1.  V33n4 of the BAS Speaker has been published. It features a writeup of the meeting at David Moulton's house, discussing eq for mastering, written by John S. Allen. Also extended reminiscences of Edgar Villchur and Daniel von Recklinghausen; Reports on CEDIA 2011 by David Weinberg and Jim Buchanan; and AES 2011 by David Weinberg and Alvin Foster. 33 pp

2.  I recently watched "Tree of Life." At the beginning there it says "For maximum enjoyment of this movie the producers (6 of them!) recommend that you play it loud." So I turned up the volume and started the movie. At the first voiceover I jumped for the volume control as it was too loud and almost unintelligible. Once the volume was lowered I sat back and enjoyed the movie*. It is nominally about a boy growing up in Texas, but is really about images and sounds. (A movie theater in CT posted a sign warning that there would be no refunds for those seeing this movie). A plus is the almost continuous classical music soundtrack, mostly familiar, but some not.

* Explanation: If a director decides to have a program with wide dynamic range, from very soft to loud, then of necessity the average level is lower than that of a compressed program. Thus the admonition to play it loud since most people probably play everything at the same level. However the dialogue level was raised, forcing me to reduce the volume, thereby partly subverting what they were trying to achieve. Still a commendable effort.

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