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Meetings and other Notices

The Boston Audio Society now has its own YouTube channel:
www.youtube.com/@bostonaudiosociety

The September Meeting

Date: Saturday, September 26, 2026

Time: 1:30-4 pm EST

Place: 68 Butler St., Apartment 5D, Dorchester, MA 02124

Featured Guest: All Attendees

Topic: White Elephant Sale featuring Jim Doucas’ audio equipment, recordings, and audiobooks. Members may also bring audio or video-related items to sell. Because space is limited, please bring only items likely to sell. Most proceeds from Jim’s estate will go to the BAS Treasury, as he would have wished. BAS will gratefully accept 10% of the proceeds from member-supplied items as a donation. Unsold items may be donated or discarded.

What to Bring: The second page of this notice includes photos and names of some items for sale. Jim was a BAS member for more than 40+ years. Like many members, his interests progressed from ham radio to cameras, audio, video, and eventually music recording. Please share this notice with friends and others who may be interested. As always, the public is welcome.

Light refreshments will be served.

When you arrive at the front door of the apartment building, ring the doorbell and someone will let you in.

Directions to 68 Butler St.

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Sunbeam Microwave Oven, SGC7702

Beckman Industries Scope, 9020, 20 MHz

Small Tektronix scope

Visioneer? OneTouch 7100 USB Computer Scanner

Sony Multi channel Amplifier, TA-N220

5 Audio Books

- 2 AES Loudspeaker Anthologies

- 1 Beranek

- 1 Bruel &Kjaer audio book

- 1 Barwick

- others

Box of foreign canceled stamps

Sharp Microwave, R310AK

AIWA Tabletop Radio with CD Player, FR-TC5500U

2 Quad ESL 57 Electrostatic Speakers, no power cable, no sides, no feet

Carver C-4000 Preamp

Pioneer DVD/CD Player, DV-563A-S

Behringer Firewire USB/Audio/Music Interface, FCA610

3 Toolboxes with tools

Box of Bruel & Kjaer parts and bits

Optoma Ultra Short Throw Projector 4k HD Laser Cinema, WB01 TV

An Unopened 12’ screen designed to stand on the floor or table top, Elite Series

Brother Ink-Jet Printer w/ink. HL-L2370DW

Koss Electrostatic Headphones ESP-950

Small tube amplifier with supply (for headphones?)

HeathKit Short Wave Receiver, 7800

Audio Technica AT2050 MultiPattern Mics (2) with accessories

Neumann USM-69 mic condition/completeness unknown

16” LCD Computer Monitor

Blu-ray Box Set - Lord of the Rings

Blu-ray Box Set - The Hobbit

3 Metro Metal Industrial Shelves, chrome with casters

2 Carver 5-Channel Amps. 100w/channel, AV-505 (one rusty)

Sony CD/DVD CDP C425 Multi Disc Player

HP Distortion Analyzer Measurement System, F-339A

Vacuum Sweeper, Bissel PowerForce Helix Turbo

6’ long desk top designed to sit on 2 short filing cabinets, included

1 ZERO Carrying Case & 4 other brands

100’ of Ambisonic Microphone Cable, 4-channels, Michael A. Gerzon

Lots of Miscellaneous Audio/video Stuff

Microphone Tripod, 12’

Quad ESL 57

Hope to see you there.

THE BAS MESSAGE
September 2026

Miscellaneous News

Boston Audio Society

PO BOX 260211
BOSTON, MA 02126
978-944-6481

Below, other meetings and notices which
may be of interest to BAS members

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

GBH Awarded $16 Million to Digitize Radio, TV Broadcasts

www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/gbh-awarded-16-million-to-digitize-radio-tv-broadcasts

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

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

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]

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

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

Foster's Test Bench !
by Alvin Foster ! Click the logo: —>

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

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

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

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

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 !

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 -

AES Future Meetings
www.bostonaes.org

Acoustical Society of America
www.gbcasa.org

SMPTE New England
www.smpte-ne.org

There is a posting of an ABX article, The Digital Challenge by Stanley P. Lipshitz HERE

The Boston Audio Society
PO BOX 260211
Boston MA 02126

updated 4/14/23