| Meetings and other Notices |
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| The February Zoom Only Meeting |
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Date: Tuesday Evening, February 11, 2025. 7:00 PM EDT (NOTE: DATE+TIME)
Location: ZOOM Only
Featured Guests: Thomas Clark Fenner, Inventor and President of HiFi Vibe
Topic/Activity: Vibration Healing ZOOM Education Program
Thomas Clark Fenner, the inventor and president of HiFi Vibe, will be presenting a Zoom education program on Tuesday evening, February 11. The session will focus on the evolution and future of using True Sine Wave Frequencies for alternative health care. Fenner will explore past, current, and future technologies used to create vibrational frequencies for therapeutic and entertainment purposes.
Fenner's journey began in the late 1970s when he built the first prototype of a tactile sound transducer to address high-frequency hearing loss caused by loud music. In the 70’s, and probably worse now, over 80% of young adults (under 20) had already sustained a measurable and permanent high frequency hearing loss. Mr. Fenner’s work focuses on delivering vibrational frequencies safely for both therapeutic and entertainment purposes.
His work has since expanded to include the development of Vibro Sensory Stimulation (VSS) tables, and the only underwater speaker approved for Olympic Synchronized Swim Team events. Inspired by Swedish scientist Olav Skille and Dr. Charles Butler's research on physio-acoustics, Fenner's innovations aim to deliver vibrational frequencies safely.
The benefits and applications of Fenner's technologies are diverse. They help overcome hearing loss through bone conduction, allow people to experience music and concert effects without damaging sound pressure levels, and can be used for stress and pain reduction.
Background & Expertise:
- Built the first tactile sound transducer in the 1970s
- Developed the only underwater speaker approved for Olympic Synchronized Swim Team events
Technology Development:
- Created Vibro Sensory Stimulation (VSS) tables
- Inspired by Swedish scientist Olav Skille's research and Dr. Charles Butler's work on physio-acoustics
Benefits & Applications:
- Helps overcome hearing loss through bone conduction
- Allows people to experience music/concert effects without damaging sound pressure levels
- Can be used for stress and pain reduction
- using multi-sensory stimulation in conjunction with familiar music to remediate the effects of Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.
Take a look around his website https://hifiwellness.com/ You will find many resources and information on the healing and entertainment aspects of Vibration Healing.
fennertc@gmail.com
303-358-3882
Boston Audio Society
PO BOX 260211
BOSTON MA 02126
617.271.6588
Ken Schwarz is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Time: Tuesday Evening, February 11, 2025, ~ 7:00 PM Eastern
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89414786087?pwd=aG8wMFFKaXZuejR3TEJQOThISkhrUT09
Meeting ID: 894 1478 6087
Passcode: 989644
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Hope to see you then.
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THE BAS MESSAGE
February 2025 |
Miscellaneous News
1. The BAS is looking for a new webmaster. The current webmaster will train you and hand it over to you, and provide support as necessary. The website is written in simple HTML. You will need a computer and a high speed internet connection (you will need to download a 6GB backup in a reasonable amount of time). $300 is the annual payment. You may be asked to support admin of the BAS Facebook pages as well.
2. The BAS has a new President. Welcome Ken Schwarz!
3. Sound Strategy: Want to Make Fungus Grow? Add In a Little White Noise.
The discovery that sound improves the growth rate of beneficial fungus suggests that dirges in the dirt may help restore forests.
Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a green microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. Sound also seems to help some bacteria grow, said Jake Robinson, a microbial ecologist at Flinders University in Australia who studies the soil microbiome. It was this work with bacteria that inspired Dr. Robinson and his colleagues to see if the same were true of a beneficial fungus.
First, the scientists lined big plastic tubs with soundproofing foam to make quiet places for their fungi to live in. Then they put petri dishes with a dab of T. harzianum in the tubs. Once a day, they played some of the dishes 30 minutes of white noise drawn from a YouTube video intended to help people with tinnitus.
It's not clear why the sound had these effects. Dr. Robinson speculates that the sound waves may be striking receptors in the fungal cells that are sensitive to pressure. These receptors could then lead to a cascade of signals that switch on growth genes. The researchers plan to look closer at what genes are switched on and off in the presence of sound to help understand the effects.
Perhaps silence indicates a hostile environment, one where no other organism has been able to grow. It might also be that certain kinds of sound fend some microbes off but give off a come-hither vibe to others.
"It might be you can create a certain soundscape that has an invigorating, growth-promoting effect," he said -- music to a forest's ears.
Greenwood, Veronique, NYT,22 Oct 2024
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Below, other meetings and notices which
may be of interest to BAS members |
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JUST RELEASED !
A fantastic historical video!
Ken Berger and Kenton Forsythe are the founders of EAW (Eastern Acoustics Works) and they discuss, with terrific overlaid graphics, the history of, well, pretty much every audio thing Boston from the early 70's.
18 minutes and right here: https://youtu.be/fPfQEK0b0mI
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A Boston issue - As MIX magazine reports:
Sound Museum owners cry foul as their tenants likely secure new spaces without them
While the headline sounds like someone has sour grapes, the complete story of how the closure of this crucial Boston rehearsal studio is being handled is far more nuanced and complicated -- particularly since it brings up issues of gentrification, government support of the arts, non-profits' ethics and more. Full Story HERE (WBUR-FM Boston (1/11/23)
And here's an update:
www.wbur.org/news/2023/01/25/charlestown-rehearsal-studios-musicians-boston
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MAHLER 3
In the recent (April 2022) performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony at Boston's Symphony Hall by Ben Zander and his Boston Philharmonic, the recording was done with the three main spaced omnis with two more farther back. No accent mikes or chorus microphones were used nor, it turns out, were they needed. Remarkably, this produced a recording that is as close to the Symphony Hall experience as may be possible.
The info is here: www.bostonphil.org/concerts/2021-2022/bpo4-mahler3
Here is the recording in its entirety as a single .WAV file; 44k / 16 bit; 1hr 47 min
Mahler Sym 3 CD.wav 1.1GB
(For those of you with editing software note that the .wav file HAS markers to denote the movements.)
Here is the exact same Symphony 3 with the movements separated as FLAC files, 48k / 24 bit as a ZIPped file: Mahler 3 Zander as FLAC.zip 1GB
IF you'd like further Gustav Mahler info... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler
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Shop Talk
Shop Talk was a WBUR program about Hi Fidelity, music, speakers, tape recorders, etc. Enjoyed by many during the 1970s, the program's format was ‘talk’ and interviewing major audio luminaries. It was a forerunner of the popular program Car Talk!
Peter Mitchell and Dr. Richard Goldwater were the original hosts. They were later joined by Brad Meyer. Here, John Allen interviews Scott Kent:
Shop Talk John Allen talks to Scott Kent on SPEAKERS.mp3 (81Mb 1:27)
Shop Talk John Allen talks to Scott Kent on TAPE RECORDERS.mp3 (79Mb 1:26)
There is also an episode track on the BAS CD and here is that Description:
Track 12. "Shop Talk", WHRB-FM, November 5, 1984.
Peter Mitchell (on the left), Richard Goldwater, MD (center) and E. Brad Meyer (right) introduce the show with a 1932 stereo recording and prepare to talk with guests Mark Davis and David Moran, both then of dbx corporation.
Shop Talk, which through most of its ten-year life on WBUR featured just Mitchell and Goldwater, was the precursor of Tom and Ray Magliozzi's "Car Talk". As we finished our 9:00-10:30 stint every Saturday morning, Tom and Ray would take our places and begin joking with each other. Eventually the station manager figured out that they were funnier than we were, and that more people drove cars than owned hi-fi equipment, and fired us. Until then, the show publicized the Boston Audio Society, vastly increasing attendance at our monthly meetings. The show came back for a time during the '80's on the Harvard station WHRB, where we appeared once a month as guests of HRB stalwart David Elliott. [EBM]
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| BAS MICROPHONE CLINIC REPORT ! |
| In September 2009 the B A S held a microphone clinic, testing 37 different microphone models. The ambitious nature of the clinic effort, the extent of data collection, the number of individuals involved in microphone testing and in writing various sections of the report, and the complexity in determining how to construct the clinic report and make it available to members resulted it not being published until now. The dataset is extensive.
Representative samples were included in the abbreviated report in "The B A S Speaker"
(Fall 2015; v37n3)
Go to the MICROPHONE CLINIC PAGE for more...
...and don't forget, here is the master list of microphones in the world
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When collecting and plotting "noisy" data it is often useful to have Microsoft Excel plot a Trend Line through it. If that data is to be used for further work, it may be necessary to have an X-Y table of the Trend Line. That is not easy to get and this paper will show how to do it.
Joseph DeMarinis has an article here: Extracting Numerical Data from an Excel Trend Line
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Foster's Test Bench !
by Alvin Foster ! Click the logo: —> |
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The rapidly-becoming-famous BAS Headphone Test Article is now available in the BASS VOLUME 25, ISSUE 4, on Page 17, available HERE  PDF 3mb |
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Visit our PODCAST PAGE for:
The LIVE video podcast of our meetings,
Archived video of past meetings (only one so far!),
and Audio Podcast interviews by Alvin Foster |
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There is a supplemental and further explanation addendum paper to the E. Brad Meyer / David Moran paper published in the September, 2007 issue of the AES Journal. That page, which documents the experimental protocol and audio systems/source material is here:
www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm |
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| There is a Power Point Presentation of the lecture given by Dr. Barry Blesser at the March 2007 Meeting. The Meeting page synopsis is HERE; the Power Point Presentation (as a web page) is HERE |
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Some earlier BASS issues, previously available only directly by mail, are now available online, on the BAS SPEAKER page, HERE
Show your appreciation for the immense amount of dedicated work that went into both the original writing, gathering, editing and printing, PLUS the more recent scanning and conversion to PDF format, by joining the Society, HERE !
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A L L O F F S I T E L I N K S O P E N I N T O A N E W T A B O R W I N D O W
- AND FOR CONVENIENCE -
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