I had the fortunate experience of hearing Dennis' instruments while in
Sydney. I also heard the CD's and the instrument used for the
recordings. Since he lives in the city the recording engineers had to
carefully block off windows, etc to cut out noise, and put baffles in
the large room to control echo. I found it all very interesting. As
I understand it, the CDs have been released in Europe but not yet in
the U.S.
Dennis has restored a number of instruments and they all sounded very
good--he gave lots of attention to piano hammers and the results yield
realistic performances. The Duo-Art had flawless dynamics which suited
the room. One wasn't aware of the dynamics pumping up and down, much
as the old DBX volume expanders used for home stereo (if you remember
the days before CDs). The Duo-Art just sounded like someone playing
the piano in the style of 1920's. Too bad Dennis isn't on the net, as
he really understands the DA and how to make it sound realistic.
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