Any major garage-band dude anywhere in the Universe can tell you: there's no accounting for the Physics of Sound. There's almost no way of knowing when that microphone will scream in feedbacky protest, that it's been placed in the wrong spot. Okay. So, that's kid stuff. Amateur night. Granted. Which is why one of my pet peeves is how "the sound guy" (remarkably, even at major gigs such as Donald Fagen's recent concert appearance at the Chicago Theater) seems to forget that Life exists at midrange, so it's the Highs and Lows that need accentuating. Mind you, Chicago-based harmonica master Howard Levy told me the sound check onstage was "perfect." Which just goes to show you how different things can sound, from the audience. (Levy, whose band Chevere was gigging at the Green Mill up on Broadway and Lawrence, joined the band onstage that evening to reprise his solo stint on "What I Do," one of two songs he recorded on MORPH THE CAT, Fagen's brand-new CD.) www.donaldfagen.com In any case, Howard's a cool cat. A pro. Plays amazing duotonic harmonica, probably is the leading jazzer in the category...was a founding member of Bela Fleck's highly respected Flecktones, for years. He's even done sessions with our very own "Dr. Skunklove." So he's not easily fooled. Still, I'm relatively certain that expert audio engineer Elliot L. Scheiner (aka "ELS") and Fagen both would have been at least slightly appalled if they'd heard what the audience heard. Not that the sound was "bad." Not at all. Just mushy. Muddled. "Middled," if you will. Fagen and Scheiner would've freaked just a little, if they'd heard the sound because they're the tops, having teamed together on Steely Dan albums for 30 years, since 1976's THE ROYAL SCAM, to create audio perfection. (Our own Steve Lukather and Simon Phillips can attest to ELS' professionalism...so would Jeff Porcaro: they all worked with Elliot over the years, many times, both as TOTO and as solo artists.) With producer Gary Katz (who was in from the first, CAN'T BUY A THRILL) and chief engineer Roger Nichols (who still maintains professional vigil whenever The Dan tours), Scheiner has been on the case, as a mixologist of the highest order who knows, better than anyone els(e) how a recording should sound. And there's not a recording artist, audiophile, or critic on the planet who would disagree. (See www.steelydan.com.) Which may not seem like much, until one realizes and/or recalls that the arrival of a Steely Dan album used to (and still) means not only great new music, but a next-generation audio-technological experience . . . much like (dare I say it?) the arrival of a Beatles album, back in the day. Not so much for consciously (or even self-consciously) pushing back the edge of the envelope in terms of sound-experimentation, per se, but in the crystalline recording and reproduction of exactly every note, pitch, timbre, and . . . well . . . sound, on each of those danged separate tracks, just as their Creator(s) intended. And Elliot Scheiner, in the words of one industry mogul, is "an audio magician." Not in the pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-console, masking and subterfuge sense (as is the job of so many ProTools jockeys, these days, e.g., de-flat-ifying the vocals of someone named Justin, or Brittany, or Jessica, or Josh, or Kelli, or whomever), to cover up a litany of errors, but to capture an honest performance with 100% accuracy. EXERCISE 1 - Go to your album collection, choose your ten favorite CDs/LPs, and ferret out the engineer's name. I guarantee that Scheiner's name will be on at least one of them. (To get his full resume, or a rough approximation thereof, you can download Scheiner's discography at http://www.elssurround.com/Scheiner_Bio.pdf . . . ) That is also the site to get an eyeful of the entire ELS Surround story: all the verbiage, specs, history, and "application notes" one might want, in order to check out this brave new system. The one available since the 2004 model year in the Acura TL, and soon to be found in the automaker's newest SUV, the Acura RDX. EXERCISE 2 - Get a 5.1 Surround Sound edition of your absolute favorite (if it's been released yet, and if it has, chances are huge that ELS engineered it, so check out his PDF bio). Go to an Acura dealership. Find a TL. Ask for the keys. Get inside. Listen. Enjoy. Report back to me. (I suggest Fagens' first solo album, THE NIGHTFLY. It was also the first CD that was recorded using the maddeningly wonderful digital technologies that everyone ended up using, throughout the 80s. And, yes: Elliot Scheiner did tracking and mixdown.) Perhaps the most comprehensive "everyman" review of Scheiner's 5.1 surround sound-based design, as implemented by the Panasonic engineers for Acura — which concept, fundamentally, hinges on six separate, non-compressed speaker channels, instead of two — can be read at Duluth, MN-based reviewer John Gilbert's website, "Costly audio system has 2004 Acura TL for wrapper," http://www.jwgilbert.com/index.php?story_id=152816. Gilbert told me that the best CD for listening to the ELS Surround-graced Acura is the acoustic version of "Hotel California" on The Eagles' HELL FREEZES OVER concert album. (I'll stick to my guns where THE NIGHTFLY is concerned, even though they and SD traded lyrical salutes, on that song ----- "They stab it with their steely knives" --- in response to ROYAL SCAM's "Everything You Did," i.e. "Turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening.") NOTE: INFORMATIVE BACKGROUND HYPE. Based in Southfield, Michigan, Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America is a division of Secaucus, New Jersey-based Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, the principal North American subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC) of Osaka, Japan. (JK NOTE: Which, of course, is also where Honda makes Acuras.) Discussing the system, Scheiner says, "With the ELS Surround audio system we can finally capture and reproduce music the way we hear it in the studio. And when it comes to multi-channel-audio and surround sound, a factory-installed sound system is one of the best ways to experience it since you are dealing with a defined listening space in which the system can be tuned to the vehicle's specific acoustic environment. Also, when you think back, many of our musical formats achieved widespread acceptance through the automobile - eight track tapes, cassettes and CDs - and now 5.1 surround." This is a dramatic advancement over previous automotive audio systems where only two channels (left and right) were available. For the first time it is possible to enjoy separate dedicated channels of music from the center, left front, right front, left rear, right rear and subwoofer. The ELS Surround audio system features the world's first in-dash radio with a built-in six-disc DVD-Audio/CD changer that plays DVD-Audio discs and DTS CDs, as well as standard CD's. This unique unit plays the six discrete channels of DVD-Audio in high-resolution 24 bit, 96 kHz and can also play DVD-Audio 2-channel recordings at 24 bit, 192 kHz. The ELS Surround audio system's eight-speaker package was developed specifically to reproduce the extended frequency range and dynamics captured in today's recordings, and includes dedicated speakers to reproduce the center and subwoofer channels. Of course, to my mind, getting great sound out of a good car-audio system is somewhat like shooting fish in a barrel: the inside of an automobile, with all windows closed, forms a natural cabinet enclosure. But it does depend on the engineering and the media involved, to be sure. Case in point: I listened to Fagen's Steely Dan partner Walter Fagen's only solo CD to date, 11 TRACKS OF WHACK (which, for reasons passing understanding, contains 12 songs: don't try to figure that one out, unless you’re a street-smart hipster-dufus) for one year, literally, before taping it. At that time (1994), Panasonic arch-rival Sony Corporation had released its CD-IT brand of audio tape . . . mama mia!!!!! Incredible sound reproduction, beyond imagination: I actually heard tracks on that tape, from Becker's album, that I had never heard on the CD. But, again: with multiple speakers pointing at your head, inside a natural cabinet enclosure, and a near-digital-quality analog tape…how could you not? Naturally, Sony pulled their CD-Its from the market, about two years ago, in favor of the burnable discs that most of you are pirating your tunes on. Typical.