"No pain; no gain." Thus goes the June 1991 offering from the Cliché-of-the-Month Club(800) MOT-JUSTa saying that seems particularly appropriate for audiophiles with aspirations. High-performance loudspeakers fall into two categories. First are those exasperating thoroughbreds requiring endless Tender Loving Care and fussy attention to system detail to work at all. Take the Avalon Eclipse or the Infinity IRS Beta, for example: when everything is just fine, you put on record after record, trying to get through as much music as possible before the system goes off song again. On the other hand, speakers like the Vandersteens, Magnepans, B&W 801 Matrix, and KEF R107/2 appear to sound excellent even as you unpack them, before you've even put them in what you think might be the optimum positions in your listening room.
The question is: Are such unfussy designs really high-end? I mean, if they were truly high-performance speakers, shouldn't the owner have to suffer even just a little to reach musical nirvana? "A little pain; some sonic gain!" goes that other familiar saying.
You all know where you stand on this vitally important question. Me, I prefer to sit and construct the following graphical analogy. Draw a vertical axis and mark it "Absolute Performance." (The units are "gb," footnote 1) Now draw a horizontal axis and label it "Setup." (The units are "dU" for "deci-Ungers," footnote 2) Okay, sketch out an inverted V-shape. This curve, something like an engine's torque vs RPM curve, represents the manner in which a system's or component's performance changes according to how it is set up.
As we announced last month, this past weekend saw the grand opening of EarsNova's new store at 3 East 28th Street, in Manhattan. Founded in 1979 by Joshua Cohn (right in photo), the store's new location is on the second floor of a solidly constructed 1920s building, with high ceilings and the space to present high-end audio products and systems under ideal circumstances. The listening rooms, for example, have floors and walls that are isolated from the building's structure. Not only does this prevent sound from the audio systems being demmed leaking into the other floors, it makes the rooms extremely quiet. When I was auditioning the new Magico Q1s during last Friday's evening rush hour, there was no clue that just half a block away there was the usual torrent of 5th Avenue traffic.
I was talking last winter to Musical Fidelity's Antony Michaelson, who had been enthusing about his forthcoming stereo amplifier, the AMS100. It would be physically enormousalmost a yard deepand commensurately heavy at 220 lbs. Despite its bulk, its maximum rated output would be just 100Wpc into 8 ohms. It would also be expensive, at $19,999. And to cock a snoot at environmentalists and their concerns, the AMS100's output stage would be biased into class-A up to its rated 8 ohm power, meaning that, even when not playing music, it will draw around 10 amps from a typical US wall supply of 120V. This also means that it will run very hot, making the amplifier impracticable for summer use in homes without central air-conditioning. Like mine.
"I don't like Mondays!" sang Bob Geldof some years back, and I'm beginning to hate Mondays too. No, not for the obvious reason. You see, Monday is "hate-mail" day. Every day I get letters from Stereophile's readers. But for some reason known only to the mavens (or should that be Clavens?) of the US Postal Service, the ones pointing out my stupidity, dishonesty, and sheer incompetence as a human being arrive on Mondays.
For example: "Bits are bits, and it is therefore dishonest for Stereophile's writers to continue to insist that they can hear any differences between CD players or digital processors!" recently wrote an angry reader, canceling his subscription. (They always tell me they're going to cancel their subscription.) "Yeah, right!" thought I, having just sat through a comparative audition of, would you believe, digital data interconnects in Robert Harley's listening room. Some of the differences I heard were not trivial. They might even be audible in a blind listening test.
It was the distant past, a time so long ago that the M in MTV stood for Music, and I was watching a David Bowie concert on TV. The svelte singer was wearing what I took to be hearing aids.
Are regional shows like Gary's the future of the audio market, as Classic Speakers' John Wolff believes, or will we return to the days when there were just one or at most two large shows each year? That is going to depend on the resources of audio manufacturers and retailers and their willingness to spend more time on the road. But the 2011 Capital AudioFest certainly proved that if you hold it, audiophiles will come.
And OMG, the sound! Whether it was Peter McGrath's hi-rez recordings or commercial material like Yello's "Stay," you were mainlining the music. Peter asked if he could play some of my hi-rez recordings, and played first the Cantus performance of Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque in 24/88.2k fidelity. I was transported to the Sauder Auditorium at Goshen College in Indiana, with the acoustic wrapped around me. The system did subtlety. Peter then played the 24/88.2k master of Attention Screen's "Blizzard Limbs," from Live at Merkin Hall. Again, the acoustic wrapped round me but the drum transients were more startling than I have ever heard before. And I mastered the recording!
I have heard Wilson Sashas in a number of systems, and yes, they are "fast," in that the bass doesn't boom or blur. Yes, the Nordost Odin is extraordinarily transparent cable (at a price) and that Meridian player's D/A is top-rank. And that HRS rack is a black hole for vibrations. But driven by the Dan D'Agostino ampswow, did the Sashas kick some awesome booty! Without ever sounding crass or lacking in subtlety.