Review: Zeta Zero Venus Picolla

TR Studios and Zetas

   TR Studios, meaning Mr Tomasz Rogula’s recording studio, ia an important ingredient of  the Polish music scheme, it is a place where most known music stage artists as well as the masters of a spoken word proceed with their recordings. Working at such a place is surely a wonderful experience and it is excellent for finding optimal sounds which most successfully combine emotional advantages of the sound with the great exactness of its production and replaying from the technical point of view. That is not an easy task because the battle between emotional layer and so called musicality with a precise, analytical grasping of sound material appearing suddenly on the verge of attempts to obtain possibly best dramaturgy and tune along with efforts to pass the most meaningful message, has been carried on since the very beginning of musical recordings technology and applies equally to both analog and the digital sphere.

There were opposite Vectors like the usual happenings during war. Analog recording was smooth, it could precisely express emotions and musical atmosphere, however it suffered a lack of information related to the morphology of physical modeling and what is more, it was poor when it came to the durability of a sound carrier. The digital one, on the other hand, could gather large amounts of independent bits, as well as artifically multiply them by the method of interpoling. It could also store and copy given material without any damage, however it lacked that smooth analog flow and it constantly faced so called steps. Although those issues apply mainly to what happens to the sound, still being an electromagnetic wave, before it reaches the speaker’s converter. But it is not the only issue. All problems with conversion and recording eventually fall upon those converters and they had to somehow convert those imperfections into possibly the best picture of live music, being at the opposite end of the signal.

And so the truth is, that it was within the loudspeakers themselves where the final clash would take place between not precise enough analog smoothness and a jagged bit.

Some loudspeakers are more musical and others are more analytical, which can be easily checked by connecting them  interchangibly to the same path. The most crucial aspect here is to balance the proportions, as for no one should assume that a speaker would only be connected to analog paths, or only to those focused on analysis. As an effect, a good loudspeaker should fall in between and should be able to combine apects which are really not possible to combine; not fit for one another from the very start, or somehow disabled. It has to be a synthesis of musicality without analysis, and at the same time be analysis lacking musicality, for such is the practice and the reality of life itself. Of course both contemporary record players as well as digital CD and file players strive to achieve perfection as is electromagnetic wave perfectly modeling live music; but let us not deceive ourselves – already the fact that the best recordings  exist as archival imperfections, means that there will be constant problems while playing music. We will take a closer look at the part devoted to hearing and see how Zetas manage to combine the flow with analysis. For now, we will focus on the technical side of the issue.