annoying myself. So anyway, he built. He took all the advice on board. It was. Even though it was going to cost him considerably more to do it than he was originally planning, he still took it on board and built the room and it sounded great. And he’s still got his glass windows and stone floor and everything, but, it just sounded great.
David Spargo: And acoustic curtains, where the glass. The long glass wall was,
David says he spent hours tweaking his sound system to improve acoustics
Acoustic blinds.
David Spargo: Well, no, I don’t, I don’t think we did do that. It was mostly in the ceiling that we did the treatment. I, I can’t remember. He did. He did have some curtains of some description. But, yeah, when I, When I went over there after he’d set it all up, I just wasn’t really that impressed with the way it sounded and I thought, better get Brad to come and have a look at this as well. and because, you know, whenever you start moving loudspeakers around, you need. You need a couple of people there to work with it. So.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: So yeah, we spent maybe, I don’t know, it was about an hour.
David Spargo: Yeah.
David Spargo: Moving speakers around and then just found. Found the right combination and the whole system just sprang to life. And it was like, you know that hair standing up on the back of your neck feeling.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Where it was just perfect. and we were like.
David Spargo: Yeah.
David Spargo: Whoa. then we spent like two or three hours just sitting there listening to stuff because it just sounded so good.
Andrew Hutchison: The moral of the story is that you. You have to get the acoustics right, but then you still have to install the equipment in the correct positions, I guess.
David Spargo: Yeah, it’s. Yeah, it’s a system. The whole thing is a system.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: You have to, you have to address everything in the system.
Andrew Hutchison: Which kind of reminds me of a. Of a story, I think. You know, it was. Yeah, you told me, David. It was, where, ah, a guy rang you up and said, this. This, my system sounds like crap. I spent all this money, blah, blah, blah, you know, and you said, oh, well, I’m not going to fix it over the phone for you, but why don’t you send me some pictures and a plan or something?
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah. Well, he, he was remote, so there was no chance.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. You weren’t going to be able to visit. Yes.
David Spargo: No. And I said, well, look, just send me a couple of photographs, and if you would do some measurements in the room to tell me where the loudspeakers are and where your listening position is.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: And what. What the dimensions of the room is. So he did that. And I. As soon. As soon as I saw it, I went, ah. He also described to me what he was hearing in the room. Because that’s one of the things I do first, is I get people to tell me what’s their impression of what’s wrong, what is it that they’re unsatisfied with, because it gives me a really good idea of what they’re keyed into.
Andrew Hutchison: Uh-huh.
David Spargo: In terms of the way they’re hearing the rooms. And as soon as I looked at his drawing, I could see really clearly what was going on, especially as it related to what he thought the fault was in the room. And, so I just emailed him back and said, just move your left speaker, you know, 300 millimeters to the right and 100 millimeters forward. and just a few other adjustments like that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. And pretty simple little tweaks.
David Spargo: Simple, simple stuff. And I didn’t hear from him.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: So it just went. And I went, okay, maybe. Maybe it didn’t work. And then about six months later, I got a phone call from him. I knew it was him because his name was in my phone. But as soon as I answered the phone, he was just going, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Andrew Hutchison: He was a religious man.
David Spargo: Did you. What did you do? And I went, what?
Andrew Hutchison: What?
David Spargo: He said. He said, I thought you were taking the piss.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Move it 276 millimeters to the right.
David Spargo: He said, I thought you were taking the piss. He said, I didn’t do what you told
00:35:00
David Spargo: me to do. And he said, I, was just got over, the last six months. I just become so, upset with the way the loudspeakers sounded. I was just selling them. I was just about to sell them. And he said, I was just about to pack him up. And I thought, what the hell? I’ll just try it.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Spargo: And he totally transformed his system. He said as soon as he did it, it was just like. He was just dumbstruck. and he said he had to run up the road to his mate, who was also into. Into audio.
Bloomline’s system sounded perfect in an anechoic environment
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Spargo: Ah. And grab him down and get him to have a listen. And they were just like. Both of them were just astounded at how different his system sounded. And it solved the problem that he was hearing. So he didn’t end up.
Andrew Hutchison: So he hung onto them, I guess.
David Spargo: Yeah, yeah. He said it was. He was perfect. So perfectly satisfied.
Andrew Hutchison: So that for the Sake of the audience. Do you remember, what, you know, 300 mil, 100 mil. And I guess you’re using those as example tweaks. Because what your point is, I guess is that you. That very little was wrong with the system. The gear was good, the room was basically. But it was in the wrong spots.
David Spargo: That’s right. But what’s clear to me from the diagram that he sent me, that he was, he was driving into one or two room modes.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
David Spargo: And so I just got him to change the geometry a little bit so that he wasn’t interacting with the roommates so strongly.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
David Spargo: there was a little bit of offset. So I made the arrangement a little bit asymmetrical.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Spargo: And it just essentially just cured the problem that he was having. And he was very confounded. He couldn’t understand it.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s not, it’s not anything to do with acoustics. But I do love the fact that he thought you’d taken the piss and he just. That guy, that acoustics guy, him basically. And how could that possibly work? As if that, as if that would fix anything or change anything and and just ignored it. I mean, I’ve got the speakers in my equilateral triangle, you know.
David Spargo: That’s right. That’s right. And, and people, you know, getting back to the point that we mentioned, you know, much earlier on is that people love to have these simple answers for complex M. Complex problems. And you know, that’s all the way. Look, I’ve set up the speakers with the equilateral triangle and it doesn’t sound right.
David Spargo: And I’ve often been to people’s head places that. And I say, well, let’s change that. And they’re like, no, you can’t. It’s not the right way to do it. M. You know, and it’s like, I not. Don’t think you’re getting it here. It’s like it’s not. This is not a hard and fast rule. And it really only came from that early experimental work where, you know, that just happened to be the relationship and everyone’s just gone, well, yeah, let’s just not change that. Yeah, there’s no good reason for it. I mean it’s, it does tend to work in ideal situations, particularly if you’ve gotten very low energy lateral, reflections or late lateral reflections.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yes.
David Spargo: In a virtually anechoic environment. It does tend to work that way. Because let’s face it, when Bloomline was developing this system, he was in A. In a theater.
Andrew Hutchison: Big space. Yeah.
David Spargo: With very, very late lateral. Lateral reflections or very, you know, low level lateral reflections. So he was almost in an anechoic environment.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. If you’re putting a stereo outside, you could definitely have an equilateral triangle. And you would get your best stereo.
David Spargo: yeah, you’d get a pretty good stereo image representation. Yeah. But as soon as you include any room reflections, it all goes out the window. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: The best room is no room, clearly.
David Spargo: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: Although it’s not because you want that, you want that sense of. Sense of space.
David Spargo: You still need the envelopment.
Andrew Hutchison: Envelopment. Yes, that’s the word.
David Spargo: otherwise, your listening position becomes very, very small. The tolerance for your listening position becomes very small.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay. So if you set up your stereo outside in a big open, like in a football field, and you get your equilateral triangle, you’re only going have one chair and you’re going to need a head clamp. Is that, is that the.
David Spargo: That’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. All right, interesting. okay, so, yeah, so that, that, diffuse sound field helps with broadening the hot spot or the sweet spot.
David Spargo: That’s right. That’s right.
David Spargo answers some of your questions that you haven’t asked
Andrew Hutchison: And on that note, for this round of David Spargo tells us. David Sparko, the guy that invented race suits. David Spargo, the other guy who knows about acoustics.
00:40:00
Andrew Hutchison: where he, he answ of your questions that you haven’t asked. this round is complete. David, if we, if we asked nicely, could we get you back sometime in the future? Because what we’ll do is, is we’ll, we’ll take questions. People will comment, people will ask questions. They’ll have questions. Because you’ve just, you’ve just, you just created that by mentioning you could move at 276 millimeters in one direction. People will, people will have questions. and maybe we could get you back to answer. I know you’re a busy man.
David Spargo: be happy to.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, that’d be great. Thank you so much. so thank you, David. Thank you, Brad, of course, for, for, for, asking the hard questions and of course, confusing, us all about, R, I double.
Brad Serhan: Let me say it for you, mate.
Andrew Hutchison: R I double A. Oh, he’s come back. He’s on top. He’s had a coffee.
David Spargo: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: And he’s with us.
Brad Serhan: And you’ll be cutting up those pieces anyway, so thanks for that.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, that’s right. I’m going to cut those pieces out even though we don’t have the technology. Yes. Okay.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. And, David, thank you so much for your time.
David Spargo: That’s all right. That’s a pleasure.
Brad Serhan: Bloody marvelous, mate.
Andrew Hutchison: All right, thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for listening. And as you know, we would absolutely, love you to subscribe, follow, like, and comment comments. As I say, YouTube’s the best place to do that.
David Spargo: That.
Andrew Hutchison: Just do it, and we’ll say whatever you like, and we’ll get back to you. All right, we’ll be off, and we’ll be back with another episode in due course. thank you, everybody. Bye.
00:41:28