Philosophy 

The tale of Achilles and the Turtle

Like the baffling mathematical paradox of "Achilles and the Turtle", apparently introduced by the Greek philosopher Zeno from Elea, The Spirit of Turtle strives to win "The Race” against an overwhelming and seemingly unbeatable opponent, by applying wisdom and resourcefulness.

As independent and highly personal music platform, one is taken over on the left and the right regularly, because of being relatively small and slow, just like the  Turtle competing against a faster animal.  The speed and agility of powerful major record companies is like the strength and speed of the great warrior Achilles and seemingly impossible to beat when it comes to a race for reaching a particular goal.

However, when time is taken out of the equation, it proves that a true paradox is revealed in this lovely tale. The Turtle not only often outlives his opponents, but he also is more clever than the one who just uses brutal force. It is about the goal to reach and winning the contest in the end by staying ahead all the time ever so slightly. The turtle reasons differently from Achilles and in this tale actually convinces him of becoming the winner in the end.

Quality, passion, being clever and different from the mainstream and inventive execution of recording processes proved to survive the tooth of time, even when the big successes of the average day in life are long gone and forgotten.

This is how The Spirit of Turtle functions!
Staying a bit ahead all the time, already for over 25 years, by offering the worlds Finest Musicians, applying the Ultimate Recording Esthetics and always deliver the best Union of Sound and Performance!

"An Artist's Philosophy" 

We seek to collaborate with artists who share our vision to communicate music through recording and playback in the highest possible quality and therefore honoring the sound of reality. Artists who also share our desire to reveal the legacy of great musical minds such that their art reaches as many as possible. Authenticity, inventiveness, sampling and re-working of master pieces can go hand in hand and no musical convention has merits or truth on its own, rather than it being used as an extra tool to create great music and sound.

The Spirit of Turtle is about music and how we can communicate this optimally from performer to listener. A quest for transparency whereby an unconditional dedication and effort is shared and invested by all involved to reach our goals.
A gateway between performer and listener that in the best case adds nothing, and takes nothing away from a real life performance.

 

"A Recording Philosophy"

The Spirit of Turtle strives to let music sound in an acoustic environment whereby the collision of air molecules creates the ultimate blend and balance, rather than to synthesize sound and balance it through electrical currents in mixing boards. Also electrical synthesized music must sound at some point, and The Spirit of Turtle tries to deliver this sound in a way that is believable and similar to a real sounding concert where human beings are involved rather than only abstract soundscapes. Often small noises and even fragile musical moments bring the holographic nature of a recording to life. This philosophy delivers honest, dynamic and extremely colorful recordings in which the musical message comes across in a logical set-up which we recognize to be similar to experiencing a live performance.

"A Cinematic Philosophy"

The Spirit of Turtle is all about music and the sound that this music represents in real live events. Still, however suggestive, imaginative and alive a sound scape might be, and however high the standard of recording quality, just sound will never completely replace a real life performance as seeing artists perform is a crucial part of the communication between them and their audiences. By adding visual information through video and film to our audio productions, we strive to enhance this artistic communication. This, rather than to create a distraction or diversion from the audio, which unfortunately often is the effect of adding moving picture to audio.
 
Delivering carefully selected and balanced visual information, with a tasteful artistic abstraction level to what is heard during the musical performance, will draw the observer into the musical sound scape that is projected and create an imaginative teamwork between the 2 disciplines. The music becomes even more clear and understood and even inherently alien music to the listener becomes more attractive due to what the picture shows. This philosophy delivers a complete and honest representation of musical performances with the immersive characteristics and a psychological response to ultimately resemble attending a real live performance.

 

Bert van der Wolf-Oude Avenhuis

Producer, Recording- & Balance Engineer

Director Bert van der Wolf - Oude Avenhuis (1964) is a practicing recording engineer/producer based in The Netherlands and has run his own audio recording facility since 1996. He trained in Electronics at the Higher Technical School in Enschede from 1982 to 1985, served in the army a year and after that studied and practiced Music Recording, Piano and Classical Guitar at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he gained the internationally recognized Tonmeister qualification in 1990.
Bert worked for the Dutch recording companies Channel Classics from 1989 to 1996 and Kompas CD Multimedia from 1996 to 2000, making several hundred recordings for numerous international record labels. He also works as a consultant and “evangelist” for many recording studios and professional audio equipment manufacturers. Bert has been making High Resolution recordings since 1996, starting initially with the 24/96 formats and then moving on to 24/192 and DSD. He engineered the world’s first 24/192 recordings for Samsung in 1996. As a technical consultant he was responsible for the assembly and delivery of 3 first prototype 8 channel DSD recorders to Philips and worked together with their NATlab on the specifications. Hundreds of the first SACD releases that appeared in the early 2000′ have been made with these systems. Bert specializes in acoustic recording techniques and has numerous award winning recordings to his credit. In 1997 he was a co-founder of the High End Audio label Turtle Records®, and from 2008 onwards he is the sole owner of Edison Production Company BV, which harbors Turtle Records® and its spin-off brand “The Spirit of Turtle”. The latter is a merging between Turtle Records® and HQ|NORTHSTAR branded recording productions.

 

 

Contact us:

The Spirit of Turtle
Edison Production Company BV
Molenstraat 13
Haaften 4175CA 
The Netherlands
tel: +31418594066
mob. +31653420430
email: info@spiritofturtle.com
KvK/CoC: 30152002
BTW/VAT: NL807477837B01

 

Additional Photos: Brendon Heinst

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