Absolute Sound

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IN THIS ISSUE 

ISSUE 148 ■ JUNE/JULY 2004 

103 Cover Story: 

Drop-Dead Gorgeous: Sonus Faber 

Stradivari “Homage” Loudspeaker 

In sound and looks Sonus Faber’s new statement design is simply 

gorgeous, so says our man, Jonathan Valin. 

36 Recommended Products 

Loudspeakers Under $5000 

Our staff selects the crème de la crème in affordable and mid-priced speakers. 

77 The State of Multichannel Audio 

In a series of special reports in The Cutting Edge, we explore the past, 

present, and potential future of high-end multichannel sound. In his 

Multichannel Audio Primer, Robert Harley explains the ins and outs of 

expanding your two-channel system—the right way; the TAS 

Roundtable finds RH, HP, Classical Music Editor Andy Quint, and 

recording engineer Peter McGrath debating the pros and cons of stereo, 

multichannel, center-channel speakers, and subwoofers; and in his 

Workshop, HP looks at the Dark Side of Multichannel Sound. 

Equipment Reports 

56 NAD C 162 PREAMPLIFIER, C 272 POWER AMPLIFIER 

Chris Martens reports on NAD’s new entry-level separates. 

62 YBA INTÉGRÉ INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER 

The latest combo amp from YBA finds Neil Gader waxing nostalgic. 

65 DOUBLE-DIPPING: MOREL OCTWIN 5.2M LOUDSPEAKER 

Neil Gader listens to a stacked pair of speakers with more than a few 

sonic and design twists. 

68 FURTHER THOUGHTS: THE GAMUT D 200 MK3 

Jonathan Valin reports on the latest incarnation of a technological 

tour-de-force. 

72 ROMANTIC AT HEART—VALVE AMPLIFICATION COMPANY AVATAR SUPER 

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER 

Wayne Garcia on VAC’s top-of-the-line, retro-looking, all-tube integrated amp. 

Viewpoints 

4 FROM THE EDITOR 

6 LETTERS 

121 MANUFACTURER COMMENTS 

2 22 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ JUNE/JULY 2004

Columns 

16 INDUSTRY NEWS 

20 FUTURE TAS 

Hot new products on the horizon. 

22 START ME UP: Meeting High-End Expectations on a Modest Budget 

Our column on affordable gear resumes with new writer Jerry Sommers. 

28 ABSOLUTE ANALOG 

Paul Seydor spins Pro-Ject’s RM 9 turntable and Sumiko’s Blackbird 

cartridge, and sets it all atop Townshend’s Seismic Sink Isolation Platform. 

TAS Journal 

33 EDITORIAL: Missing the Boat 

Robert Harley argues that, for all the great contributions the high end 

has made over the years, it also has a habit of ignoring opportunities to 

expand its business (and your options). 

48 BASIC REPERTOIRE: The Piano Trio 

Andrew Quint kicks off the first in a new series on must-own music. 

Music 

127 ROCK AND POP RECORDING OF THE ISSUE Wilco: A ghost is born; 

Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand; Sigur Ros: Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do; 

Broken Social Scene: Bee Hives; Sam Phillips: A Boot and a Shoe; 

Patti Smith: Trampin’; Eric Clapton: Me & Mr. Johnson and Keb Mo: Keep It 

Simple; Diverse: One A.M. and Kanye West: The College Dropout; Lou Reed: 

Animal Serenade, Allman Brothers: One Way Out, and Bob Dylan: The 

Bootleg Series Volume 6; Ellis Hooks: Uncomplicated; The Buzzcocks: Singles 

Going Steady and The Saints: I’m Stranded (Runt 180-gram LPs) 

SACD —Mission of Burma: ONoffON; George Harrison: Live In Japan 

141 JAZZ Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls: Breeding Resistance and Chicago 

Underground Trio: Slon; Duke Ellington: Masterpieces by Ellington; Brad 

Mehldau: Anything Goes and Joel Framm with Brad Mehldau: Don’t 

Explain; Fred Hersch: Trio + 2; Jason Lindner: Live/UK; Miguel Zenón: 

Ceremonial; Andy Bey: American Song 

SACD—Great Jazz Trio: Someday My Prince Will Come 

149 CLASSICAL Purcell: Dido and Aeneas and Britten: The Turn of the Screw; 

Anonymous 4: American Angels and Trio Mediaeval: Soir Dit-Elle; The 

1950s Haydn Symphonies Recordings; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 

SACD—Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin and Bluebeard’s Castle; 

Mahler: Symphony No. 3; Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition and 

Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible; SACD and DVD-A Tackle Beethoven’s Nine 

Symphonies Conducted by Karajan and Abbado 

158 ABSOLUTE AUDIOPHILIA 

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 (Maag) (Speakers Corner 45 RPM LPs); 

John Lennon: Imagine and Aimee Mann: Lost In Space (MoFi 180-gram LPs) 

160 TAS Retrospective 

NAD 3020: The Little Amp That Put High-End Sound Within 

Everyone’s Reach 

Chris Martens 

WWW.THEABSOLUTESOUND.COM 3 

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f r o m t h e e d i t o r 

There’s a certain cynicism among a minority of audio-magazine readers 

regarding the integrity of the review process. This view, sometimes 

expressed on Internet forums, goes something like this: because 

reviewers enjoy the use of expensive equipment without paying for it, 

there’s a quid pro quo with the manufacturer that guarantees a favorable 

review. Those holding this belief mention this alleged arrangement casually, as 

though corruption were an automatic and integral aspect of magazine reviewing 

that everyone knows about and tacitly accepts. 

When I come across such comments, I don’t know whether to laugh or be outraged. 

Those holding such views have absolutely no basis for their position except 

an a priori assumption that something untoward must be going on. As someone who 

has written more than 350 product reviews, and presided as editor over the publication 

of another 400 or so, I’d like to share my experience, as well as outline The 

Absolute Sound’s policies regarding equipment loans. 

In my eleven years as a full-time reviewer and four years as Editor (two-and-ahalf 

years at TAS), I have never been approached by a manufacturer offering equipment, 

long-term loans of equipment, or any other compensation for favorable coverage. 

It just doesn’t happen. If such a practice existed, I think I’d be aware of it considering 

the large number of products I’ve reviewed over the past fifteen years. Of 

course, I can’t speak for other reviewers or publications, but this is my experience. 

The cynics may respond that even if there’s no overt quid pro quo, a favorable review 

makes the manufacturer amenable to a long-term loan of the product, and thus influences 

the reviewer. The reality is that I could spend an afternoon on the phone and 

assemble a reference-quality system of components on long-term loan—components 

entirely of my choosing, before a word was written, and with no promise of a favorable 

review. If virtually all products are available on long-term loan, how can there be any 

coercion by a single manufacturer to write a favorable review? 

But are long-term loans ethical? Absolutely. Reviewers need reference-quality 

equipment with which to judge other reference-quality components—equipment 

they could never hope to afford. Moreover, equipment changes and is updated, and 

reviewers need to use the latest gear. Manufacturers see the value in lending equipment 

to reviewers after the review period has ended; not only is the product mentioned 

in subsequent issues, but the reviewer’s use of the product is an endorsement 

far more powerful than the review. Because reviewers can have virtually any products 

they want on a long-term basis, the ones they choose to live with are special 

indeed. Everyone wins: the manufacturer gets the exposure; the reviewer has the best 

tools available; and the reader is alerted to those products so good that the reviewer 

has chosen to live with them. 

There are two prerequisites that make this policy work. First, the magazine’s official 

stated policy must specify a time period from when the reviewer acquires the product 

to when the review appears in print and the product is ready for return to the manufacturer. 

At TAS, that period is six months. Second, when the manufacturer makes the 

inevitable call for the component’s return, the product goes back immediately. 

Products receive favorable reviews in TAS (and The Perfect Vision) for one reason—they 

deliver exceptional performance, value, or both. Anyone who says otherwise 

simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 

Robert Harley 

founder; chairman, editorial advisory board 

Harry Pearson 

editor-in-chief Robert Harley 

editor Wayne Garcia 

associate editor Jonathan Valin 

managing & music editor Bob Gendron 

acquisitions manager Neil Gader 

& associate editor 

copy editor Mark Lehman 

classical music Andrew Quint 

sub-editor 

equipment setup Michael Mercer 

editorial advisory board Sallie Reynolds 

advisor, cutting edge Atul Kanagat 

senior writers 

John W. Cooledge, Anthony H. Cordesman, 

Gary Giddins, Robert E. Greene, J. Gordon Holt, 

Fred Kaplan, Greg Kot, John Nork, Arthur S. Pfeffer, 

Paul Seydor, Kevin Whitehead, Roman Zajcew 

reviewers and contributing writers 

Soren Baker, Shane Buettner, Dan Davis, Frank Doris, 

Roy Gregory, Stephan Harrell, John Higgins, Sue Kraft, 

Mark Lehman, Arthur B. Lintgen, Anna Logg, David 

Morrell, Aric Press, Derk Richardson, Dan Schwartz, 

Gene Seymour, Aaron M. Shatzman, Alan Taffel 

design/production Design Farm, Inc. 

publisher/editor, AVGuide 

Chris Martens 

web producer Jerry Sommers 

Absolute Multimedia, Inc. 

chairman and ceo Thomas B. Martin, Jr. 

vice president/publisher Mark Fisher 

advertising reps Cheryl Smith 

(512) 439-6951 

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copyright© Absolute Multimedia, Inc., Issue 148, June/July 2004.The Absolute Sound 

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4 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ JUNE/JULY 2004

L E T T E R S 

No April Fool 

Editor: 

Presuming the comments on the 

Home Depot extension cord as loudspeaker 

cable were for real (this being 

the April issue), I think I just saved several 

hundred dollars. Think I’ll buy 

some more SACDs. Jon Thomas 

Home Depot Cables, Good! 

Editor: 

Would you be so kind as to convey 

my sincere thanks to Paul Seydor. (He of 

so little faith in cable importance 

[Loudspeaker Cable Survey, Part Two, 

Issue 147].) I have just spent several 

hours listening to the very best sound I 

have ever heard from my system. 

Yesterday—almost on a lark—I 

replaced $600+ worth of AQ Hyperlitz 

Silver speaker cable with $30 worth of 

Home Depot extension cord. The difference, 

in a word, stunning!! 

In fairness—two other minor 

changes were made—the HD cable is a 

full 8-foot true bi-wire with bare wire at 

the speaker terminals. The AQ was 5 

feet (Pierre Sprey [of Mapleshade] says 

that less than 8 feet always sounds 

worse) of internally biwired cable with 

spades at both ends. (I have also heard it 

said that internal bi-wiring mitigates 

much of bi-wiring’s advantages.) 

Whatever the reason—simple syner- 

gy perhaps, I am truly amazed at the 

sound of these cables and they aren’t 

even broken in yet. If the secret gets out 

(I guess it already has), there’ll be a lot of 

upset cable manufacturers. 

As they say: “It’s all about the music,” 

and what I am hearing is a substantial 

improvement in every parameter I can 

think of. 

If it matters: Speakers are Vandersteen 

2Ce Signatures and the amp is a Classé 

CA-100. David R. Kidd 

(Reader from the beginning) 

Home Depot Details 

Editor: 

I read with interest Paul Seydor’s 

comments on Home Depot speaker 

cable in the most recent issue of TAS. I 

was hoping to clarify the identification 

of this cable. The information might be 

of interest to other readers as well. 

In visiting Home Depot I found that 

there was no outdoor extension cord 

that carried its brand name and was told 

that no such brand existed in any store. 

Instead the “house” brand seemed to be 

from a company called Commercial 

Electric. The cable specified: 

“Medium Duty” 

14 AWG 

Suitable for 1875 maximum watts 

Insulated for 300V 

15Amp 

125V 

Designated as “indoor/outdoor” 

Made in the Philippines 

Is this the right cable? Also, can you 

identify specifically (with specs) the 

Black and Decker equivalent mentioned 

in the cable survey? (Are they the same?) 

On another point, how did you prepare 

the cable? This is a three-conductor 

configuration...Did you just cut off one 

of the three? 

Further detail on this would be a 

service to all readers, and personally I 

would greatly appreciate your clarification 

on these points as I’ve already been 

experimenting. 

Thank you for a great magazine and 

your enthusiasm in perpetuating music 

and audio. Chris Vollor 

PS. I tried the stuff at Home Depot and 

find it a bit “loose,” “hazy” in the 

mids/upper mids (possibly accounting 

for the open spaciousness), a little 

“sandy” but with some nice attributes in 

size and depth and overall engagement. 

Sounds “loud” to me compared with the 

AQ GR8 I’ve been using. 

Paul Seydor replies: I’m amazed and 

delighted by both the number and enthusiasm 

of readers’ responses to the inclusion in Neil 

Gader and my cable survey of Home Depot’s 

“speaker cable”—in reality, its heavy-duty 

outdoor extension cords. I wish I could take 

In the Next Issue 

Affordable speaker survey • Entry-level Edge electronics • Rotel’s 1068 integrated amplifier 

Simaudio’s Moon Equinox CD player • Musical Fidelity M1 turntable 

TAS Roundtable: The sound of old media (analog master tape, LP) and new media (SACD and DVD-Audio) debated 

…And an exclusive look at two speakers from fledgling speaker manufacturer Epiphany Audio 


L E T T E R S 

credit for discovering them; but I was first 

alerted to them by Robert E. Greene, who in 

turn heard about them from the designer of 

the one of the most literally accurate reference 

monitors ever made; and recently Tony 

Faulkner used the Black and Decker equivalent 

to drive his Quads at the Heathrow 

audio show in England. 

As I noted in the survey, the model designation, 

HD-14G—i.e., “H(ome) D(epot) 

14-G(auge)—is my own invention, so if you 

inquire about it that way at your local outlet, 

the sales people will be baffled. Instead, go 

directly to the electrical department where the 

outdoor extension cords are sold. You will find 

several alternatives. I selected the 14-gauge cord 

that is bright orange with a black stripe running 

along its length. This is a three-conductor 

cable terminated in a male AC-plug at one end 

and a female AC-plug at the other, and is 

available in several lengths (a 50-foot pair 

will run you about $30, not counting termina- 

tions; I used Pomona bananas, an excellent connector 

available for a couple of dollars at any 

decent electronic-supply house, but spade lugs 

are also fine, as are stripped ends). Many readers 

were apparently confused as to what I did 

with the third conductor. Well, you have three 

options: wire the hot lead with two conductors 

and the ground with the remaining one, wire 

the ground lead with two conductors and the 

hot with the remaining one, or simply leave the 

third conductor unconnected. I chose the last. 

There is, by the way, nothing magical 

about either Home Depot’s cords or the orange 

jacket. The color is dictated by the use for 

which the cords are made: to provide electricity 

to garden tools like powered hedge clippers, 

the brilliant orange easily seen against the 

greens of shrubs and lawns, the better to prevent 

accidentally cutting through a live AC 

cord that might otherwise blend in with the 

background. If you want a different color, at 

the same electrical supply-house that has 

Pomona bananas you’ll find essentially the 

same cords in bulk with black or beige jackets. 

Apparently some clever readers have 

already begun tweaking even this unprepossessing 

product, e.g., buying enough cord to 

use two lengths per channel, one for the hot, 

the other for the ground, all three conductors 

in each length connected. And some other 

readers have twisted the cords together into 

braids. Obviously, sky’s the limit here, 

including buying thicker cords (there’s a 

12-gauge and maybe a 10 as well). (I seem 

to recall Enid Lumley once saying she tried 

welding cables.) It’s certainly refreshing to 

find readers seeking sensible alternatives to 

extravagantly expensive “audiophile” cables. 

Finally, in answer to those who’ve 

inquired if I’ve tried any of these tweaks or 

experimented with other kinds of unconventional 

speaker cable, the answer is a firm no. 

After conducting surveys of interconnects and 

speaker cables—and I believe I can speak for 


Neil Gader here also—I’ve listened to enough 

wire to last a lifetime! Too much music and 

too little time to waste on a problem that 

remains, for me, about as far as you can get 

from a top priority in the first place and one 

that has been effectively solved in the last. 

Roundtable Feedback 

A Middle Ground? 

Editor: 

I enjoyed reading the Tubes vs. 

Transistors Roundtable discussion in 

Issue 147, but I’m left wondering why 

the distinguished panel didn’t mention 

or discuss the option of combining (suitably 

matched) solid-state and tube gear 

in a complementary and synergistic 

manner, in order to possibly enjoy the 

best of both worlds. For example, one 

might choose to combine a very accurate 

and “fast” solid-state preamplifi- 

er (such as the Spectral DMC-15) with 

the warmth and lushness of a wellmatched 

tube amplifier. If you and the 

other distinguished panel members plan 

to hold further discussions on the tubes 

vs. transistors debate, I hope that 

you will address the advantages and disadvantages 

of this “hybrid” approach. 

Kurt Heintzelman 

Roundtable Laughter 

He Who Laughs Last… 

Editor: 

Genuine laughter! Have not 

laughed so much for ages! Electron flow 

indeed! There is undoubtedly a significant 

difference between tube and transistor 

amplifiers by and large. Those of 

us brought up in the thirties and forties 

will recognize the even harmonic distortion 

which valves tend to produce. That 

L E T T E R S 

plus the transistor amplifiers’ undoubted 

ability to produce nasties such as 

intermodulation distortion and there 

you are. (Even, as distinct from odd, harmonics 

can sound rather pleasant.) As 

someone who has done his bit for amplifier 

design (current dumping etc.) I can 

assure you that mystery does not come 

into it, but non-linearity certainly does. 

A. Sandman (Dr.) 

M.Phil., PhD., M.I.E.E. 

See the following letter.—RH 

Laughs Best 

Editor: 

Interesting piece, this Tubes vs. 

Solid-State. I would like to comment 

briefly on an interesting issue raised by 

Paul Seydor, being the so-called “digital” 

nature of our hearing: 

We can absolutely not compare our 

WWW.THEABSOLUTESOUND.COM 9

L E T T E R S 

hearing with any “digital” system for 

one all-overruling reason, which is the 

fact that “any” digital system is locked 

by a steady clock frequency, resulting 

effectively in a steady “refresh” of the 

presented information, independent of 

frequency; whereas the hearing uses NO 

clock and every “nerve” action is totally 

individual, therefore we have many, 

many random moments of reception, 

and at one given moment in time our 

hearing system is receiving and processing 

multiple stimuli. This makes our 

hearing essentially “continuous.” 

Secondly, briefly regarding even/ 

odd/lower/higher order harmonics: 

Omitted in this first discussion is the fact 

that most distortions of solid-state gear 

are lower than those of tube gear by a factor 

of 100 or more. This difference must 

be incorporated in the reasoning of the 

influence of distortions on our perception 

of musical information. Otherwise it will 

be a hollow argument. 

I myself would argue that two other 

phenomena play the dominant role in the 

differences between tubes and solid-state: 

One is the fact that electrons (and 

holes) travel 10 times faster in a vacuum 

than in doped silicon, and it takes 

another order of magnitude of time for 

the electrons to get moving in the first 

place (avalanche effect; at least in bipolar 

transistors, FETs are faster), which 

adds up to a difference in propagation 

delay of 100. Tube amps therefore have 

100 times (not really because of the 

transformers but for the sake of the 

argument) higher transition speed and 

hence a 100 times lower negative influence 

of the always-too-late negative 

feedback. In my view this is the single 

most dominant factor of detail-masking 

in solid-state amplifiers. Feedback that 

is too late is in fact truncating low-level 

information instead of reducing 

“dynamic” distortion products. In tube 

amps this feedback is thus 100 times 

more effective, dynamically. So in fact 

to reach “solid-state levels” of negative 

“NFB artifacts,” you can apply 100 

times more feedback in a tube amplifier. 

When you do that I bet that they 

don’t sound very different from each 

other anymore. 

Secondly I would say that the output 

impedance in conjunction with NFB 

also plays a major role here: tube amps 

with damping factors of 8...80 do not do 

a good job in eliminating ringing of the 

moving mass (cone, motor, air) in loudspeaker 

systems. 

This is bad and good. Dynamic 

loudspeakers have their most problematic 

nonlinearities just around the center 

position of the movement, i.e., in its 

physical crossover region. 

When a low/mid unit is still moving 

somewhat after a bass burst, then lowlevel 

information is more present because 

it “rides” on the “ringing” of the loudspeaker. 

So it is more audible, although 

maybe a little bit distorted because of 

mild IM—or Doppler effects, as it is not 

“swallowed” by the problematic lowlevel 

linearity of a cone unit. (This is why 

E’stats and M’stats are far more revealing.) 

However low-level detail also suffers 

from the same mechanism because of 

masking, when the cone is still recovering 

from the bass pulse. But since the 

concerned frequencies differ from each 

other this will be a mild effect. 

Hope this adds a little bit to the discussion, 

which I find in fact an essential 

one. You are literally raising fundamental 

questions. This can only be done 

properly in TAS. 

Marcel Croese, Creato Audio 

Hidden Factor in Tubed Sound? 

Editor: 

Your TAS Roundtable on “Tubes vs. 

Solid-State” [Issue 147] was fascinating 

and insightful. Several of the roundtable 

members commented on the significant 

differences in midrange reproduction 

between solid-state and tubes. While the 

members explored many facets of this 

timeless question, one was overlooked. I 

believe the quality of low- and high-frequency 

reproduction has a profound effect 

on our perception of midrange accuracy. I 

submit that the midrange will sound different 

in systems with identical midrange 


L E T T E R S 

reproduction but differing low- and 

high-frequency reproduction capabilities. 

Broadly and generally speaking, the 

best solid-state electronics are perhaps 

more linear in their reproduction of the 

full frequency spectrum than are the finest 

tube electronics. I believe this affects the 

way we perceive the midrange reproduction 

of the two. Solid-state electronics that 

assault the state of the art offer massive 

midrange detail (including superb lowlevel 

detail), liquidity, and “continuousness,” 

along with deep, solid bass and natural 

highs. I have spent countless evenings 

in concert halls enjoying unamplified 

symphonic music, and to me the best 

solid-state electronics offer a more realistic 

picture of the live event—top to bottom—than 

tubes. Don’t misunderstand; I 

too can be seduced by the lovely bloom 

and “roundedness” of tubes. But to my 

ears, the best solid-state sounds more like 

the real thing. 

Speaking of the real thing, I am 

amused at some equipment reviews comparing 

the way a pop singer sounds with 

different equipment. Unless the reviewer 

has heard the real thing—unamplified— 

how can the reviewer make claims that 

one sounds better than the other? There 

is after all an absolute reference—the real 

thing. Unfortunately, in the pop world 

the “real thing” consists of live performers 

reproduced through bad microphones, 

amplifiers, and speakers. Hardly 

an absolute reference. And too often, we 

ignore the impact of the microphone and 

other recording equipment in capturing 

the real thing. Do tubes ameliorate nasties 

in the recording chain that solidstate 

mercilessly unmasks? Who knows? 

Anyway, your roundtable discussion was 

illuminating and provocative. I look forward 

to more such discussions from your 

staff of golden ears. Ken McCarty 

Mark Levinson Speaks Up 

Editor: 

I want to thank you for the recent 

numerous and kind mentions of my 

work during the last 30 years, both for 

equipment and recording, that appeared 

in your magazine. I’m gratified that HP 

chose the JC-2 for inclusion in his Top 

Ten [Issue 145]. In particular, I enjoyed 

Jon Valin’s words of praise of the Red 

Rose Music series of SACDs. 

There are a few factual errors in HP’s 

Top Ten story that need correction. 

On page 168, HP states that “Mark 

Levinson, the man, bankrupted the company 

that later became Madrigal.” This 

is simply not true, and the facts are 

available to anyone who gets the documents, 

which are on the public record in 

Federal Court files. 

The purchasers of Mark Levinson 

Audio Systems (MLAS) forced me out of 

the company and ran it for five years 

with full financial control. They had 

originally valued the company at $1.8 

million. They then stopped paying the 

bank debt, for which I was personally 

liable, forcing the bank to come after me 

for the money. They also stopped paying 

the vendors, who eventually forced 

MLAS to file for bankruptcy in the 

hopes of getting paid something. The 

original purchasers eventually bought 

the assets of MLAS for around $110k 

and moved those assets to a new company 

called Madrigal. I had been kept out 

of the picture during the five years 

before the bankruptcy and knew nothing 

about these activities. There are documents 

on file in Federal Court records 

which prove that the purchasers planned 

this bankruptcy a year in advance to 

eliminate my 43% of the stock. The 

purchasers subsequently sold Madrigal 

to Harman. I have had no involvement 

with Madrigal or Harman. 

The point is that the purchasers, far 

from being saviors, acquired a company 

of worth, planned a bankruptcy a year in 

advance, and forced it through bankruptcy 

to eliminate my stock. 

HP says that Cello was “essentially 

an upscale high-end boutique for the 


L E T T E R S 

rich and famous.” In fact, Cello’s customers 

included many people who were 

neither rich nor famous, a good number 

of whom had purchased what HP recommended 

and were not satisfied. Many of 

these people still have their Cello systems, 

enjoying them almost twenty 

years later, with no service required. 

The bankruptcy of Cello is a truly sad 

tale. In an apparent gesture of support, 

one of our customers acquired a controlling 

interest in 1997 and, in a totally 

shocking move, decided to stop manufacturing 

products. He closed the factory, 

putting 20-year veterans in the street, 

and reoriented Cello as a custom-installation 

company selling conventional products 

through ultra-costly installers. The 

only reason the Cello factory closed was 

that a very wealthy man chose to discard 

it. I should have made a better deal that 

allowed me to protect the company. 

It is true that I allowed men with 

hidden agendas to come into MLAS and 

Cello without adequate protection for 

the companies and myself. It is important 

to recognize that it was my former 

partners who forced MLAS through 

bankruptcy, took my name for nothing, 

and have tried all these years to blame 

the troubles on me. These are facts, not 

opinions. Mark Levinson 

Taking Issue with Garcia on 

Stones 

Editor: 

I am a longtime reader and subscriber 

to The Absolute Sound. I have also 

been a mastering engineer for over 22 

years (www.Dongrossinger.com). I respectfully 

disagree with Wayne Garcia’s review 

of the recent releases of the early Rolling 

Stones on vinyl [Issue 146]. 

I am the mastering/cutting engineer 

who cut most of the releases in question. 

The cutting of this project was clearly a 

labor of love for ABKCO, which actually 

went to three other mastering studios to 

attempt the project’s completion (without 

success) before coming to me, on Bob 

Ludwig’s recommendation, to finally get 

the job done to everyone’s satisfaction 

(please excuse the pun). ABKCO went the 

extra mile: Jody Klein went past release 

date after release date and I would guess 

over budget as well to get the best results. 

There were extensive comparative 

listening sessions done at Europadisk 

Mastering, at ABKCO, and at other 

facilities in New York City to determine 

the new album’s “trueness to the original” 

under the most stringent conditions. 

I worked closely with Teri Landi, 

ABKCO’s chief archivist, who located all 

of the original masters used in the SACD 

and vinyl project. I believe she is, 

because of her painstaking research, the 

most qualified person for an authoritative 

comparison between sources. 

Additionally, a complete set of vinyl test 

pressings was sent for evaluation to Bob 

Ludwig at his mastering facility in 

Maine and were approved by him as 

well. As a fanatical Stones fan myself, I 

would not have let the project come to 

completion without feeling that the 

work was done right. 

It is indeed curious that the album 

mentioned by Mr. Garcia as having “a 

grainy edge” which he attributes to the 

D.M.M. process, Let It Bleed, was not cut 

on the D.M.M. lathe, but rather to lacquer 

at another studio. This would have 

been easily determined if he chose to do 

his research because each of the albums I 

cut using the Direct Metal Mastering 

process was clearly marked as such in the 

lead-out groove of the album. I 

cynically suspect (with no proof) that 

Mr. Garcia read the press release that 

stated “D.M.M. cutting” and automatically 

damned the entire set of albums 

with a preconceived idea of their sound. 

It has also been my experience in over 22 

years of cutting for vinyl on all sorts of 

lathe setups, that D.M.M. is uniquely 

suited for a transfer of this vibrant, yet 

archival, material to the vinyl medium 

because of its accuracy. 

The albums were indeed cut from 

the SACD masters using a custom, stateof-the-art 

Ed Meitner DSD digital-toanalog 

converter and a purist, analog 

Neumann cutting chain to retain all of 

the qualities of the recent remastering. 

The entire setup was assembled exclusively 

for this project. The remastering 

process as done by Bob Ludwig was 

extremely involved and the noise reduc- 


tion, editing, and equalization used precluded 

the use of the raw original reelto-reel 

masters. The final results of the 

SACD mastering far exceeded any mastering 

job that anyone could have done 

using a single pass of almost 40-year-old 

tape. There was no shortcut involved in 

the choice to use the SACD masters, just 

a desire to get the best quality master for 

the transfer. 

It may be too late at this point for a 

reevaluation by someone on your staff 

who will give a full, unbiased, and 

exhaustive listening to my work (and 

the hard work of all the folks involved in 

the project), but I believe the results 

speak for themselves. I heartily recommend 

the Stones vinyl releases to all fans 

and vinyl aficionados alike, with pride. 

Don Grossinger 

Chief Mastering Engineer 

Europadisk, LLC 

Wayne Garcia comments: Not being a 

cynic myself, I have no reason to doubt Mr. 

Grossinger’s detailed account of the care that 

went into these LP releases. As to whether the 

relatively hollow, edgy, rhythmically static 

sound I heard from these records was the 

result of D.M.M. mastering or not (and contrary 

to Mr. Grossinger’s self-admittedly 

cynical suspicion, I did not approach these 

sides with “a preconceived idea of their 

sound”), from the DSD masters or not, or for 

any other reason is not strictly the point. I 

was speculating as to why they might sound 

the way they do, not making concrete pronouncements. 

I reported what I heard and 

stand by my opinion. 

HP’s Vinyl Super Disc List 

Editor: 

I have been a loyal reader and supporter 

of The Absolute Sound since the mid- 

’70s—when I was poor, but proud—and 

later as a subscriber for many years, still 

proud, but not quite as poor (almost). 

I started to collect vinyl in the mid- 

’60s, buying retail. Really got hooked 

on finding the gems based on HP’s 

Super Disc List in the ’80s—used record 

stores, thrift stores, garage sales. I also 

devised a home-made record-cleaning 

machine based on the concepts of sever- 

al of the machines on the market. 

I have been lucky to find a large 

number of the items on the Super Disc 

List. There have been a few titles I disagreed 

with (perhaps the wrong pressings), 

but, all in all, the list has been a 

great resource. 

Please forgive the background. My 

question: It has been several years since 

L E T T E R S 

The Absolute Sound has published a 

vinyl Super Disc List. Is one in the 

works? If not, please consider this as a 

humble request to develop and publish 

an update to the vinyl list. Clay Ancell 

An excellent suggestion, Mr. Ancell. HP 

is working on a new list for an upcoming 

issue. —RH 


I N D U S T R Y N E W S 

The Present and 

Future of Hi-Rez Audio 

More than four years after the launch of SACD and 

DVD-A, it’s still impossible to predict the future of 

either format. But over the course of the last few 

months, several new developments shed light on 

the prospects for each. 

As I reported in Issue 146, Sony Music spent upwards of 

$30 million to promote SACD via a campaign involving 

Rolling Stone, Clear Channel radio, and Circuit City. Launched 

in late November 2003, the blitz came on the heels of 

Columbia/Legacy’s Bob Dylan Revisited hybrid SACD series. 

Yet one wonders if it had the intended impact. 

Lately, SACD happenings from Sony haven’t been. Aside 

from a handful of titles, including two James Taylor reissues 

(review, TAS 147), the SACD scene at Sony has been quiet. To 

entice other labels, Sony paid willing participants to release 

titles on SACD and footed the advertising bills. It’s also 

rumored that Sony paid EMI/Capitol $1 million to release 

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon on SACD. (Capitol hasn’t 

produced an SACD since then.) 

At this juncture, Harmonia Mundi and Telarc remain 

SACD’s most active players. If their monthly releases were 

taken out of the equation, new SACDs would be few and far 

between. And since those labels specialize in classical, they 

aren’t turning out titles that sell in massive quantities, 

although their aggressiveness has possibly made SACD the 

classical format of choice for the future. Jazz and pop are a different 

story. 

Recent hybrid stereo SACDs from Songlines and Fantasy 

(reviews, TAS 146 and 147) were the first new jazz releases in 

some time; indeed, save for a scattering of Telarc discs, multichannel 

jazz remains a largely untapped field. Most revealingly, 

Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 6 (review, this issue) is not 

being released on hybrid SACD, reversing the promise that 

Sony made last August when it included a hybrid sampler in 

its soundtrack to Masked and Anonymous. 

News on the DVD-A front appears to be better. Recently, 

companies invested in the technology formed the DVD-A 

Council to organize and market its strengths. Only 700 

DVD-As are currently available, but several notable albums 

are slated for late spring and early summer release. Warner 

Brothers is supplying most of the product, including older 

selections from R.E.M. and Frank Sinatra. As reported in TAS 

147, Silverline secured the rights to the Omega Classics catalog. 

Upcoming DVD-As from BMG, J, and Arista offer 

hope that more contemporary pop and R&B will finally 

become available, and recent releases suggest that the muchballyhooed 

bonus features (video extras, onscreen lyrics) are 

slowly becoming a reality, albeit at the expense of production 

delays. But the accurate barometer of both formats may be 

what is happening at Universal. By releasing DVD-A titles it 

has already issued on SACD, the media giant is practicing a 

let-the-marketplace-decide strategy. While no victor has 

been declared, Universal just switched its SACD advertising 

over to DVD-A. 

In spite of this, both new formats are light-years away 

from emerging from their niche positions. Most mainstream 

reviews of the Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, and The Who 

SACDs didn’t mention a word about high-rez formats or surround 

sound. Radio could care less. Overall sales—save for the 

Stones, Dylan, and Floyd SACD hybrids—are infinitesimal 

when compared to conventional CDs. Add to this the recent 

cutbacks at Warner Brothers—which resulted in the laying off 

of the publicist in charge of DVD-A titles—and the company’s 

interest in DVD-A could entirely disappear with one fell 

swipe of new owner Edgar Brofman, Jr.’s red pen. 

Making titles available on SACD or DVD-A months after 

their CD/LP release (and after thousands of copies have already 

been sold) is yet another disincentive to most music buyers. 

Even on the rare occasions where both formats hit stores on the 

same day, as was the case with DVD-As of Fleetwood Mac’s Say 

You Will and R.E.M.’s In Time, advertisements didn’t mention 

the DVD-As or even reprint the DVD-A logo. Hybrid SACDs 

that eliminate the need for separate discs seem to be an obvious 

solution, but it has gone unrealized by Sony. Even with 

Sony’s new Indiana production line, only one Sony title— 

James Carter’s Gardenias for Lady Day—has been released in 

this fashion. Questions surrounding mass-production capabilities, 

necessary for any major new release, remain a concern. 

So does the inability to copy new-format discs to portable 

devices like Apple’s iPod. In this age of Internet piracy, labels 

view as advantageous most kinds of download-proof software. 

But to most listeners under the age of 35 who listen to music 

on the go, it’s an unacceptable deterrent. To this extent, more 

contemporary titles are needed and more labels need to be persuaded 

to get involved. Aimed at indie-rock audiences that 

place a premium on sound quality, Matador’s day-in-date 

hybrid SACD issue of Mission of Burma’s high-profile OnOffOn 

(review, this issue) is a start, as was Barsuk’s release of DCfC’s 

critically acclaimed Transatlanticism (review, TAS 146). 

There’s also another “new” format already here, called One 

Disc. Debuting on Kathleen Edwards’ Live From the Bowery 

Ballroom EP, released in December by Rounder Records, the 

technology affords programming on both sides of a single disc, 

offering audio on one and DVD-Video on another. Credible 

sources hint that DVD-Audio is considering a switch-over to 

this technology, though problems with the disc’s thickness (it 

won’t play in car CD players) and the likelihood one side is 

going to become scratched need to be addressed. However, one 

thing is clear: Consumers have positively responded to incentive-based 

releases packaged with bonus CDs and DVDs, like 

Neil Young’s Greendale and Metallica’s St. Anger. Following the 

formula that’s made DVD-Video into a phenomenon, more 

record labels are expected to follow suit. 


As we have since their inception, 

we’ll continue to review new-format software 

releases in the Music section, and 

provide you with our list of the best titles. 

Because both have tremendous potential, 

it would be a shame to see either format 

coast on life support or be relegated to 

novelty items. But if significant progress 

is to occur, conditions need to improve, 

and soon. BOB GENDRON 

Nuts About Hi-Fi 

Hosts Harley 

Book Signing, 

Manufacturer 

Seminars 

Nuts About Hi-Fi in Silverdale, 

Washington, will host a book 

signing and series of manufacturer 

seminars on Saturday, June 

5. Robert Harley of The Absolute Sound 

and The Perfect Vision will be signing 

copies of the just-published Third 

Edition of The Complete Guide to High-End 

Audio as well as Home Theater for Everyone. 

Representatives from Krell, Dali, 

Wilson Audio, NAD, PSB, and 

Marantz will be on hand to demonstrate 

equipment and answer questions. 

Robert Harley will sign books at 3pm 

and 6pm, and will be available 

throughout the day to answer questions. 

The event begins at 2pm, and 

refreshments and snacks will be served. 

Music for the event will be provided by 

the new Wilson X-2 Alexandria loudspeakers 

driven by Krell Master 

Reference amplifiers. 

Nuts About Hi-Fi, 10100 Silverdale 

Way, Silverdale, WA 98383. Phone: 

(360) 698-1348, (800) 201-hifi (toll-free 

in WA only). www.nutsabouthifi.com. 

E-mail: bbenson@silverlink.com. 

Quad Book 

Written and compiled by Ken 

Kessler of Hi-Fi News, 

Quad—The Closest Approach 

[ISBN 0 954 57420 6] is 

both pleasurable reading and a valuable 

addition to the historical literature of 

audio. (The title refers to Quad’s advertising 

slogan, “The closest approach to 

the original sound.”) In addition to 

Kessler’s own thoughts, it contains 

interviews with Quad’s late founder, 

Peter Walker, his son Ross, and other 

people who were associated with Quad. 

The book also contains facsimile reproductions 

of Peter Walker’s fundamental 

papers on amplifier and speaker design, 

nostalgic reprints of old Quad advertisements, 

photos of ceremonies honoring 

Quad, and so on. This miscellany is 

nicely organized and unified by 

Kessler’s prose and presentation, and 

the whole book is a most attractive 

visual package as well as being fascinating 

reading. No book contains 

everything, but I would have liked to 

see reprinted some of the detailed technical 

reviews of Quad speakers by 

Trevor Atwell (on the ESL 63), 

Richard Heyser’s slightly jaundiced 

but also interesting viewpoint, and 

perhaps Martin Colloms on the original 

Quad ESL, revisited just a few years 

ago. The book does contain some references, 

but again it would have been 

good to have something along the lines 

of a complete bibliography, although 

admittedly that would have been a 

considerable labor to prepare. Still, the 

book is so charming, interesting, and 

informative that to ask for more is no 

doubt a little greedy. For those of us 

who have either owned or dreamed of 

owning Quad equipment—as I 

dreamed of it long before I could afford 

it—reading this book is all but hypnotic. 

And while the $80 price would 

be a bit high were it an ordinary book, 

it is so elegantly printed and presented 

(with the dimensions of an LP record 

cover, but a lot thicker than an LP) 

that it is in the “coffee table book” category. 

The history of audio is all too 

often preserved only in magazine articles, 

inaccessible to all but the most 

determined library sleuths. It is a 

pleasure to see Peter Walker’s great 

contributions to audio and his company’s 

remarkable products memorialized 

in book form, and one hopes the 

prospect of the book brightened his 

last days. ROBERT E. GREENE 


on the Horizon 

futureTASProducts NEIL GADER 

Mo’ Fi From MoFi 

originally designed for use in Mobile 

Fidelity Sound Lab’s mastering facilities, 

the OML-1 compact monitor and 

the OML-2 tower will be equally 

at home in your living room. 

Utilizing proprietary custommade 

drivers, crossovers, cabinets, 

and hardware, the OML series is 

said to exhibit superior dispersion 

characteristics and overall sonics 

at an affordable price. The compact 

12.5" high OML-1 uses a 

1.25" silk-dome tweeter and a 

6.5" mica-Kevlar-impregnated 

paper cone. The OML-2 adds a 

second mid/bass driver in a 2.5way 

configuration. Both speakers 

have a nominal impedance of 6 

ohms. Sensitivity for the bookshelf 

is 88dB, for the 38" tower, 84dB. 

Price: OML-1, $999; OML-2, 

$1999 

www.mobilefidelitysoundlabs.com 

New Balance for the Un-Shure 

the REK-O-KUT Stylus Force Gauge from Esoteric 

Sound should be a great alternative to the trusty Shure. 

Made of sturdy plastic it comes with a set of weights for 

0.25 to 5.75 gram measurement. Operation is simple and 

relies on the principle of a basic laboratory balance. Easy to 

upgrade to even greater force measurements. 

Price: $24 

www.esotericsound.com 

Two Loaded Revolvers 

revolver Loudspeakers of England has set its sights on affordable 

performance with stereo and multichannel speaker offerings. 

Designed by Michael Jewitt, formerly chief designer for 

Mordaunt-Short, Epos, and Heybrook, the compact R33 is fitted 

with a 1" aluminum-dome tweeter and a 6.5" woven-fiberglass 

mid/bass. The 36.5" floorstanding R45 adds another pair of 6.5" 

woofers to extend low frequencies down to 38Hz. Both speakers 

are rated 90dB-sensitive, with impedances of 8 ohms, and can be 

driven with as little as 6 watts (SET lovers take note!), or up to 

100–200 watts of solid-state. The Revolvers are magnetically 

shielded for use in both two-channel and home-theater applications. 

Available in pearlized maple and fabric with wood veneers. 

Price: R33, $995/pr; R45, $1795/pair; R25 center channel, $695 

www.ossaudio.com 


Bottom Feeder 

focal-JMlab’s Sub Utopia Be means serious subwoofing. 

The Be sports a 16" sandwich cone driver 

with a 3" Kapton voice coil (the magnet array alone 

weighs in at 17.6 lbs.). The massive enclosure has 

panel thicknesses of up to 2.5". Add a 1000W 

switching amplifier and the sub’s fighting weight is a 

pumped-up 121 pounds. The Sub Utopia Be is capable 

of delivering a true 20Hz at nearly 120dB of 

sound pressure in test conditions. In average realworld 

listening rooms, it goes even deeper, down to 

16Hz at 128dBSPL. The port’s unique profile is said to reduce distortion 

and noise artifacts by a factor of 10. Connectivity matches the exemplary fit and finish, 

with RCA, XLR stereo, and LFE inputs. 

Price: $6000 

www.audioplusservices.com 

What’s in a Nait? 

england’s Naim Audio has been building 

various editions of its Naim integrated amplifier 

for over 20 years. The Nait 5 ($1550) was 

highly recommended in these pages by both Editor 

Wayne Garcia and Editor-in-Chief Robert Harley for its natural 

tonal balance, outstanding dynamics, engaging musicality, and terrific 

value. That said the Nait was slightly fussy, requiring the use of non-standard 

(in the US) DIN interconnects and Naim’s own speaker cables. With the new Nait 5i, 

Naim has taken all the good stuff about the Nait, upped the power from roughly 30 to 

50Wpc, lowered the price by a few hundred, and made the unit far more versatile with the addition 

of RCA jacks as well as versatility with any speaker cable. Expect a review in the near future. 

Price: $1350 

www.naimusa.com 

Defying Gravity And Drag 

the Ganymede V.C.S. (Vibration Control System) is not a typical set 

of aluminum footers. Rather, the unique system consists of a round steel 

bearing sandwiched between a top and bottom puck. When placed 

beneath a CD player or amplifier it allows lateral movement even as it 

mass loads the component. Ganymede claims the V.C.S. provides isolation 

from transient vibrations while reducing the pernicious drag that 

cables create. When the VCS is properly set up, gear appears to float on 

it when lightly touched. The latest version now features an elevation on 

the outside of the top and bottom pucks allowing for more intimate 

contact between component and shelf/surface. 

Price: $299 (set of three) 


S T A R T M E U P 

Meeting High-End Expectations on a Modest Budget 

Jerry Sommers 

Acrucial and exciting part of 

choosing gear is the search for 

synergy among components 

within your allotted budget. I 

recently had the chance to audition a 

system that included the Philips 

DVD963SA DVD/SACD player, a 

Portal Panache integrated amplifier, and 

Definitive Technology’s BP7004 loudspeakers. 

The system met all of my 

expectations and then some, giving me 

everything from deep satisfying bass to a 

tonally accurate rendering of midrange 

and treble instruments, complete with 

the spine-tingling sound of air and space 

around those instruments. In short, this 

system put the fun back in listening— 

and at a reasonable price. The system’s 

components had an uncanny complementary 

quality—each element playing 

off the strengths of the others. 

The Philips DVD963SA offers 

almost everything I would ever want in 

a digital player, including progressive- 

scan DVD playback, multichannel 

SACD playback, 96kHz and 192kHz 

CD upsampling, MP3 decoding, and 

CDR/RW playback. I first read about 

this post-modernistic-looking player in 

Wayne Garcia’s short review in the 

SACD, DVD-A, and Universal Players 

Special Feature in TAS 145. There, 

Wayne characterized the 963SA as 

“warm and sloppy,” but he tempered his 

comments with the observation that his 

interconnect cables cost more than the 

entire DVD963SA. My findings were 

considerably more positive, as I was 

using this player in a much more moderately 

priced system. 

The most notable, exciting, and useful 

feature in the DVD963SA is its 

upsampling circuitry. Audio CDs can be 

upsampled to either 96kHz or 192kHz, 

and I found the fun factor went up a 

notch as I heard subtle nuances that 

brought new life to my huge catalog of 

CDs. “The 3 rd Planet” from Modest 

Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica [Sony], 

starts with a lightly plucked acoustic 

guitar that quickly shifts to full-on 

acoustic rage—a transition the Philips 

accomplished with ease, without sacrificing 

momentum or focus. As the 

rhythms became more complex, instruments 

didn’t bleed into one another; 

instead, I was able to discern each easily, 

without losing track of the rhythm of 

the piece. The acoustic guitars in the 

song’s introduction sounded full-bodied 

yet retained such subtle nuances as the 

pick scrapes and finger screeches you 

often hear when moving your hand from 

different neck positions on the guitar. 

These brilliantly reproduced details gave 

the illusion of musicians playing in a 

real space, and made the system so transparent 

it seemed to disappear. 

If you want to step up to a higher 

level of full-bodiedness and resolution, 

SACD on the 963SA certainly delivers. 

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon 

[Capitol] in stereo SACD was 

more three dimensional and 

revealing than its CD layer. On 

“Breathe,” the bass drums and 

cymbals sounded more robust; 

electric guitar, bass guitar, and 

synths were more open. If 

you’ve been wanting to get 

into SACD, the DVD963SA 

will make your transition to 

the new format quite satisfying. 

Indeed, with CD upsampling, 

SACD playback, popular 

format playability, and a 

progressive-scan DVD player, 

the DVD963SA has even more 

of what I want in a player than 

some respected high-end players 

I’ve auditioned in the past. 

The Portal Panache is a 


thirty-two-pound heavyweight integrated 

amplifier from Portal Audio. Its 

chunky heatsinks and simple but rugged 

build-quality give an accurate indication 

of the solid sound this little behemoth 

produces. The Panache has been around 

for about two years and is sold exclusively 

via Portal’s Web site (www.portalaudio.com) 

for $1795—not bad for a 100 

watt/channel amplifier whose guarantee 

includes a sixty-day return policy. As 

Henry Ford used to say about his Model 

A, you can have the Panache in any color 

you’d like as long as it’s black. The front 

of the unit is rather simple, providing 

only an input selector switch, a balance 

knob, a volume knob, and a headphone 

socket. The rear of the unit has a stereo 

pair of five-way binding posts, four pairs 

of analog inputs, and a pair of analog 

recording outputs. 

Finding an amplifier able to play 

loud was very important to me, and the 

Panache delivered the goods without 

breaking a sweat. To show why volume 

really matters, let me tell you about an 

extremely catchy song that has been 

buzzing through my cranium for some 

time now—and really needs to be played 

loudly. Yes folks, I’m talking about “I 


Believe in a Thing Called Love” from 

Permission to Land [Atlantic] by The 

Darkness. This song is full of crunchy 

guitars and 1980s hair-band kitsch. The 

beginning of the song starts with the 

main riff, full of distortion, played at 

very low level for two bars; then in the 

third bar, a bass, kick, and snare drum 

snap into action with such head-rockin’ 

loudness and good soundstaging that I 

felt like I was sitting in front of a 12-foot 

stack of Marshall amps (although when I 

checked, the volume of the Panache was 

only set at 25%). Powered by the 

Panache, the rhythm and pacing—that 

is, transients and dynamics—of the 

music sounded spectacular, progressing 

from the quietest to the loudest passages 

without losing detail. I wanted an amp 

that didn’t lose clarity, resolution, or 

dynamic impact at any volume level, and 

I found what I wanted in the Panache. 

Simple is as simple gets, and from 

this no-frills amp I mostly got just what 

I wanted. What might have made it 

even more enjoyable, however, would 

have been a remote. I hope I’m not being 

too picky here, but I do appreciate being 

able to select inputs as well as adjust volume 

levels from my couch (these are 

basic control functions many audiophiles 

want to have when auditioning 

music). While not fancy, the amplifier 

that pleases me has to deliver all the 

essentials right, and this the Portal does 

magnificently. 

Completing my system was a pair of 

$1598 Definitive Technology BP7004 

loudspeakers, smaller versions of the 

BP7002 SuperTowers (note, though, 

that they are “smaller” relative to the 

very big sound and value that all members 

of the SuperTower speaker family 

seem to offer). The BP7004 features 

bipolar driver arrays (with identical sets 

of forward- and rear-facing drivers) 

incorporating two 5" bass/midrange 

drivers with cast-basket frames and two 

1" aluminum-dome tweeters. The bass 

section of the speaker provides a built-in 

powered subwoofer that consists of a 10" 

driver and two 10" pressure-driven 

“infrasonic” passive radiators, powered 

by a 300-watt internal amplifier. 

Whatever I chose to throw at these 

speakers, I was always able to hear something 

good that I hadn’t heard before— 

especially in the bottom octaves. Can 

you say FUN? Couple the Def Techs 

with the high-resolution Philips player 

and the potent Portal Panache, which is 

more than able to push the speakers 

with oomph and clarity, and you’ve got 

a perfect three-way combo. 

The tonal balance of the BP7004s 

was very impressive. Because the 


BP7004s are bipolar loudspeakers, 

music emanates from both the front and 

back, resulting, IMO, in a much more 

realistic image. On Michael Jackson’s 

Thriller [Sony], the “Billie Jean” track 

starts with a simple kick and snare and 

evolves into the complex tapestry of an 

eight-note bass line accompanied by a 

funky guitar lick—a simple yet effective 

passage that the Definitives cleanly execute. 

The guitar had a clean tone that 

sounded very realistic, the kick and 

snare both sounded accurate, and 

Michael’s voice was extraordinarily clear 

and transparent—so much so, in fact, 

that I could hear his inhalations between 

each line, something I had never noticed 

in previous listening sessions. 

So much of rock and hip-hop can be 

drowned out by speakers with a sloppy 

low-end—speakers that sacrifice accurate 

mids and highs to achieve the thun- 

derous low “drone” you hear from many 

car stereo systems. These poorly 

designed speakers are designed around a 

couple of music styles only, so if you try 

to play something outside the standard 

hip-hop repertoire, you’ll hear the same 

bass-heavy EQ curve etched onto your 

music. Although I once was an example 

of a bass-driven enthusiast, I have since 

discovered there is much more going on 

in the high frequencies and midrange 

than I first realized. 

For me, the initial discovery came 

through Red Rose Music’s Spirit loudspeaker—a 

speaker I really dig for its 

clean, upfront presentation, vivid soundstage 

and imaging, and extremely transparent 

mids and highs. But as I looked 

back, the Spirit’s upfront presentation 

was sometimes too aggressive, creating 

an imbalance in the sound and becoming 

fatiguing in the long run. The BP 

7004 is much different, successfully 

delivering warm mids and highs, and 

always managing to sound engaging 

(and certainly not fatiguing). On 

Lovage’s Music to Make Love to Your Old 

Lady By [Tommy Boy], the “Anger 

Management” track sent shivers down 

my spine with its mix of jazz and 

lounge-bar theatrics rolled up into a 

hip-hop tortilla. The beat supplied by 

Kid Koala is a simple, jazzy kick/snare 

combination brought to life by the 

BP7004’s not overly bright, yet always 

warm and airy midrange. In the song’s 

main chorus, this beat is coupled with 

the sound of Mike Patton and Jennifer 

Charles’ duet, and the top octaves of 

their voices are absolutely stunningly 

revealed by the tweeter. Mike’s voice 

(often called an instrument in itself), is 

complemented by Charles’ upper range, 

creating a third, more complex voicing 


that is simply phenomenal. 

I’m sometimes disappointed to find 

a really good loudspeaker that performs 

in the mid- and high-frequency departments, 

yet doesn’t have balls in the bass. 

The BP7004s combine a fantastic middle 

and high section with a built-in subwoofer, 

so there’s no need to even think 

about spending more money on a sub. 

The BP 7004s have tonally accurate bass 

that’s bound to shake yer rump—low 

end that will cause your neighbors to 

either envy you or want to puncture 

your speaker cones with a screwdriver. 

Chuck D. from Public Enemy said it 

best, “Bass! How low can you go!” Well, 

Mr. D, these speakers are “the bomb!” I 

appreciated being able to adjust the subwoofer 

level to tune the speaker’s bass 

output to fit the requirements of whatever 

song I wanted to hear. What fun! 

The “Murderers” cut from John 

Frusciante’s To Record Only Water for Ten 

Days [Warner Brothers] shows you just 

how much fun you can have with an 

adjustable subwoofer level control. The 

song starts off with a programmed beat 

that quickly leads to the opening riff. 

You can listen to this song five times in 

a row and each time hear something different; 

when you push the subwoofer to 

go lower and louder, the beat gets more 

interesting each time, yet it never distracts 

you from the amazing textural 

tapestry that Frusciante’s weaves with 

each electric guitar note. Tonally accurate 

bass is always available to you, but I 

often found it cooler to fatten up the 

lower end at least a bit. From accurate 

mids and highs to a deep satisfying low 

end, this speaker did it all for me. 

Taken as individual components, the 

Philips DVD963SA, Portal Panache, 

and Definitive Technology BP7004s are 

all good performers within their respective 

product classes and price ranges, but 

taken as a whole this system performs at 

a level much higher that the sum of its 

parts. But don’t feel compelled to stick 

with this system (unless you want to); 

start piecing together your own dream 

hi-fi to fit your personal budget and 

musical tastes. No one is wrong in this 

game and musical enjoyment in the end 

boils down to what you want out of your 

stereo—not what a dealer (or an audio 

magazine) tells you your music is supposed 

to sound like. As for me, I’ll take 

a system whose affordable components 

are synergistically matched over poorly 

matched combinations of pricier equipment 

any day of the week! & 

SPECIFICATIONS 

Definitive Technology BP7004 loudspeaker 

w/300-watt internal subwoofer amplifier 

Driver Complement: Two 5.25" bass/mid 

drivers, two 1" aluminum-dome tweeters, 

10" active subwoofer driver, two 10" passive 

radiators 

Frequency Response: 16Hz–30kHz 

Sensitivity: 92dB 

Impedance: 8 ohms 

Recommended Amplifier Power: 20–300Wpc 

Dimensions: 6.6" x 42.25" x 13" 

Price: $1598/pair 

Philips DVD963SA DVD/SACD player 

Outputs: Component, composite, S-video, 

RGB 

Dimensions: 17" x 3" x 10" 

Weight: 8 lbs. 

Price: $499 

Portal Panache Integrated Amp 

Power output: 100 watts/channel at 8 ohms; 

200 watts/channel at 4 ohms 

Inputs: Four line-level 

Dimensions: 17" x 4.5" x 12" 


Price: $1795 

ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT 

Wireworld Speaker Cables, Monster Cable 

Interconnects, Chang Lightspeed CLS 3200 

Power Conditioner, M-Audio Audiophile 

24/96 Soundcard 

MANUFACTURER INFORMATION 

DEFINITIVE TECHNOLOGY 

11433 Cronridge Drive Suite K 

Owings Mills, Maryland 21117 

(410) 363-7148 

www.definitivetech.com 

PHILIPS ELECTRONICS 

64 Perimeter Center East 

Atlanta, Georgia 30346 

(865) 521-4316 

www.philips.com 

PORTAL AUDIO 

6626 Charter Hills Rd. 

Charlotte, North Carolina 28277 

(888) 737-4434 

www.portalaudio.com 


A B S O L U T E A N A L O G 

Pro-Ject RM 9 Integrated Turntable, Sumiko 

Blackbird Phono Pickup, and Townshend 2-3D 

Seismic Sink Isolation Platform 

Paul Seydor 

Sumiko has been importing Pro-Ject turntables for 

several years now as low-budget alternatives to its 

premier line—the magnificent but expensive 

SMEs. Imported from Czechoslovakia, the Pro-Jects 

can’t be expected to compete against these or other 

top models when the cheapest Pro-Ject costs a mere $279 

including pickup (this is not a misprint), and the flagship, 

under review here, a reasonable $1499. The surprise is how satisfying 

the RM 9 proves, not least owing to an accessory recommended 

by Sumiko. But more of that anon. 

The RM 9 has a 

number of features 

usually found only on 

more expensive models, 

most visibly 

a massive, 1.5-inchthick,sandwich-constructed 

acrylic platter, 

belt-driven by an 

AC-synchronous motor 

physically isolated from the 

plinth. The inverted bearing—a 

far more stable 

arrangement than a spindle 

balanced on a ball at the 

bottom of an oil-filled 

shaft—uses a stainless-steel 

axle with a ceramic ball running 

on a ceramic thrust-plate. 

Another thing that clearly separates 

this unit from the comparably-priced 

pack is the tonearm, a medium-mass 

gimbal design made from 

carbon-fiber, a very expensive material the use of 

which Sumiko’s James Alexander informs me is possible only 

because Czechoslovakia is not yet on the Euro. This would be a 

fine arm for any turntable: high rigidity, good control of spurious 

resonances, and the usual adjustments of VTA, VTF (static), 

azimuth, and antiskating. 

The principal sign of cost-cutting is the plinth itself; 

though made from high-density particle board, the chassis is 

still lightweight and rather microphonic (though no more or 

less so than several others I’ve heard). Leveling is done via three 

adjustable feet that offer some protective damping. Sumiko’s 

superb new high-output moving-coil pickup, the Blackbird 

($749), completes the package. 

When Alexander delivered the turntable, he brought along 

Max Townshend’s 2-3D Seismic Sink, an air-suspension isolation-platform 

(see sidebar). Readers of my Sota review (Issue 145) 

will know of my bias toward tuned suspensions, hung or sprung. 

Mass alone cannot adequately isolate the stylus-groove interface 

from very low frequency disturbances such as passing trucks, 

footfalls, or speakers, especially subwoofers. Sumiko apparently 

considers the basic performance of the RM 9 so good that 

the addition of Townshend’s platform catapults 

it into a higher category. 

I went 

straight to a 

longstanding 

reference, the 

fourth act of 

Bernstein’s sensational 

Carmen 

[DG], and was 

immediately struck by 

the transparency, clarity, 

and impact of the sound. The 

first several minutes run the 

gamut from full orchestra to 

solo voices to children’s chorus 

marching in and out back to orchestra 

and now chorus at full throttle. The presentation 

was open yet well controlled, with excellent 

definition, rich and true timbres, and exciting dynamics. 

Soundstaging was quite spectacular; you could easily chart the 

movement of the children’s chorus, while the sections of the 

orchestra were beautifully layered as the soundstage receded. 


Remove the Seismic Sink and the 

sound remained recognizably the same. 

But the soundstage shrunk in all dimensions, 

the bass lost some definition, transients 

became less hair-trigger, snap and 

vitality less scintillating, and dynamics 

reduced. Nor is it only large-scale material 

that benefits from the Sink. Try Pure 

Audiophile’s beautiful reissue of the Ray 

Brown Trio’s classic Soular Energy: how 

deep, ample, and tuneful the string bass, 

how securely positioned the piano is in its 

own space, how clean its articulation with 

the Sink in place, and how diminished 

these virtues are when it is removed. 

In observing this, I don’t intend to 

single out the RM 9 for special censure: 

All non-suspended turntables, especially 

lightweight ones, suffer from these 

defects to some extent, most of them 

more than the RM 9. On the contrary, I 

mean to commend Sumiko for frankly 

admitting the inevitable limitations 

involved in price-driven designs and recommending 

an effective solution, even if 

it’s a solution Sumiko doesn’t sell. 

How effective will be determined by 

several factors, including but not limited 

to your speakers’ low-end response, listening 

levels, musical tastes, equipment 

cabinet, room construction and materials, 

etc. Consider this for a worst-case 

scenario: Sumiko lent me a Studio III for 

several weeks, REL’s best subwoofer, 

with response flat to well below 20Hz 

and no provision for compensating for 

room gain. As the REL pumped out 

enough bass energy to overload my 

room, the only turntable that could play 

without recourse to rumble filters or 

other forms of electronic low-frequency 

attenuation was the Sota, with its massive, 

2.55Hz-tuned hanging suspension. 

All others I tried, including the superb 

SME Model 20, were too excited unless 

supported by a Seismic Sink, in which 

case there were no problems. 

Audible breakthrough is only the 

Townshend Seismic Sink 

most obvious and noxious form of 

acoustic feedback. Far more prevalent in 

record-playing setups that lack adequate 

isolation are the effects of feedback at 

levels below breakthrough: a vague lack 

of clarity, uneven or poorly defined 

bass-response, a subtle muddiness in the 

lower midrange, imaging that never 

quite focuses, unsteadiness of pitch and 

rhythm. If any of this sounds familiar, 

especially when you switch from good 

CDs to vinyl, you might want to give a 

Seismic Sink a try. 

I played a wide variety of music 

throughout the evaluation period, 

always with satisfying results in the 

areas of transparency, liveliness, natural 

tonal-balance, rhythmic precision, and 

that elusive sense of involvement. Detail 

and resolution were more than satisfactory, 

enough to reveal what’s there, but 

not too “hi-fi.” Suppression of extraneous 

pops, clicks, surface noise, and the 

like was not in the league of the very 

best vinyl components, but it was satisfactory 

or better, and never intrusive. 

The RM 9 lacks a mat but is supplied 

with a weight that presses records 

into firm enough contact with the 

acrylic platter. Claims to the contrary, an 

acrylic platter, no matter how massive or 

Seismic Sinks are air-bladder-suspended, constrained-layer, damped isolation 

platforms, available in several sizes and weights to accommodate a wide variety 

of components, not just turntables. Setup is straightforward: place the component 

on the platform, hook up the supplied bicycle pump, and pump in enough air to 

raise the outer platform so that about a quarter inch of the inner platform is revealed. 

That’s it. Because Townshend platforms act as filters (around 2–4Hz), I prefer them to 

cones. Cones anchor components solidly but in doing so allow vibrations to be transmitted 

directly to the chassis; suspensions don’t. It is my impression that the so-called 

superior definition afforded by cones is often in fact a subtle edginess that I never hear 

from tuned suspensions, which always sound more musically natural to me. 

Townshend’s Sinks may require a bit of searching, but they will reward your efforts with 

cleaner, quieter, higher resolution reproduction from all sources. PS 


intimate the contact with the LP, does 

not in effect make the LP thicker and 

thus does not eliminate vinyl resonances. 

I do not have space here to address the 

acrylic-platter question in detail. 

Usually I prefer an absorptive mat of 

some sort, but I had mixed results when 

I tried mats like the Audioquest or 

ExtremePhono on the RM 9. 

Sometimes the top end sounded a 

little more natural; but the excellent 

bass response, one of the virtues of this 

setup, was softened, as were dynamic 

shadings. With a completely natural, 

unhyped recording like Doc Watson’s 

Southbound (in Cisco Records’ gorgeous 

new reissue), a sweeter top-end would be 

hard to imagine than with the 

RM 9/Blackbird/Townshend system as 

supplied, so that is how I did most of my 

listening. Different pickups will doubtless 

require different solutions. 1 

But that’s the way it is with 

record-playing components: they can be 

evaluated only in relation to one another, 

which is to say, as a system. In the RM 

9/Blackbird/Townshend ensemble, 

Sumiko has come up with a system that 

never left me feeling deprived, that offers 

performance comparable with turntables 

costing far, far more, and that affords 

protection from acoustic feedback superior 

to anything in my experience except 

the Sotas. And keep in mind that when 

the Blackbird is purchased along with an 

RM 9, you save $250—over half the 

price of the Townshend base. Now that’s 

a good deal. Seriously recommended. & 

1 Last issue Chris Martens reviewed the Blackbird as part of a survey. I have little to add to his evaluation except to 

say that I had none of the even mild tracking problems he mentioned; and that when I installed it in Bob Graham’s latest 

masterpiece, the 2.2 arm, it performed like a pickup costing three times its asking price. 

DISTRIBUTOR INFORMATION 

PRO-JECT RM 9/BLACKBIRD 

Sumiko 

2431 Fifth Street 

Berkeley, California 94710 

(510) 843-4500 

www.sumikoaudio.net 

Prices: Pro-Ject RM 9: $1499; 

Blackbird: $799 

TOWNSHEND 2-3D SEISMIC SINK 

ISOLATION PLATFORM 

Sound Advice 

1087 East Ridgewood Street 

Long Beach, California 90807 

(562) 422-4747 

Price: $450 


For all the great contributions the high-end audio 

industry has made over the past thirty years, it also has 

a habit of ignoring opportunities to expand its business. 

The most obvious example is the industry’s failure 

to reach out to affluent, non-tweaky music lovers, 

and, instead, to remain content to sell new products to the 

same pool of already-committed audiophiles. 

Similarly, our industry tends to stick with tried-and-true 

product architecture rather than innovate. Many manufacturers 

would rather upgrade a few capacitors in a preamp, call it 

a Mark VI, and hope to sell it to owners of the Mark V. 

Though the high end innovates astonishingly well on a microscale 

(the minutia of circuit design), it has been less innovative 

on the macro-scale of envisioning new products which 

expand the possibilities of the home-listening experience. 

This strategy is doomed to fail in today’s climate of rapidly 

changing technologies. We are on the threshold of a new era 

in music reproduction, and the high-end industry has a 

unique opportunity to be a driving force in this new order. Or, 

at its peril, it can continue with business as usual in the hope 

that today’s revolutionary changes are temporary aberrations. 

The technological sea change the high end is ignoring is 

the convergence of multichannel music with playback of filmbased 

sources. And what is sorely needed is a single system 

that delivers high-quality two-channel music, provides multichannel 

music playback, and accommodates surround-sound 

for film and musical performances on video (Dolby Digital 

and DTS decoding, for examples). Today’s consumer can have 

extremely high performance two-channel music reproduction, 

or multichannel music, or surround-sound for film, but not all 

three in a single easy-to-use system. (A notable exception is 

Meridian’s Digital Theatre, which employs unconventional 

system architecture.) In this issue’s TAS Roundtable, classicalmusic 

editor Andy Quint notes that to switch between twochannel 

and multichannel he must spend five minutes swapping 

cables. Requiring such gymnastics of your customers 

guarantees a tiny market. Of course, it is simple to integrate 

The Ideal Component? 

Rather than simply criticize the 

high end for the dearth of forward-looking 

convergence products 

that solve real-world system problems, 

I should be constructive and offer 

my view of the perfect preamplifier/control 

center. I’ve therefore imagined the 

ideal solution for accommodating stereo 

and multichannel music, as well as surround-sound 

for film. 

e d i t o r i a l 

Missing the Boat 

Robert Harley 

Such a product would deliver uncompromised 

two-channel performance, 

accommodate multichannel audio and 

film-soundtrack reproduction, as well as 

offer custom configurations to meet a 

wide range of user needs. This may sound 

like a tall order, but this mythical beast is 

well within the design capabilities of 

most high-end companies. I’ll call my 

imaginary product a preamp/controller 

stereo and multichannel music with home theater—Japanese 

manufacturers routinely deliver that integration in $500 

audio/video receivers. The catch is that these products fail to 

live up to high-end standards of sound quality. 

This is where the high end is uniquely qualified to make 

its contribution. Sound quality is the front line on which the 

high end must make its stand to avoid slipping into irrelevance. 

It must apply its aesthetic ideals and creative talents to 

building products that meet the functional needs of today’s 

listeners without compromising sound quality. Although 

nearly all high-end audio companies have embraced surroundsound, 

their efforts have been, with a few exceptions, limited 

to multichannel power amplifiers, and to digital controllers 

based on off-the-shelf decoding boards to which the analog 

circuits, a chassis, and a nameplate are added. The high end 

can do better than that. 

Product development in the high end is driven by dealer 

and distributor feedback, which is itself driven by the preferences 

of the customer. But if a customer doesn’t know what he 

wants, he can’t ask for it. He might like to try multichannel 

music, but lacking any clear path for adding it to his system, 

he either buys nothing or chooses a mass-market product that 

offers full functionality at the expense of sound quality. By 

failing to serve the needs of this customer, the high-end industry 

also fails to serve itself. 

The high end cannot compete in today’s world purely on 

the basis of two-channel sound quality; it must also offer 

innovative solutions that address real-world customer needs. 

Some products are available that address these needs, but they 

tend to be very expensive, further limiting their appeal. Of 

course, there will always be those listeners who don’t care 

about multichannel audio or surround-sound for film. The 

high end will continue to make products for them. But it 

must also look beyond the traditional component and system 

architectures to deliver both functionality and sound quality 

in forward-thinking products. 

And only the high end can create products that do both. 

because it combines the functions of a traditional 

two-channel preamp with the 

capabilities and feature-sets of the digital 

controllers used in multichannel hometheater 

systems. 

The preamp/controller should be 

built on two chassis—one to house the 

analog signal path and the analog source 

switching, and another to perform surround-sound 

decoding and digital-signal 


processing. The analog chassis should 

accommodate a minimum of three multichannel 

signals from SACD or DVD- 

Audio sources, as well several two-channel 

sources. If you’re into stereo and multichannel 

music only, you need only the 

analog chassis. If, however, you want a 

system that can also accommodate surround-sound 

for film, you buy the outboard 

controller module that accepts digital 

signals from DVD players, satellite 

dishes, and other video-oriented sources. 

(The outputs from the digital box feed a 

multichannel input on the analog box.) 

Let’s take a closer look at the analog 

box’s architecture. First and foremost, it 

must offer an uncompromised signal path 

for the left and right channels. These 

channels could be tubed or high-end discrete 

solid-state. Whatever the circuit 

topology, it must be as good as that of the 

best two-channel preamps, and have a 

power supply to match. The center, surround, 

and subwoofer channels can be of 

lower quality (even op-amp based) to 

keep the product’s cost and chassis size 

under control. (Some would argue that 

the center-channel’s circuitry should be as 

good as that of the left and right.) Three 

multichannel analog inputs are a minimum: 

one to accept the multichannel 

analog outputs from the digital box, and 

one each for SACD and DVD-Audio 

players. I’m making this provision for 

users who embrace both SACD and 

DVD-Audio, but who may choose separate 

players rather than accept the compromises 

inherent in virtually all universal 

machines. One of the multichannel 

inputs can be connected to the outputs of 

a DVD player with integral Dolby 

Digital and DTS decoding, if the listener 

wants discrete multichannel surroundsound 

for film without having to buy the 

digital box. 

Another important feature of our 

analog box is the ability to send the center 

channel of multichannel recordings to 

the left and right channels. The signals 

must be attenuated by 3dB to be reproduced 

at the correct volume. This allows 

our device to be compatible with a system 

employing four loudspeakers. Eschewing 

the center-channel loudspeaker can have 

many advantages, particularly if you have 

very high-quality left and right loud- 

speakers or have a projection screen for 

home theater. As discussed in this issue’s 

TAS Roundtable, instruments panned to 

the center channel in a multichannel 

recording can sound unnatural, flat, and 

dry. Reproducing the center-channel signal 

equally in the left and right channel 

for phantom center imaging overcomes 

this limitation. 

If we were ambitious, the analog box 

could also contain a simple analogdomain 

Dolby Pro Logic decoder. This 

circuit would create multichannel audio 

from a two-channel source, as well as 

provide decoding for film soundtracks. 

Those who occasionally watched movies 

or concert videos could do so without 

the expense and complexity of adding 

the digital box. Analog-domain bass 

management (independently switchable 

80Hz high-pass filters) would allow the 

unit to be used with a wide range of 

loudspeaker configurations. A separate 

and easily accessible volume control for 

the surround channels provides adjustment 

to tone down the overly aggressive 

surround channels in many recordings. 

For vinyl spinners, we’ll include several 

phonostage options as plug-in 

boards for the analog chassis. If you listen 

to LPs casually, a $300 phono board 

may be appropriate, but an outboard 

super-high-end unit for serious LP aficionados 

should also be available. 

Finally, the box should offer a fixedgain 

setting so that when we’re listening 

to sources from the digital box, the digital 

box’s level control and individual channel-level 

calibrations assume priority. 

Now let’s look at the digital box. It 

should have most of the features of today’s 

advanced digital home-theater controllers, 

including decoding for all multichannel 

sources such as Dolby Digital, 

Dolby Digital EX, DTS, DTS-ES, Pro 

Logic II, DTS Neo:6, and their variants. 

Your DVD player or other source drives 

the digital box, which then decodes the 

signal and presents six (or eight) analog 

output signals to one of the analog box’s 

analog inputs. The digital box should also 

contain algorithms for converting twochannel 

sources to multichannel for those 

users who desire such processing 

(Meridian’s superb Trifield comes to 

mind). Full Ambisonics decoding is 

mandatory, as is THX post-processing for 

film-based sources. All video switching 

would be performed here, and accommodate 

multiple HDMI (High-Definition 

Multimedia Interface) video inputs. 

Twelve-volt trigger outputs would be 

standard, as would a Crestron/Phast control 

input for system automation. The 

digital box must be modular and accept 

hardware and software upgrades to accommodate 

changing standards and formats. 

For example, a port for a FireWire input 

would allow the box to be used with a 

high-resolution, multichannel digital 

interface, should that interface become 

commonplace. Because digital signal processing 

is cheap and already on-board, the 

box could offer equalization and even 

multichannel DSP room correction. Keep 

in mind that all this digital hocus pocus is 

completely separate from the analog 

box—and you don’t have to buy it unless 

you’re going to use your system for reproducing 

film soundtracks. You can even 

watch films in surround-sound without 

the digital box; our analog chassis has a 

discrete multichannel input for discrete 

surround-sound from DVD players with 

integral Dolby Digital decoding, as well 

as on-board analog-domain Pro Logic 

decoding available for all sources. 

The digital box almost exists today 

in the form of a home-theater controller, 

but you’re paying for features 

you’ll never need when a controller is 

used in conjunction with the analog 

unit. The type of functionality I’m 

describing is very inexpensive to implement—the 

Japanese companies offer all 

this (plus seven channels of amplification) 

for $500. That’s not a realistic target 

for a high-end company, but 

nonetheless points to the climate in 

which the high end must compete. In 

my hierarchy, the digital box can be 

inexpensive; the analog chassis is where 

we need high-end circuitry and build 

quality. One aspect of the digital box 

that is expensive to do right is digitalto-analog 

conversion; our box must 

contain eight DACs and eight analog 

output stages. Perhaps two quality 

grades of DAC would be offered to suit 

the customer and application, much the 

way Theta Digital offers different 

DACs in its Casablanca controller. & 


ecommended products 

Under $500 

PARADIGM ATOM 

Price: $199 

www.paradigm.com 

A staggering value, Paradigm’s tiny Atom does 

an awful lot right. With a smooth frequency 

response, an open treble, and a natural 

midrange, this little guy only falls short in the 

bottom two octaves or when pushed too hard, 

displaying coarseness at unreasonably loud levels. 

Best used in small rooms at moderate volumes. 

Reviewed by Robert Harley in Issue 133 

PSB ALPHA B 

Price: $249 

www.psbspeakers.com 

PSB’s Alpha B may not possess the levels of 

detail, tonal neutrality, or overall refinement of 

the best mini-monitors, but it still does what a 

good mini should. The sound is remarkably 

open and spacious; imaging is precise; and 

there is an impressive suggestion of threedimensionality. 

As one would expect, the PSBs 

have no deep bass, and dynamic range and 

power handling are limited. The speaker sounds 

best on stands and well away from walls. 

Reviewed by Neil Gader in TPV Issue 138 

EPOS ELS3 

Price: $329 

www.musichallaudio.com 

Like all mini-monitors, the Epos ELS3s strive to 

give you big sound from small boxes, and they 

do a much better job than most, offering 

midrange and treble clarity and refinement on a 

par with good $1000/pair speakers, superb 

three-dimensionality, and just enough (accurate, 

not “juiced up”) upper midbass weight to 

loudspeakers under $5000 

Loudspeakers dominate the audio world, particularly in 

the popular sub-$5000-per-pair price range. And yet 

there are so many speaker manufacturers, 

so much contradictory (and misleading) 

information in ad copy, and such a dizzying 

array of speaker sizes, looks, and design philosophies 

in the market, that it’s enough to scare off 

anyone interested in upgrading his sound 

system. 

On the following pages you’ll find our 

recommendations for the very best models 

we’ve heard—from two-way mini-monitors to 

full-range towers, from conventional dynamic 

systems to some with built-in powered woofers, 

from planar magnetics to electrostatic hybrids. Each speaker 

gets a capsule review—most were penned by the original writ- 

keep you from missing the lower frequencies 

that aren’t there. The ELS3s sounds rich, not 

thin and shrill like so many mini-monitors do. 

Would they sound even better with a sub? 

Possibly, but they’re a ton of fun as is. Just use 

a decent set of stands to place the ELS3s at 

ear level, position them away from walls and 

nearby objects, use clear-voiced amplification, 

and stand by to grin. Reviewed by Chris Martens 

in Issue145 

MONITOR AUDIO BRONZE B2 

Price: $399 

www.monitoraudio.com 

Although it comes in an ordinary-looking box, 

Monitor Audio’s Bronze B2 offers a notably 

clean, open, and detailed sound throughout the 

midrange. Unlike most small fry, its bass is 

weighty and powerful, its dynamics are nimble, 

and its metal-dome tweeter is airy and 

detailed, not edgy. It likes a bit of power—50plus 

watts should do—and the well-away-fromwall 

placement of the other little guys above. 

Reviewed by Wayne Garcia in Issue 140 

ers—explaining why we are recommending it, noting shortcomings 

in its performance (e.g., limitations in frequency 

response or power handling), and giving tips on 

placement and power requirements. 

The majority of our recommendations cover 

components that have already been reviewed in 

these pages (or in a few cases on our Web site, 

AVGuide.com), but we’ve also included products 

that are pending review, or ones that 

have not been formally reviewed but have 

been extensively auditioned. 

We also award a “Best Buy” designation 

to select models that we feel offer the highest 

value within their price range. 

Finally, complete reviews of the majority of these components 

can be found on AVGuide.com.. 

$500–$1000 

PARADIGM 

MONITOR 5 

Price: $579 


Its prominent top-end mandates 

careful placement and 

equipment matching, or a 

tone control; its midrange 

has a slight nasality; and its 

port exhibits some “boom” 

when pushed too hard. 

Nevertheless, the Monitor 5 

has a lively, engaging sound 

with a very musical tonal balance, 

and can play very loud and go surprisingly 

deep for a speaker in this 

size/price category. A three-driver, 

two-way, bass-reflex bookshelf, the 

5 is very sensitive, easily driven by 

as little as 15 watts. Stand-mount 

for best performance. Reviewed by 

Paul Seydor in Issue 133 

B&W 602.5 S3 

Price: $700 

www.bwspeakers.com 

A rather cool customer that’s unforgiving with 

bright recordings, B&W’s 602.5 Series 3 is 

fast, dynamic, and detailed. What it lacks—the 

deepest bass, a bit of instrumental body and 

warmth—can be made up for in part by warmsounding 

amps and source components. Feed 

it 50–100 watts and give it a bit of space from 

walls. This model uses Nautilus tweeter technology 

as well as a newly fashioned Kevlar 

mid/bass driver and cabinetry. Reviewed by WG 

in Issue 137 



SNELL QBX 20 

Price: $750 

www.snellacoustics.com 

The pint-sized, two-way Qbx 20 sets the standard 

in build-quality, cabinet finish, and enclosure 

rigidity in this price range. The spectral 

balance of this stand-mounted Snell doesn’t 

quite match the overall transparency and bottom-to-top 

extension of the larger K Series, but 

restricted bass output is its only serious shortcoming. 

Reviewed by NG in Issue 135 

PSB IMAGE 5T 

Price: $799 


It may not be the most 

refined speaker in this 

category, but PSB’s 

Image 5T is another 

remarkable performer 

and value from one of 

Canada’s top manufacturers. 

Its sound is 

powerful and dynamically 

alive; its bass has 

a true sense of detail 

and instrumental 

weight; its presentation 

is rich, smooth, relaxed, 

and spacious. It’s not 

too fussy about setup, 

though don’t stick it 

right against the wall, 

and works well with any 

amp of 40 watts or 

more. Reviewed by WG 

in Issue 137 

$1000–$1500 

NHT ST4 

Price: $1000 

www.nhthifi.com 

NHT’s three-way ST4 tower may 

redefine your expectations of 

what a $1000 speaker can be, 

especially if you value extended 

frequency response, an open 

and articulate midrange, excellent 

dynamic agility, and a 

speaker whose drivers speak 

with one voice. Imaging and 

overall balance are fine, too, provided 

you follow two set-up tips. 

First, (despite what the manual 

suggests) remove the ST-4’s 

grilles, and second, try listening 

with the speakers aimed straight 

ahead—not toed-in. A few speakers 

in this range offer focus and 

resolution superior to the ST4’s, 

but typically at the expense of 

a missing bottom octave (or 

two) of bass. 

Reviewed by CM in Issue 141 

MAGNEPAN MG12/QR 

Price: $1099 

www.magnepan.com 

This two-way quasi-ribbon 

model brings you remarkably 

close to the best performance 

such designs are 

capable of (and that is very good, 

indeed) for a fraction of the best’s usual price. 

When properly placed—that is around three 

feet from the back wall and some distance 

from sidewalls—its clarity is addictive. The 

MG12s present a wide and deep soundstage, 

and are almost unequalled in dynamics and 

transient speed. After a rather long break-in 

period, they perform, even in modest systems, 

wonderfully and satisfyingly down to about 

40Hz; some listeners may want a subwoofer 

for the octave or so below that. Overall, these 

little Maggies are reliable, easy to set up, and 

above all, musical. Reviewed by Sallie Reynolds 

in AVguide, Issue 2 

SPENDOR S3/5 and SE3/5 

Prices: $1099 and $1349 

www.qsandd.com 

The S3/5’s dimensions are Lilliputian, so its 

dynamic limitations are real; likewise its bass 

response, though it lacks neither warmth nor 

richness. But this 8-ohm, sealed-box two-way is 

a true mini-monitor of world-class tonal neutrality 

and wonderful openness, transparency, and 

imaging—think a Quad 63/988 in a 

shoebox-sized enclosure. The more PS uses 

this speaker—and he uses it daily in his film 

editing—the more he 

loves it. Its 

84dB sensitivity 

suggests at least 

25 watts of quality power. In domestic settings 

stand-mounting is far preferable to shelf. The 

SE version trades the Quad-like midrange of 

the standard S3/5 for a slightly forward uppermidrange 

and improved transparency, resolution, 

and dynamic range. As with the standard 

model, a subwoofer is mandatory for deep and 

loud bass. Their different tonal balances mean 

careful listening before buying. PS’s heart is 

with the standard version, but he has no argument 

with those who prefer the SE. Identical 

strictures to the standard model as regards 

power and installation. Reviewed by PS in Issues 

119 and 143 

TOTEM ARRO 

Price: $1100 

www.totemacoustic.com 

“A minor miracle,” is how 

Editor-in-Chief Robert 

Harley described Totem’s 

Arro, “combining extraordinary 

resolution, transparency, and soundstaging 

for the price. It is built to the same standard 

as mega-buck loudspeakers, but on a 

much smaller scale. You also get a beautiful 

wood-veneered cabinet, not a vinyl-wrap box.” 

The somewhat lightweight bottom end can be 

warmed up and extended by placement close 

to walls. A particularly good choice if you can’t 

position your speakers out into the room. 

Recommended Systems, Issue 124 

SNELL ACOUSTICS K.5 MK2 

Price: $1200 

www.snellacoustics.com 

Snell’s K.5 mk2 indicates a designer obsessed 

with tonal neutrality, snappy transients, and low 

distortion. Although this stand-mounted twoway 

lacks the deepest bass and has a hint of 

port overhang, it captures mid- and upper-bass 

energy with truthful pitch definition and surprising 

dynamic punch. A cool, rather analytical tilt 

accompanies a stunning sense of detail and 

may deter some listeners, but the K.5 never 

actually gets aggressive. A rear-mounted switch 

allows for free-standing or near-wall placement. 

Reviewed by NG in Issue 133 

DEFINITIVE TECHNOLOGY 

POWERMONITOR 700 

Price: $1200 


With an overall character that’s 

a bit dark and lush sounding, 

Definitive’s PowerMonitor 700 

has a solid midrange, a treble 

that extends but doesn’t fully bloom, nearly 

unstoppable dynamics, and, thanks to an 

amplified side-firing woofer, bass that’s flat to 

30Hz—a remarkable achievement from such a 

small box. Stand-mounting gives best results, 

where its corner-to-corner soundstaging allows 

the PowerMonitor to sound much larger than it 

really is. Reviewed by NG in Issue 133 



PROAC TABLETTE REFERENCE 8 

Price: $1200 

www.proac-usa.com 

A two-way loudspeaker for connoisseurs who 

prize precision, ProAc’s Tablette Reference 8 

has a slightly forward midrange—emphasizing 

vocalists—and open highs. Soundstage dimensionality 

is its specialty, particularly when it 

comes to height. To offset its light tonal balance, 

however, the Reference 8 requires careful 

room placement to enhance bass reinforcement. 

Although remarkable on its own, it 

requires the best subwoofers to keep up with 

its transient acrobatics. Benefits from the use 

of high-quality stands. In spite of its obvious 

dynamic and amplitude limits, this speaker is 

required listening. Reviewed by NG in Issue 141 

RED ROSE MUSIC SPIRIT STUDIO 

MONITORS 

Price: $1490 

www.redrosemusic.com 

The two-way, ribbon-plus-cone-driver-equipped 

Red Rose Spirit Studio Monitors “deliver what 

most small monitors only promise—world-class 

imaging, a deep and wide soundstage, reasonable 

volume capabilities, and respectable bass 

extension (to just below 60Hz).” Better still, the 

speaker is brilliantly balanced, offering plenty 

of resolution, but with smooth, extended treble 

and a gentle “middle-of-the-hall” perspective 

that tends not to overemphasize recording 

flaws. Plan on using good, rigid speaker 

stands, and a clean-sounding (though not necessarily 

high-powered) amp to get the most 

from the Spirits. Reviewed by CM as part of the 

Red Rose Spirit system in AVguide, April 2003 

$1500–$2000 

INFINITY INTERMEZZO 2.6 

Price: $1500 

www.infinitysystems.com 

Another small two-way design, the Intermezzo 

features a curvilinear aluminum enclosure, 

ceramic-composite drivers, a self-powered 

mid/bass driver, and Infinity’s RABOS system, 

which impressively smoothes the dominant resonant 

peak of the room. The 2.6 is transparent, 

with excellent bass extension and a cool, 

somewhat clinical personality. It is dynamically 

unflappable at nearly any volume. Best performance 

comes when mounted on the dedicated 

(optional) floorstands. Reviewed by NG in 

Issue 134 

VANDERSTEEN 2CE SIGNATURE 

Price: $1549 

www.vandersteen.com 

This classic three-way floorstander delivers 

excellent top-to-bottom balance and an engaging 

musicality. Though not as transparent as 

comparably priced Magnepans, Vandersteen’s 

baffle-less time-and-phase-coherent design can 

nonetheless suggest the spatial focus usually 

heard with planars. It benefits from bi-wiring, 

should be placed away from walls, and careful 

attention must be given to adjusting the backtilt 

via the optional stands. Shane Buettner 

considers it “…a high performance speaker 

that might just be the best value in the industry.” 

Reviewed by SB in Issue 139 

MAGNEPAN MG 1.6 

Price: $1725 

www.magenpan.com 

Magnepan’s MG 1.6 is simply one of the great 

high-end speaker values. The bass is defined 

and tuneful down to a respectable 40Hz, and 

the highs are a little soft, but with its top-tobottom 

frequency coherence, great speed, 

wide-open soundstaging, and transparency, this 

moderately priced Maggie is a music lover’s 

pleasure. JV’s Recommended Systems, Issue 124 

POLK AUDIO LSI-15 

Price: $1740 

www.polkaudio.com 

A three-way tower, 

standing 45" tall, 

the LSi-15’s 

strengths are its 

smooth and detailed 

treble, which never 

irritates even at loud 

listening levels, 

thanks to the exceptional 

Vifa XT254 

ring-radiator tweeter, 

and an equally 

smooth and open 

midrange. Where the 

speaker falls short 

is in the bass, which 

has a lot of energy 

but not quite the 

tightness and control 

that would raise 

this otherwise excellent 

effort up a notch. Not tricky to set up, and 

works with a wide range of amps from 

20–250W. Reviewed by Anthony H. Cordesman 

in Issue 135 

AUDIO PHYSIC YARA 

Price: $1995 

www.immediasound.com 

Despite its small cabinet, 

this two-way, downward-firing 

bass-reflex design possesses 

exceedingly natural and 

extended low-frequency 

response, a rich midrange, 

and silky highs. 

Soundstaging, too, is excellent, 

thanks in no small part 

to the ultra-narrow 6-inch 

front baffle. Its output limitations 

make this highly musical 

little floorstander best in 

smaller rooms with average 

ceiling heights. Reviewed by 

NG in Issue142 

PSB PLATINUM M2 

Price: $1995 


The aluminum-sheathed 

Platinum M2 shines in its 



ability to reproduce the weight, majesty, and 

complexity of every genre of music. Tonally, the 

speaker is sure-of-foot through the crucial 

midrange and well into the mid-bass region. 

Highs are extended and neck-snappingly quick. 

Whatever the music, from Mahler to 

Motorhead, the M2 gives as good as it gets. 

When pushed it gets uncomfortable and 

betrays a trace of port overhang as well as dryness 

from its aluminum tweeter. Melds seamlessly 

with a great sub such as PSB’s SubSonic 

10. Reviewed by NG in Issue 145 

$2000–$2500 

B&W 704 

Price: $2200 


Clarity and control top 

the long list of sonic 

virtues of this affordable, 

2.5-way, vented-box floorstander, 

which incorporates 

key refinements 

derived from B&W’s 

acclaimed Nautilus 800 

series. Experimentation 

is required with toe-in for 

best imaging, but otherwise 

it is an easy speaker 

to place if space is 

limited. Some may prefer 

a bit more weight on the 

bottom end, but its limited 

LF extension (40Hz) is 

more than made up for by 

bass performance that is 

remarkably quick, solid, 

and well-defined. Caution is 

advised with OTL designs, but otherwise a 

great match with both tube and solid-state 

amplification. Reviewed by Sue Kraft in Issue 147 

FOCAL-JMLAB 906 

Price: $2200 


A compact two-way incorporating 

the company’s Grand Utopia 

technology, the 906 has a 

vivid palette of musical 

colors, impressive 

dynamics, and excellent 

definition. Also expect 

to hear a speaker 

with exceptional 

transparency, good 

off-axis behavior, and 

freedom from box colorations. 

Note, however, 

that the open, airy 

tweeter is intoxicatingly 

detailed but 

adds a brilliance that 

borders on the clinical. 

That said, this is a compact with the one-two 

punch of graceful good looks and uncommon 

musicality. Reviewed by NG in Issue 140 

TOTEM HAWK 

Price: $2295 


An impeccably finished, “overachiever at this 

price” that communicates the soul and spirit of 

music” said Peter Braverman. With “essentially 

correct” tonal balance, tremendous presence, 

and the prodigious soundstaging more typical 

of a mini-monitor, the two-way, narrow-baffle 

Hawk is superbly engineered and “fundamentally 

right in virtually all aspects.” As with other 

Totem loudspeakers, the Hawk trades a bit of 

bass extension for its extraordinary midrange 

transparency and resolution. Lowish sensitivity 

(86dB) suggests the Hawk is best mated with 

higher-powered amps. Reviewed by PB in 139 

THIEL CS1.6 

Price: $2390 

www.thielaudio.com 

A sleek little beauty, Thiel’s 90dB-sensitive 

CS1.6 delivers a relaxed musical presentation 

with an accurate tonal balance, exceptionally 

low noise floor, huge soundstage, and excellent 

dynamic resolution. What this engaging 

speaker won’t do is reproduce the bottom 

octave or deliver the highest dynamic peaks. 

Best results are achieved with first-rate associated 

gear. Reviewed by Tom Miiller in Issue 135 

HARBETH HL COMPACT 7 ES-2 

Price: $2495 

www.harbeth.co.uk 

This smallish two-way box speaker, intended for 

stand-mounting, features Harbeth’s unique 

midrange driver, made of its proprietary “RADI- 

AL” material that reduces materials-based coloration 

to exceedingly low levels. Midrange clarity 

and neutrality are absolutely top class. 

Vocals are amazing. Special anti-diffraction 

grilles (leave them on!) make the sound surprisingly 

“out of the box.” Strong solid-state 

amplification will give more robust dynamics 

than you might expect from the speaker’s size. 

Conventional looks but magical sound—the ES- 

2s’ big sisters, the M40s, with the same 

midrange driver, are REG’s reference speakers. 

Reviewed by Robert E. Greene in Issue 110 

$2500–$5000 

REFERENCE 3A MM DE CAPO I 

Price: $2500 

www.reference3a.com 

The Reference 3A De Capo uses the latest version 

of Daniel Dehay’s 8" direct-drive 

(crossoverless) carbon-fiber driver and a cus- 



tom SEAS silk-dome tweeter. Both are mounted 

in a small, rear-ported, and beautifully finished 

enclosure. Rated at 92dB sensitivity, they can 

be effectively used with amps (especially tubed 

ones) from 8 watts up, and really shine when 

paired with a first-rate subwoofer. 

Reviewed by Aaron Shatzman in Issue 132 

VON SCHWEIKERT VR-2 

Price: $2500 

www.vonschweikert.com 

Von Schweikert’s VR- 

2 (“VR” for Virtual 

Reality) is a towertype,transmissionline 

design with three 

forward-facing drivers 

plus a rear-firing 

“ambience recovery” 

driver. The VR-2 

offers deeply extended 

(mid-20Hz range) 

bass, a midrange 

and treble whose 

clarity scales upward 

with that of associated 

electronics, and 

lively and expressive 

dynamics. The ambience 

recovery driver—when 

used judiciously—helps 

add 

plausible depth to 

the soundstage. For 

best bass definition 

and clarity, install 25 pounds of lead shot in 

the damping chamber provided in the bottom of 

each speaker. In our tests, the VR-2s opened 

up and imaged best when positioned relatively 

far apart (as the manual suggests). Experiment 

patiently with positioning for finest results. 

Reviewed by CM in AVguide, July 2003 

SPENDOR SP-1/2 

Price: $2999 

www.qsandd.com 

This medium-sized box speaker with three drivers, 

two of them tweeters, offers some of the 

most musically accurate sound available at any 

price, within the limitations of no deep bass 

and somewhat restricted loudness (SP1/2s are 

dynamically lively on transients, but are not 

intended to fill really large rooms with high volumes). 

Stand-mounting (around 14–16" is best) 

is needed, with some space around. Properly 

set up and listened to on axis, the SP1/2s 

have a truth to instrumental timbre that few 

speakers come close to. The declining dollar 

has forced the American price of this UK speaker 

up a little, but it remains well worth the 

money if correct tonal balance and accuracy of 

timbre are priorities. Reviewed by REG in Issue 90 

MARTINLOGAN AEON I 

Price: $3295 

www.martinlogan.com 

Utilizing the first significant 

upgrade to ML’s electrostatic 

technology in more 

than 15 years, the Aeon i’s 

Generation 2 ESL panel 

achieves a remarkable 

level of clarity, smoothness, 

and transparency 

from 400Hz on up. To 

complement the new 

panel, a freshly designed 

8" aluminum-cone woofer 

has been added, as well 

as a more rigid bassreflex 

enclosure. Most of 

the time the blend is 

quite seamless, but the 

deepest bass notes will 

reveal the slight slowness 

of the woofer compared 

to the ’stat. A new 

rear-firing tweeter helps 

off-axis listening, but 

totally screws up the 

speaker’s mostly excellent 

coherence, so leave 

it switched off. These 

babies sound best with 

about three feet behind 

them and a few to the 

sides, and also sing their 

sweetest with a powerful amp. 

Reviewed by WG in Issue 146 

SOUNDLINE AUDIO SL2 

Price: $3495 

www.soundlineaudio.com 

This terrifically well-integrated hybrid speaker 

mates a planar-magnetic linesource midrangetweeter 

with a 10.4" dynamic woofer. The 

blend is good and, of course, from 250Hz on 

up coherence is total as there is only one driver. 

Being a dipole, it needs to be away from 

walls, and since it is a linesource early room 

reflections are just about nil. Frequency 

response is notably flat, the midrange is quite 

natural, the bass is deep, if not subwooferlevel, 

and soundstaging is wide and well 

defined. This speaker comes into its own with 

large-scale music. Reviewed by REG in Issue 144 

VANDERSTEEN 3A SIGNATURE 

Price: $3495 

www.vandersteen.com 

Like all Vandersteen designs, 

the 3A Signature is time-andphase 

accurate. Its driver 

complement features the 

patented midrange and tweeter used in the 

vaunted Vandersteen 5. The 3A Signature, 

which sounds more relaxed than others in this 

price category, is musically seductive, and will 

appeal to those who want to forget about the 

sound and enjoy the music. The 3A Signature 

trades off some dynamic contrast and 

midrange resolution for its overall ability to 

involve the listener in the music’s meaning. 

Excellent bass extension, combined with a 

good balance between bass warmth and articulation, 

round out this outstanding effort. The 

3A Signature is a world-class speaker at a realworld 

price. Reviewed by RH in Issue 122 

COINCIDENT SPEAKER 

TECHNOLOGY PARTIAL ECLIPSE 

Price: $3499 

www.coincidentspeaker.com 

Albeit on a smaller scale, 

this 3-way floorstander 

shares many of the same 

sonic virtues that earned 

its big brother, Total 

Eclipse, a 2001 Golden 

Ear Award. The midband 

tilts slightly to the warm 

side, with gloriously open 

and extended highs and a 

tight, well-controlled bass. 

Mirror-image side-firing 8" 

woofers can be positioned 

facing in or out, necessitating 

some experimentation 

for proper room setup. 

The Partial is an especially 

synergistic match with 

higher-powered OTL tube 

designs, but mates nicely 

with solid-state as well. 

Reviewed by SK in Issue 146 



DEFINTIVE TECHNOLOGY 

BP7001SC 

Price: $3500 


The BP7001SC SuperTower is a serious highend 

speaker that does a remarkable number of 

things right. Featuring a two-way, six-driver, bipolar 

D’Appolito array, the speaker offers deep 

and spacious imaging, delicacy and finesse on 

textural and dynamic details, and the ability to 

handle heavily modulated, explosively dynamic 

passages without breaking a sweat. A built-in 

powered subwoofer (with a 10" active driver 

and two 10" passive radiators) provides tight, 

potent bass that extends down to around 20Hz 

(freeing owners to use amplifiers optimized 

more for midrange/treble subtlety than for fullrange 

clout). There is a narrow upper midrange 

band where you might hear occasional hints of 

edginess or sibilance—but that’s a very minor 

drawback. For best results, place BP7001SCs 

well out from the back wall (more than the 

manual says); go easy with the subwoofer level 

controls; and where needed use room treatments 

to smooth reflected output from the rear 

of the bipolar array. Reviewed by CM in Issue 146 

REVEL F30 PERFORMA 

Price: $3500 

www.revelspeakers.com 

The three-way, full-range loudspeaker for those 

who thought they could only afford a skinny 

two-way tower. Exquisitely finished, this 90pounder 

has dynamics and extension to burn. 

Prefers a medium-sized room to breathe. It 

especially shines in low-level resolution and 

nuance. Some may find the tweeter a bit lean 

and white in character, but most will revel in 

this bang-for-the-buck triumph. Golden Ear 

Award, Issue 133 

THIEL AUDIO CS2.4 

Price: $3900 

www.thielaudio.com 

This superbly crafted three-way floorstander 

features a unique concentric tweeter/midrange 

configuration and an oval passive radiator. It 

adds up to pinpoint images, an ultra-wide 

soundstage, and near-realistic orchestral scaling. 

Dynamics, both micro and macro, are invigorating. 

The CS2.4 is both analytical and musical, 

with a sweet yet bright treble balance 

requiring quality amplification and attention to 

setup. Because of the speaker’s first-order 

crossovers, Thiel’s minimum recommended listening 

distance should be adhered to for best 

driver integration. Reviewed by NG in Issue 144 

AUDIO PHYSIC TEMPO 3 LE 

Price: $3995 

www.immedia.com 

Incorporating Vifa’s excellent ring-radiator 

tweeter and a pair of identical-looking (but not 

acting) 6.5" mid/bass drivers, this elegant 

speaker angles back on its base in order to 

time-align the drivers. Cleverly ported at the 

junction of the cabinet and base, the Tempo 

excels at transparency and soundstaging, with 

an almost hypnotic ability to define images in 

space. In smaller rooms you’ll get real bass 

extension, with definition and impact. Although 

there’s a hint of added brightness in the treble, 

the tweeter remains one of the sweetest we’ve 

heard. Reviewed by NG in Issue 127 

MAGNEPAN MG 3.6 

Price: $4375 


Yet another great deal from 

Magnepan, this large ribbon/quasiribbon 

dipole gives you much of the sound of 

its big brother, the 20.1, for considerably less 

moolah. As with the 20.1, be sure to bring a 

high-power, high-quality amp to the party, and 

make sure you have sufficient space to let 

these things “breathe” or the ribbon tweeter 

will start to glare. The best buy in a large fullrange 

planar loudspeaker. Golden Ear, Issue 121 

DYNAUDIO “SPECIAL TWENTY-FIVE” 

Price: $4800 

www.dynaudiousa.com 

Dynaudio’s 25th Anniversary compact monitor 

is a worthy alternative to the larger models in 

this range. Beautifully wrapped in a burled 

birch veneer, this speaker reaches down to a 

surprising 35Hz, presents a large soundstage 

of tonal richness and dynamic complexity, and 

despite its puny size is capable of surprising 

punch and high output levels. It likes power 

(40–100 watts), is best in small rooms, and 

needs space around it, as well as a top-notch 

stand. Reviewed by Anna Logg in Issue 141 

SONUS FABER CREMONA AUDITOR 

Price: $4845 (includes dedicated stand) 


A stand-mounted 2-way version of Sonus 

Faber’s $7995 floorstanding Cremona, the 

Auditor shares many of that models virtues— 

its warmth, coherence, sweet extended treble, 

and seductive midrange—without the dynamic 

range and bass extension of the larger model. 

Placement can be tricky, as this speaker likes 

to be well into a room and its lateral tilt and 

toe-in are critical. Although small, the Auditor 

can play quite loudly, and can handle a fair 

amount of power, be it tube or solid-state (we’d 

recommend 50W minimum). And beautiful as 

they are, removing the stringed grilles is a 

must if you want to hear this elegant Italian 

speaker at its best. Reviewed by WG in Issue 146 


The string quartet has long 

been regarded as chamber 

music’s primo subgenre, from 

its beginnings serious in 

musical intent with a tightly 

homogeneous sound. The 

piano trio—the combination of piano, 

violin, and cello—developed 250 years 

ago as something quite different and then 

metamorphosed up through the modern 

era. By the close of the Eighteenth 

Century, every middle-class European 

home had a piano and, especially for 

young women, some fluency at the keyboard 

was considered a sign of “refinement.” 

The earliest piano trios were 

essentially keyboard sonatas, with parts 

for the other players more or less optional. 

The material was lighter in tone and, 

by virtue of the forces involved, more 

open in texture than a string quartet. In 

this age before recorded sound, the piano 

trio was exploited as a way of bringing 

larger-scale forms home from the concert 

hall: arrangements of popular symphonic 

works appeared in large numbers for 

ambitious amateurs to tackle on a Sunday 

afternoon. But the great composers would 

soon reclaim the medium as an opportunity 

for full artistic expression. 

In terms of professional ensembles, 

the piano trio also differs from the string 

quartet. While even casual classical listeners 

can rattle off the names of a halfdozen 

renowned quartets—the Juilliard, 

Guarneri, Tokyo, Emerson, etc.—a comparable 

list of piano trios is harder to 

come up with. Part of the problem is 

that some of the most esteemed trios 

over the years have simply utilized the 

names of the three players for their 

moniker, sounding a bit like law firms 

BASIC REPERTOIRE 

The Piano Trio 

Andrew Quint 

in the process: Stern-Rose-Istomin or 

Ma-Ax-Kim. But more importantly, 

with a few exceptions, the trio hasn’t 

been the main focus of musical activity 

for such players, and artistic values could 

suffer. The “million dollar trio” of 

Rubinstein, Heifetz, and Piatigorsky, in 

the words of one writer, “played more 

like a thousand dollars.” 

Though mono-era recordings of the 

venerated Cortot-Thibault-Casals Trio 

justifiably remain in the catalog, the 

most important ensemble by far has 

been the Beaux Arts Trio. It’s possible to 

survey most of the consequential piano 

trio literature quite well listening only to 

this group. They formed in 1955 at the 

Berkshire Music Festival, originally 

with pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist 

Daniel Guilet, and Bernard Greenhouse 

on cello. Guilet remained until 1969 

and Greenhouse until 1987. The string 

chairs have turned over more frequently 

in recent years, though always attracting 

top-notch musicians—the current ones 

are Daniel Hope (violin) and Antonio 

Meneses (cello). The “glue” of this 

ensemble for going on half a century, 

providing a genuine source of artistic 

continuity, has been Pressler, whose 

playing has lost very little of its assured 

grace and insight. 

On to the music, then. 

Haydn wrote around 30 piano trios 

and with some a Baroque model is still in 

evidence, the violin and cello having a 

subsidiary function. The later trios are of 

a quality comparable to his mature symphonies 

and string quartets—tuneful, 

masterfully constructed pieces—and, as 

in the G major Trio, Hob. XV:25, the 

violin is episodically “emancipated” to 


take a leading melodic role. The Beaux 

Arts recorded all of Haydn’s trios. They 

are currently available only in their totality, 

as a nine-CD Philips box [454098]. 

Bargain-priced or not, this may be too 

much of a good thing for all but rabid 

piano trio (or Haydn) devotees, though if 

you still do vinyl, the original 1970s single 

LPs shouldn’t be hard to find, cheaply, 

at used record stores. For a single-CD 

introduction, performances of the last 

four trios from Robert Levin, Vivian 

Behrs, and Anner Bylsma [Sony 53120] 

are highly recommendable. These are 

“original instrument” performances— 

Levin on fortepiano—a chance to hear 

the effect these pieces made when they 

were new, with open, airy, bracing 

instrumental sonorities. 

Mozart left six mature piano trios, 

all charming, melodically fresh and harmonically 

fluid, if not as “important” as 

the operas, concertos, or even some of 

the composer’s other chamber music. 

The Beaux Arts Trio—Daniel Hope, Menahem 

Pressler, Antonio Meneses 


The Larghetto of the Trio in B flat, 

K.502, for instance, delivers the sense of 

repose one gets from the slow movements 

of certain Mozart piano concertos, 

and the final Allegretto of K. 564 has to 

bring a smile. The six pieces are 

addressed by the Beaux Arts with their 

customary attention to detail in a 

Philips Duo set [466154], filled out 

with Mozart’s lovely trio for clarinet, 

viola, and piano, K.498. 

It was Beethoven and Schubert who 

truly turned the piano trio genre into an 

equal opportunity enterprise for the 

three players. Beethoven composed 

around a dozen works, including recognized 

masterworks of enormous scope 

(the 40-minute “Archduke” Trio, Op.97 

and the “Ghost” Trio, Op.70, No.2) as 

well as the modest Allegretto, WoO39, 

written for the ten-year old daughter of 

a friend. There are several “theme and 

variations” pieces, like the delightful 

“Kakadu” Variations, based on a popular 

song of the day. Beethoven’s Op. 1 was a 

set of three piano trios, first heard at an 

aristocratic soirée, where they made a 

quite positive impression on Haydn. 

The composer was fully cognizant of the 

importance of the trio to amateur musicmaking 

and Beethoven himself fashioned 

arrangements of his Second 

Symphony and the famous Op. 20 

Septet. The Beaux Arts recorded all of 

Beethoven’s music for piano trio 

between 1979 and 1982 and these sensitive 

and perfectly scaled performances, 

featuring intimate slow movements and 

exuberant finales, can be had in an 

attractively packaged (and priced) five- 

CD set [Philips 468411]. For a generous 

two-disc selection of Beethoven trios, 

you won’t go wrong with Stern-Istomin- 

Rose [Sony 64513] which offers playing 

that’s more boldly outlined and a bit 

more Romantically inclined than the 

Beaux Arts, but never overblown. 

With Schubert’s two masterpieces, 

products of the last year of his tragically 

short life, the piano trio reached full 

maturity. The second, in E flat, D.929, 

is somewhat more serious in tone, while 

the B flat Trio, D.898, likely performed 

at one of those famed “Schubertiads,” is 

less severe. Both works blend formal 

classical architecture and the composer’s 

unsurpassed gift for song. For melting 

lyricism, look no further than D.898’s 

slow movement, with its gorgeous intertwining 

of violin and cello lines: there 

can be no question at this point that the 

medium has progressed well beyond a 

piano sonata with string obbligatos. The 

Beaux Arts readings, on another Philips 


Duo release [438700], are light-textured 

but rhythmically propelled. That 

set also holds a single-movement piano 

trio that Schubert wrote at 15 and the 

Adagio, D.897, that may have been the 

original slow movement for the B flat 

Trio. On Chandos [CHAN 10033], the 

Borodin Trio provides a more robust 

approach, still tonally attractive and 

stylish. New-format listeners will find a 

recent Praga hybrid stereo SACD 

[PRD/DSD 250 201], with both D.898 

and D.929 performed by the Guarneri 

Trio Prague, that is stunning—both 

musically and sonically. 

The piano trio flourished in the 

Romantic era, with most of that period’s 

greatest composers applying their craft to 

the form. Felix Mendelssohn wrote two 

trios that convey both the scope of that 


composer’s symphonies and the intimacy 

of his piano music. The first, in D minor, 

opens with a fiery Molto allegro ed agitato, 

continues on to a singing, powerful 

Andante, and then a Scherzo possessing 

the lighter-than-air quality of A 

Midsummer Night’s Dream. The C minor 

trio is less popular but just as melodically 

ingratiating, with a blistering Scherzo. 

Mendelssohn’s two trios represent a 

judicious balance of Classical structure 

and Romantic impulse; Schumann’s 

three are more impetuous, more of a 

journey. No. 1 in D minor has a turbulent 

opening movement with particularly 

florid writing for piano, while the sad, 

solemn third movement is quite memorable. 

No. 3 in G minor begins with a 

stormy fast movement, exploring deep 

and secret recesses of the psyche, with 

moments of dreamlike fantasy and tender 

lyricism. The finale, in a major key, 

is triumphant and affirming. 

Chopin’s trio in G minor, Op.8 is a 

gem, a piece that makes one wish the 

composer had produced more chamber 

music. The opening Allegro con fuoco is 

assertive, with idiomatic string writing 

and, of course, a magnificent piano part 

that can practically stand on its own. In 

the exquisite, relaxed slow movement, 

the music sighs and shimmers like 

Chopin’s solo keyboard pieces, with flurries 

of rapid filigree from the piano. 

All six of these works are included in 

the latest Philips reissue set of the BAT’s 

recordings, noted below. The playing is 

intense and brilliant in the Mendelssohn 

works, alert to the abruptly shifting 

moods of Schumann’s trios, and 


Menahem Pressler is fully up to the virtuosic 

demands of the Chopin. 

Four piano trios by Brahms survive, 

including an early work in A major discovered 

in the 1920s. Op. 8 in B major 

dates from about the same time, though 

it was revised decades later by the perfectionist 

composer. The two mature 

works—Op. 87 in C major and Op. 101 

in C minor—manifest fully their creator’s 

mastery of form and his profound 

gift for the transformation of thematic 

material. Both are full of appealing, contrasted 

melody, worked into logical, 

coherent structures that wow the musicologists 

in the crowd but sweep the 

more casual listener along as well. 

Brahms’ musical thought involves 

commandingly complex ideas that can 

threaten to overwhelm the capacity of 

the piano trio genre. There’s no such 

problem for the Beaux Arts, who collectively 

digest the dense intensity of the 

trios; violin and cello never seem to be 

straining against a more powerful adversary 

in these readings [Philips 438365]. 

(The CD set omits the A major composition, 

that appeared for the first time 

ever in the LP box, back in the 1960s, 

but includes the horn and clarinet trios.) 

For a recent one-disc alternative, try the 

Eroica Trio’s recording of Opp. 8 and 87 

[Angel 57199], reviewed favorably in 

TAS 136, performances that are firmly 

shaped yet warmly expressive. 

Brahms’ protégé, Dvorák, published 

four appealing works for piano trio. The 

general musical public may remember 

Dvorák best for his last few symphonies 

and other orchestral music such as the 

Slavonic Dances or the Cello Concerto, 

but chamber music may have been the 

most important aspect of his wide-ranging 

output. The first three compositions—Op. 

21 in B major, Op. 26 in G 

minor, and Op. 65 in F minor—reflect a 

marriage of Brahmsian formal authority 

with an unbridled folklike songfulness. 

The last, “Dumky,” Op.90, is a series of 

short pieces with a freer style and more 

populist appeal. Beaux Arts [Philips 

454259] give warmly human and emotive 

performances that never come close 

to schmaltz. For an excellent alternative, 


seek out a single Hyperion CD 

[A66895] presenting the F minor and 

“Dumky” trios from the English 

Florestan Trio. This ensemble combines 

refined elegance and a passionate directness 

in their readings, and are superbly 

recorded by Tony Faulkner. And speaking 

of superb recordings, audiophiles may 

remember that David Wilson once made 

records in addition to loudspeakers, and 

had a special knack for chamber music. 

Wilson recorded the San Francisco-based 

Francesco Trio in the “Dumky”—the 

three instruments are ideally scaled and 

dimensional, with exceptionally rich, 

sweet string sound. The playing is rhapsodic 

and colorful. Snap up the LP or CD 

if you come across it. 

Tchaikovsky wrote his one piano 

trio, a form he came to only reluctantly, 

as a tribute to his friend and Moscow 

Conservatory colleague Nicolai 

Rubinstein. The piece is unusually configured 

in two movements, the first an 

impassioned elegy and the second a halfhour-long 

theme and variations, meant 

to represent various aspects of 

Rubinstein’s personality. Those variations 

are wonderfully inventive, cumulative 

in their musical effect and climaxing 

in a powerful funeral march, before 

ending quietly. The early 1980s recording 

from Vladimir Ashkenazy, Itzhak 

Perlman, and Lynn Harrell [EMI 

47988] presents a full-blooded performance 

that’s hard to beat. 

Rachmaninoff composed his 

“Elegiac” piano trios as a young man, 

but both already have the identifiable 

voice of the mature composer. The first, 

in G minor, is a 15-minute, single 

movement work. No. 2 in D minor is far 

more substantial—three movements and 

over 40 minutes in duration—and was 


dedicated to Tchaikovsky after his death, 

just as the older man had dedicated his 

trio to Rubinstein a decade earlier. 

Rachmaninoff maintains tension and 

interest over long time frames, and for 

one movement wrote a series of variations 

based on a theme from his orchestral 

work, The Rock. Highly recommendable 

is a 20-year old recording of both 

pieces from the Borodin Trio, still available 

from Chandos [CHAN 8341]: it’s 

stylistically apt and, despite the reverberant 

acoustic typical of the label at the 

time, easy on the ears. One other Russian 

Romantic trio belongs on a short list of 

top examples of the genre—Anton 

Arensky’s Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op.32. 

Arensky was a Mahler contemporary who 

also taught at the Moscow Conservatory. 

The D minor Trio is possibly the composer’s 

best-known work—a vigorous, 

outgoing, dramatic, and melodically dis- 


tinctive piece. It’s fluently executed by 

the threesome of Yefim Bronfman, Cho- 

Liang Lin, and Gary Hoffman on a Sony 

CD [53269], a disc that also has a 

thrilling version of the Tchaikovsky Trio. 

Interest in the piano trio trailed off to 

some degree in the Twentieth Century, 

though a few works are essential. Maurice 

Ravel’s Trio of 1914 is a mature masterpiece 

that exploits the coloristic possibilities 

of the ensemble in ways previously 

unconsidered. Ravel creates see-through, 

gossamer-like textures, and the Trio sings 

with a lean athleticism. The work is rendered 

with refinement and emotional 

acuity by the Florestan Trio on Hyperion 

A67114, another program engineered by 

Tony Faulkner. The same CD holds 

Gabriel Fauré’s Trio in D minor, composed 

when Fauré was in his late 70s, a 

three-movement piece with a wonderful 

sense of motion, lift, and light. The cen- 

tral Andantino is especially alluring. The 

disc is filled out with Debussy’s early (and 

completely uncharacteristic, if engaging) 

trio—and is available as a spectacularly 

open, natural-sounding SACD. 

The iconoclastic Charles Ives wrote 

his piano trio, regarded as among his 

finest compositions, in 1904-1905, and 

later revised it. The music is remarkably 

forward-looking and—not unusual for 

this composer—all over the place stylistically. 

The trio reflects on Ives’ undergraduate 

days at Yale. The first movement 

infiltrates passages of free atonality 

with traditional melody—the musings 

of an old philosophy professor. The 

central movement is titled “T.S.I.A.J.” 

(“This Scherzo Is A Joke”), incorporating 

a nightmarish mélange of popular 

songs and march tunes, including such 

timeless classics as “Pig Town Fling” 

and “Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay.” The 


lengthy finale, inspired by a Sunday 

church service on campus, has a grave 

monumentality—quintessentially 

American in its broad gestures and bighearted 

songfulness. It’s challenging 

music that rewards repeated hearings. 

The Beaux Arts play the hell out of it. 

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote two 

trios, the first at age 17, even before the 

precocious First Symphony that brought 

him world-wide attention. It’s a short 

one-movement work, with Romantic 

and Impressionist touches, but also plenty 

of the composer’s modernistic grit. 

Trio No. 2 was composed in the mid- 

1940s, in memory of a friend who died 

in WW II. It opens with a spectral cello 

melody played with harmonics, joined 

by single lines from violin and keyboard 

to achieve the grim, still sense of 

expectancy so often found in this composer’s 

symphonies and string quartets. 


It’s a dark and disturbing work throughout, 

but especially in the finale, in which 

Shostakovich responded to reports of SS 

guards forcing concentration camp victims 

to dance next to their graves before 

murdering them. Both trios get exceptionally 

accomplished and idiomatic performances 

from the Kalichstein-Laredo- 

Robinson Trio on Arabesque [Z6698], 

an invaluable two-CD set that also 

includes the violin, viola, and cello 

sonatas. As one listens to the harrowing 

vividness of Shostakovich’s musical 

imagery, it is extraordinary to consider 

that the piano trio had its beginnings as 

a benign diversion for amateurs. 

There is much more to the piano trio 

literature—works by Hummel, Franck, 

Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Milhaud, Martinu, 

Villa-Lobos, Copland, and Rorem to 

consider, among many others. And they 

are still being written: Jennifer Higdon, 

whose orchestral music has been championed 

lately by Robert Spano and 

Telarc, had her piano trio premiered last 

July to great acclaim. 

A listener just getting started with 

piano trios could begin with nicely 

priced Beaux Arts reissues: the Schubert 

and Beethoven sets noted above plus 

Universal’s latest B-A collection, a fourdisc 

box [Philips 475171] that includes 

the two Mendelssohn trios, the three 

Schumann works, and Chopin’s Op. 8, as 

well as a good performance of the 

Tchaikovsky, the Ives, and the 

Shostakovich No. 2; plus trios by 

Smetana and Clara Schumann. Add the 

Florestan Trio disc for the Ravel and 

Fauré compositions, and you’ve got a 

good chunk of the best repertoire for 

around $100. Next up would be the 

Brahms, Dvorák, and Mozart trios, and 

after that—you’re on your own. & 


equipment report 

NAD C 162 Preamplifier, C 272 Power Amplifier 

Chris Martens 

Before we talk about NAD’s C 

162 and C 272 preamp and 

power amplifiers—the flagships 

of the firm’s “Classic 

Series” product line—I 

should tell you I have a deep fondness for 

well-designed, affordable amplifiers, 

especially ones that strive for good 

overall balance and musicality (rather 

than for whatever happens to be the 

trendy audiophile “virtue-of-themonth”). 

I should also mention that 

I’ve owned (or assembled for others) 

a number of NAD-based systems 

over the years—systems that often 

produced exceptional sound at reasonable 

prices (see this month’s TAS 

Retrospective for further details). 

This is not to suggest that I find all 

NAD products universally praiseworthy, 

since like most of you I think 

it’s necessary to assess each new component 

on its own merits—regardless of 

the manufacturer’s reputation—and to 

let the product evaluation chips fall 

where they may. But it is fair to say I 

was eager to hear what NAD’s new C 

162/C 272 pair could do, and let me tell 

you up front that this $1298 pair did 

not disappoint. 

The C 162 is a full-featured stereo 

preamplifier that provides six line-level 

inputs, a phono section with dual 

(switch selectable) moving-magnet and 

moving-coil inputs, and two sets of outputs—one 

fixed-level and one variablelevel 

(which together make handling 

Plainly the C 162 and 272 

have all the important “features 

and functions” bases 

well covered, but for most of 

us the essential question is 

whether these components 

can make sweet music. 

complicated bi-amplified systems a 

snap). The C 162 breaks with current 

“audio purist” norms, providing (gasp!) 

a balance control and tone controls (with 

the obligatory tone-defeat switch, of 

course). Though it may be high-end 

heresy to say so, I welcome the return of 

the balance control since my practical 

experience is that the soundstages of 

some recordings benefit enormously 

from a bit of judicious balance tweaking. 

The tone controls, too, are among the 

most useful and audiophile-friendly that 

I’ve heard, adding virtually no veiling 

when in-circuit, and providing toneshaping 

curves that are extraordinarily 

subtle (they function primarily as delicate 

“timbre tuners”). Finally, the C 

162 comes with a highly intuitive 

remote control that’s a joy to use. 

The C 272 is a 150Wpc stereo 

power amp that, in keeping with 

NAD tradition, sounds much more 

powerful than its power ratings 

would suggest. With bi-amplification 

requirements in mind, the C 

272 provides both fixed- and variable-level 

inputs (making it easy to 

level-match the C 272 with a thirdparty 

amp). The amplifier bristles 

with convenience-oriented details, 

including two sets of speaker binding 

posts (to facilitate bi-wiring), a switchselectable 

Soft Clipping circuit (useful 

in preventing damage when hard 

partiers crank the amplifier up to speaker-roasting 

levels), 12 V trigger inputs, 

and a signal-sensing automatic turn-on 

feature. Generally, I found these convenience 

touches worked well, though I 



found it necessary to use the master 

power switch in lieu of the signal-sensing 

circuit (because the sensing circuit 

required overly high signal levels to stay 

powered up, and occasionally switched 

the amplifier to “Standby” mode during 

quieter listening sessions). The C 272 

features proprietary NAD “PowerDrive” 

technology that “automatically senses 

the impedance of the loudspeaker and 

then adjusts its power supply settings to 

best cope with that specific load.” 

Plainly the C 162 and 272 have all 

the important “features and functions” 

bases well covered, but for most of us the 

essential question is whether these components 

can make sweet music. The 

answer is that they do, and in ways that 

might please even jaded audiophiles. 

Specifically, I found the C 162/C 272 

pair offered four beautifully integrated 

qualities that together produced the 

kind of effortless musicality that makes 

you want to listen for hours on end. 

The first and most central of the 

NADs’ musical qualities is midrange 

voicing that sounds open and welldefined, 

yet that always captures the natural 

warmth, “roundness” of tone, and 

evocative sweetness of midrange instruments. 

Through the NAD pair, for 

example, you can hear how Pat Metheny 

sculpts the envelopes of each jazz guitar 

note on the “He’s Gone Away” track 

from Metheny and Charlie Haden’s 

haunting Beyond the Missouri Sky [Verve]. 

If you’ve heard this piece through many 

other high-end amps you’ve probably 

noticed that most apply an artificial layer 

of edge-enhanced “frosting” to the guitar, 

where the NADs instead give you 

Metheny’s signature tone straight up— 

pure, sweet, soulful, and without any 

“hi-fi” adornment. If, like me, you find 

live music typically sounds smoother and 

less “edgy” than most audio systems, you 

may find the NADs’ ability to deliver 

detail and texture without fake “edge 

enhancement” a revelation. 

Second, the NAD pair offers unfailing 

upper midrange and treble smoothness, 

even on vigorous transients. If you 

listen to the high overtones of Milt 

Jackson’s vibraphones or Connie Kay’s 

percussion from the The Best of the 

Modern Jazz Quartet LP [Pablo/Fantasy], 

for example, you will find the C 

162/272 pair provides plenty of highfrequency 

attack, shimmer, and decay on 

individual notes, but without any of the 

“zingy” overshoot or exaggerated harmonic 

enrichment that, in so many 

other components, passes for “high defi- 


nition.” On orchestral strings, too, the 

NADs—as heard on the Abbado/Berlin 

live recording of the Mahler Symphony 

No. 9 [Deutsche Grammophon]—let 

you hear the crisp, incisive sound of the 

bowing, yet render overall string tones 

(and overtones) with a sound that 

remains rich, warm, and golden. Few 

affordable components handle the treble 

smoothness/extension balancing act as 

effectively as the NAD components do, 

and I’ve found that many which promise 

superior definition or transparency seem 

to achieve those qualities at the expense 

of voicing that can become “glassy” or 

“hard-edged” at times—characteristics 

that prove fatiguing in the long run. 

Third, the C 162/C 272 pair offers 

clear yet robust and full-bodied bass, 

especially in the all-important mid-bass 

region (this quality is one of the essen- 

tial ingredients in NAD’s “house 

sound”). It seems to me any number of 

amplifier-makers have run off in a blind 

quest to achieve better bass “definition,” 

only to wind up with tightly-controlled 

amps that suffer from serious low-frequency 

anemia. Who needs that? In contrast, 

the NADs produce ample midbass—on 

low percussion, low winds or 

brass, and on acoustic or electric bass— 

bass that has terrific weight, warmth, 

and vitality (and, yes, quite good definition, 

as well). Two beautiful recordings 

that make the most of the NADs’ bass 

capabilities (and that show why proper 

mid-bass weight is essential) are Patricia 

Barber’s Verse [Blue Note/Premonition] 

and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones’ Little 

Worlds [Columbia], both of which represent 

“master classes” of sorts on the creative 

and melodic use of bass in popular 


music and jazz. On both recordings, the 

NAD pair sounds night/day different 

from (and better than) amplifiers that 

come from “tight and bright” school. 

Fourth, the C 162/C 272 pair treats 

the listener to highly believable threedimensional 

soundstaging on great and 

even not-so-great recordings. While you 

could probably find amps with better lateral 

imaging and/or front-to-back stage 

depth, per se, the NADs’ strengths in both 

areas are so well balanced that the resulting 

soundstage almost always sounds 

convincing. Thus, when you listen to the 

classic, Cozart/Fine-produced, 

Dorati/London recording of the Webern 

Five Pieces for Orchestra [Mercury], you 

hear—as you should—sound that conveys 

the feeling of real musicians performing 

in a real hall. One small tip: The 

NAD pair develops noticeably more “liq- 



uid” and three-dimensional sound after 

being powered-up for an hour or two. 

A final point that must not go 

unmentioned is that the C 162 comes 

with a dynamite phono section—one that 

dramatically improves the already good 

“value proposition” this preamp puts 

forward. For some perspective, I compared 

the NAD phono section to the terrific 

Musical Surroundings Phonomena, 

which is one of the best-sounding 

affordable phonostages The Absolute 

Sound has reviewed. While the 

Phonomena offers greater set-up flexibility 

and better overall definition, 

focus, and transparency than the NAD 

phonostage, the sounds of the two sections 

are—on the whole—more similar 

than they are different. Then, when you 

consider that the Phonomena sells for 

about the same price that C 162 does, 

you suddenly realize the NAD phono 

section is not only a solid performer, but 

a screaming good deal! 

As you can tell from the preceding 

discussion, I greatly admired the sound 

of NAD’s C 162 and C 272. Even so, I 

suspect many of you will want to know 

how the NADs compare to higherpriced 

top-tier electronics. My reference 

amplifier is a Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 

300 Integrated (which sells for several 

times the price of the NAD pair), and 

comparison between the Tri-Vista and 

the C 162/C 272 combo proved illuminating. 

As you might expect, the Tri- 

Vista did almost everything a little better 

than the NADs could, offering par- 


C 162 Preamplifier 

Solid-state preamplifier with remote control 

Number and type of inputs: Six line-level (two 

tape in), one phono (switch-selectable 

MM/MC) 

Type of outputs: Preamp out, fixed; preamp 

out, variable; two tape out; NAD 

Link, 12 V Trigger 

Dimensions: 17 1/8" x 3 1/8" x 11" 

Weight: 13.2 lbs. 

C 272 Power Amplifier 

Number of channels: Two 

Power output: 150 Watts/channel @ 4/8 

ohms 

Number and type of audio inputs: Two fixed, 

two variable 

Dimensions: 17 1/8" x 5" x 13 13/16" 



Gallo Acoustics Nucleus Reference III loudspeakers; 

Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 300 integrated 

amplifier & Tri-Vista SACD player; 

Clearaudio Emotion turntable & Satisfy pickup 

arm with Benz Micro ACE-L phono cartridge; 

Musical Surroundings Phonomena 

phonostage; Richard Gray Power Company 

1200S power conditioner; AudioQuest 

Jaguar interconnects and CV-6 speaker 

cables with Dielectric Bias System 

ticular advantages in the areas of grainfree 

transparency, soundstage depth, and 

overall three-dimensionality; even so, 

the operative phrase is “a little better.” 

When switching from the Tri-Vista to 

the NADs, I observed—on an analytical 

level—a number of noticeable performance 

differences, yet on an emotional 

level I didn’t find the “musical satisfaction” 

gap between the amplifiers all that 

large. This is perhaps a roundabout way 

of saying the NADs always got the 

musical essentials right—enough so that 

I was quickly able to relax and enjoy my 

music without worrying about (or particularly 

missing) the superior sound my 

reference amp would have provided. 

The true genius of the C 162 and C 

272, then, is that they bring you close 

enough to top-tier performance in so 

many areas, with a sound that is so balanced 

and free from disruptive discontinuities, 

that you are released from preoccupation 

with audio equipment—and 

set free to savor (and become deeply content 

with) the beauty of music, itself. 

What could be a higher recommendation 

than that? & 


NAD ELECTRONICS INTERNATIONAL 

Lenbrook Industries Limited 

633 Granite Court 

Pickering, Ontario, Canada L1W 3K1 

Prices: C 162 preamp, $599; 

C 272 power amp, $699 



YBA Intégré Integrated Amplifier 

Neil Gader 

First impressions don’t always 

hold true in life—or in audio, 

for that matter. However, this 

was not the case with the YBA 

Intégré Passion. The rich and 

rewarding sense of musicality I noted at 

the very start of my listening sessions 

with Yves-Bernard André’s 100Wpc 

integrated amplifier never changed, 

from the first day to the last. 

This story begins with a wave of nostalgia 

when I found myself comparing an 

old Columbia pressing of the original 

cast album of Camelot to the recently 

released digital remastering. The Passion 

had been warming up and I decided to 

slide it into the reference system. During 

Camelot’s overture and trumpet fanfare, 

the YBA reproduced brass and upper 

harmonic textures so naturally that I had 

to listen to the cuts again. The sound was 

dynamic without edge. Sustained notes 

didn’t have even a hint of graininess. 

Dense orchestral low frequencies seemed 

to rise from the very foundations of the 

stage and billow into the room. The star 

quality was there without a doubt. Yet, 

as I listened further I noted that the 

Passion’s overall character wasn’t overtly 

voluptuous or extroverted in a Marilyn 

sense; it was more akin to Audrey 

Hepburn—leaner, more angular and 

pert, but with a deep inner radiance. 

There are two primary characteristics 

that define the Passion’s excellence. First 

is its lack of noise or distortion artifacts. 

Great amplifiers have the capacity for 

coiled stillness during musical silences. 

They suggest a tranquility that can turn 

into blinding acceleration, as if by the 

pulling of a trigger. The Passion idles 

like it’s holding its breath. This allows it 

to replicate micro-dynamics, transients, 

and harmonics in near-effortless fashion. 

Second, and probably as a direct result of 

the aforementioned low noise floor, the 

Passion allows musical images more 

elbowroom, revealing more of their body 

and the sound of each recording venue. 

In the same delicate breath it also creates 

a soundstage width that even my reference 

Plinius 8200 couldn’t match. 

The Passion seemed to pluck lowlevel 

inner details and offer them up 

shining and unsmeared, whether it was 

the bluegrass mandolin of Nickel 

Creek’s Chris Thile, the rattles of a tambourine, 

or a vocalist’s sigh between 

phrases. During full-tilt symphonic 

works like “Baba Yaga” [Mephisto & Co, 

Reference Recordings], instruments 

such as marimba, harp, and bassoon took 

on stronger focus and clarity, and not in 

a hard-edged sense. Occasionally, I heard 

a hint of darkening in the upper treble, 

especially on tipped-up pop music. The 

Passion didn’t, in fact, sound quite as 

bright as my reference. It might be a 

small coloration or a credit to the amp’s 

vanishingly low distortion levels. Either 

way it was subtle. 

The YBA performs well sorting 

through complex juxtapositions of 

instruments. During Jennifer Warnes’ 

“Too Late Love Comes” [The Well, 

Cisco], the Passion delineates the signatures 

of mandolin, acoustic guitar, 

acoustic bass, and violin with unqualified 

ease. The violin, though not as burnished 

as I’ve heard it, seems to stand 

out in slightly greater relief from the 

mix, just as Warnes’ voice is more finely 

focused. This was a constant trait during 

the listening sessions—the physical 

presence of solo players on the soundstage 

seemed heightened. 

Bass-baritone Bryn Terfel’s rendition 

of “Shenandoah” [Sings Favourites, RCA] 

had a rounded midrange character, his 

vocal dynamics slightly softened but not 

blunted by any means. The YBA delivered 

perhaps a little less chest resonance 

than I like (to be fair my own midrangeweighted 

bias needs to be factored in). 

However, the Passion hit its stride with 

the details of the Scots bagpipes and the 

delicacy of the harp. It didn’t quite hold 

onto the decay of the lowest bass-drum 

notes with the tenacity of some bigger 

amps, but it defined pitch so expressively 

that this deficit was small potatoes. 

Is the Passion sheer perfection? Not 

entirely. In contrast to its exceptional 

soundstage width, the Passion is less 

decisive defining the front-to-back layering 

of a symphony orchestra, as on the 

previously cited Mephisto & Co. And 

other amps add a bit more bass, though 



the Passion is so unrelentingly musical 

and so in control that walking bass lines 

or low percussion rarely receive short 

shrift at reasonable volumes. At leasebusting 

levels, apocalyptic speed metal, 

like Slayer’s “God Send Death” [God 

Hates Us All, American Recordings], 

loses a bit of top-treble extension and 

zombie-summoning low end. Similarly, 

orchestral crescendos do compress slightly 

on my lower-sensitivity loudspeakers. 

But that’s less a criticism than a 

reminder that system-matching can 

never be ignored. I’d imagine a speaker 

in the 87–88dB or higher sensitivity 

range would be heaven for the Passion. 

Physically the Intégré Passion is a 

low-key, petite-retro affair. The purist 

front panel offers a relay-controlled input 

selector with LED indicator, volume control, 

and what appears to be a tube bias 

meter but is, in fact, a power/mute light. 

Along with the shortest possible signal 

paths, vibration control is paramount to 

the YBA philosophy. The Passion’s rigid, 

anti-magnetic aluminum case and chassis 

float on a trio of adjustable footers, while 

a pair of isolation-coated 160VA double 

C transformers is fully decoupled from 

the chassis. The clean back panel offers 

two outputs per channel for biwring, five 

line inputs, plus a set of balanced XLR 

inputs. An IEC socket allows the buyer a 

wide choice of aftermarket power cords. 

An optional phonostage is available. 

The standard aluminum machined 

remote control had a couple features 

worthy of note as well. A MEMORY 

switch can recall a preferred volume 

level—a godsend since the volume control 

has no level markers at all. Also, 

holding down the VIDEO input button 

for a few extra seconds allows the 

Passion to bypass its preamp stage for 

use with a home-theater controller. 

Like any relationship, some components 

are mere flirtations whose charms 

don’t stand the test of time. But the 

YBA Intégré Passion proved to be a connoisseur’s 

delight, rivaling any of the 

larger “names” in this price range. I was 

always flush with anticipation of the 

musical rewards it would yield. & 


Power: 100Wpc (8 ohms); 170Wpc (4 ohms) 

Inputs: Five RCA, one XLR 

Dimensions: 17" x 3.5" x 14.5" 


Warranty: 5 years 


Please see Morel review on page 65. 


AUDIO PLUS SERVICES (DISTRIBUTOR) 

P. O. Box 3047 

Plattsburgh, New York 12901 

(800) 663-9352 


Price: $4650 ($4800 w/phonostage) 



Double-Dipping 

Morel Octwin 5.2M Loudspeaker 

Neil Gader 

For over two decades the Israeli company Morel has 

built a solid reputation for designing highly regarded 

drivers for other speaker manufacturers. Not as well 

known are Morel’s own loudspeaker systems, including 

the Octwin 5.2M reviewed here. A most alluring 

system, the 5.2M is not a normal stereo pair of speakers but 

instead a pair of pairs, arrayed in a vertically stacked configura- 

tion. Those with long memories will recall that piggybacking 

identical pairs of loudspeakers have generally 

married a mountaineer’s sense of adventure to a handful 

of crossed-fingers. Though the results could be impressive—witness 

the legendary double Advents or stacked 

Quads—there were also plenty of pitfalls. Connecting 

two loudspeakers in distinct enclosures creates driver 

integration issues and serious coherence problems. And 

of course, doubling the cost does not necessarily double 

the pleasure. The Octwin 5.2M is the rare exception, as 

it was designed for double-duty from the start. 

The Octwin begins life as the Octave, a compact 

two-way from Morel’s stylish MusicDeco series. It sports 

a top-mount tweeter in its own discrete capsule-like 

enclosure, a la B&W. But like those popular Mattel 

Transformer action figures, adding another pair of 

Octaves morphs the mild-mannered compact into the 

beefcake Octwin. With the help of the connecting 

adapter—a small support stand—the topmost Octave is 

flipped over so that the tweeter capsules are nearly kissing 

and the enclosure is in perfect alignment with the 

lower Octave. The resulting modular look is unique and 

makes for quite a conversation piece. 1 It’s also very clever. 

Rather than engineer a much bigger speaker, the Octwin 

gives Morel many of the advantages of a larger multipledriver 

system plus the added enclosure rigidity and cabinet 

decoupling of modular construction. 

The drivers, naturally, are Morel units. The tweeter 

is a 1.12" soft dome with an oversized voice coil and 

double neodymium magnet motors. The 5.25" mid/bass 

unit uses a large 3" voice coil and a hybrid magnet system 

of ferrite and neodymium. Morel calls its voice coil 

technology EVC (External Voice Coil), because it places 

the coil forward in relation to the wide dust cap, resulting, 

says Morel, in a shallower diaphragm and increased 

midrange dispersion. Van den Hul silver-plated crystal 

wire links the woofer and tweeter, while a hand-wired first-order 

filter crosses them over at 1.4kHz. 

The cabinet is made of three layers—a configuration Morel 

calls TRICO. The core is 5/8" MDF; a thick polymer coating 

adds an extra 3/16"; and the interior layer is a bitumen-based 

damping material used to reduce panel resonances and standing 

waves. My quartet, finished in screaming Italian racing red, 

1The connecting adapter houses a small audiophile coil which connects in series one Octave with the other. It’s intended to maintain even off-axis dispersion. Note: Keep pets and 

small kids clear of the Octwin, however. Since the stack merely rests on small rubber footers, an inadvertent bump could “double” over the whole construction. 



might make even Paris Hilton blush, 

and had a fit and finish that could win 

awards at any concours d’elegance. 

The Octwin’s sonic character combines 

an almost nostalgic blend of warmth 

and romance. Full in the lower octaves, 

expansive, almost overly ripe in the upper 

bass, the Octwin 5.2M breaks from the 

blocks with low-frequency extension and 

dynamic punch that belie its modest pro- 

The dynamic openness of 

bass drums and tympani 

seems remarkably 

unrestrained for a speaker 

with nothing more 

than a pair of five-inchers 

driving the bass. 

portions. This essentially “double” twoway 

has output and power that rival some 

medium-sized three-way floorstanders. In 

a word, the Octwin plays BIG. 

Bass response has ab-crunching solidity 

that encompasses all musical genres— 

rock ’n’ roll kick drums are aggressive 

and robust; the ripple of the drum head 

from a tom-tom can be felt, not just 

heard. Bass viols are full of resonant 

bloom. The dynamic openness of bass 

drums and tympani seems remarkably 

unrestrained for a speaker with nothing 

more than a pair of five-inchers driving 

the bass. The lowest single piano notes at 

the end of Norah Jones’ cover of “The 

Nearness of You” [Come Away With Me, 

Blue Note] hold harmonic texture, even 

as they decay into silence. 

Strings sections sound rich, and tend 

to well up and energize the listening space. 

The small chamber group intro to Jennifer 

Warnes’ “The Hunter” [The Hunter, 

Private Music] is plush with harmonics 

and mid- and upper-bass excitement. The 

tweeter is a sweet one, and the treble 

region benefits greatly from its glassy 

smoothness and obvious lack of grain. 

While driver integration is good at 

even a relatively close listening distance, 

the Octwin’s drivers need a little more 

than a small room to integrate fully. The 

Octwin’s horizontal off-axis performance 

is relatively smooth, but this is a classic 

“sweetspot” speaker in the vertical field. 

The stands are designed to position 

tweeters slightly below ear level, and 

this is crucial to extracting its full highfrequency 

potential—more so than with 

a single Octave per side. 

Ironically, a rock song from The 

Police defines my single largest reservation. 

“Murder By Numbers” [Synchronicity, 

A&M] swims with phasey guitar 

riffs and highly detailed drumming, 

courtesy of Stewart Copeland’s 

high-pitched drum kit. He’s a rhythmically 

busy player who constantly 

changes meters behind his backing 

beat, but when the song’s chorus 

swings in he locks in the beat with a 

huge yet ultra-fast snare. And here is 

where the upper midrange of the 

Octwin becomes a low-wattage affair. 

It’s as if a light dimmer had attenuated 

the sparkle of transparency in the 1- 

–1.4kHz range, before kicking in 

again higher up—the link between the 

middle frequencies and the lower treble 

is not fully established, softening 

the attack of the snare drum and 

smoothing the “crackle” that’s so much 

a part of a snare’s character. With 

drivers as articulate as these, I can 

only speculate that the doubled cabinets 

are masking some of the resolution 

in the midband. 

This trait is not entirely without 

advantages—a darker, caramelized personality 

is especially flattering to pop 

recordings, which tend to tip up the 

presence range and treble with studio 

equalization. On a recording like 

Martina McBride’s “Concrete Angel” 

[Greatest Hits, RCA], where the silvery 

tizz of artificial air hisses from the mixing 

board, the Octwin settles the treble 

down like a trainer calming a jumpy 

thoroughbred. On the other hand, with 

recordings of refinement—typically, 

classical and jazz—transparency seems 

attenuated and imaging less than 

focused. During Pictures At An 

Exhibition [RCA], the Octwin captures a 

nearly complete sense of Evgeny Kissen’s 

concert grand—full, reverberant, and at 

times thunderously powerful. But the 

diminished harmonic and transient 

excitement from his lightning fast right 

hand makes it sound as if he were gently 

riding the soft pedal, dampening the 

notes. Likewise during “Shenandoah” 

[Bryn Terfel Sings Favourites, DG], there 

is a slight forwardness and darkening on 

top that robs the music of its emotion. 

In the final analysis the choice of a 

loudspeaker remains a highly personal 

one. Although the double-barreled 

Octwin 5.2M lacks the sheer bull’s-eye 

accuracy that I prefer, it is an appealing 

speaker on its own terms with much to 

recommend it—dynamic punch, openness, 

and sheer output level. The 

Octwin’s unusual tonal balance however 

is an acquired taste, making this a 

speaker that not only deserves a good listen, 

but in keeping with its spirit, a 

double listen. & 


Type: Two-way, dual-port, bass-reflex 

Drivers: 1.12" soft-dome tweeter, 5.25" polymer-composite 

mid/bass 

Frequency response: 42–18kHz ±1dB 

Nominal impedance: 4 ohms 


Crossover: 1.4kHz 

Dimensions: 6.9" x 24.8" x 12.8" 

Weight: 16 lbs. each unit, plus stand 


Sota Cosmos Series III turntable; SME V 

pickup arm; Shure V15VxMR cartridge; 

Simaudio Equinox, Sony DVP-9000ES; 

Magnum Dynalab MD90 Tuner; Plinius 8200 

Mk2 integrated amp; Nordost Blue Heaven 

cabling, Wireworld Silver Electra & Kimber 

Palladian power cords; Richard Gray line conditioners 


MOREL NORTH AMERICA (DISTRIBUTOR) 

Jason Scott Distributing, Inc 

8816 Patton Road 

Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania 19038 

800 MOREL-14 

www.morelhifi.com 

Price: $4400, including connecting stand; 

floorstands, $600 

MOREL (MANUFACTURER) 

17 Hamazmera Street 

Ness Ziona 70400 

Israel 

972-8-930-1161 



Further Thoughts 

Gamut D 200 Mk3 Power Amplifier 

Jonathan Valin 

Several years ago I reviewed 

the original version of this 

200Wpc solid-state amp 

from Denmark’s Ole Lund 

Christensen. At that time I 

found it to be an exceptionally neutral, 

transparent, and dynamic performer, 

with excellent soundstaging and imaging 

and superior definition in the bass. 

The amp’s chief weakness was a thinness 

in tone color from the midbass through 

the treble that made it sound slightly 

cool and analytical. Nevertheless, it was 

a very good buy at $5500, and I recommended 

it highly (as did HP) for use 

with speakers with an impedance of 4 

ohms or greater. 

The wittily named Gamut (the word 

means all the musical notes from lowest 

to highest—thus the phrase “spans the 

gamut”) was and is a technological tourde-force. 

It began life when the ingenious 

Mr. Christensen concluded that the 

darkish murky sound of many transistors 

amps (think early-’90s Krell or 

Levinson) derived from the use of individual 

power transistors coupled in par- 

allel. Since these individual transistors 

could never be perfectly matched, listeners 

ended up hearing the “mixture of all 

the different signals from all the [slightly 

mismatched] parallel coupled transistors,” 

a sound that grew progressively 

less clear and neutral as current/voltage 

demands increased. To solve this multiple-mismatch 

problem, Christensen had 

the brilliant idea of substituting a single 

pair of power transistors (one for the positive 

supply and one for the negative, per 

channel) for all those coupled pairs in 

parallel. The development of power 

MOSFETs capable of 200WRMS or 

more allowed him to realize his idea, and 

the Gamut D 200 was the first fruit. 

The D 200, both in its original and 

Mk3 versions, did and does have a signature 

purity. By this I mean that it is an 

unusually neutral, grainless, and clearsounding 

device, and, unlike so many 

other amps, it does not change its colors, 

or the lack of them, as the music changes 

in intensity. Within its limits (about 

which I will have more to say in a 

moment), it sounds the same from 

pianissimo to fortissimo. 

Moreover, the Mk3 version of the D 

200 has improved in density of tone 

color over the Mk1 amp, albeit, to my 

ear and memory, at some small cost in 

the original’s most salient virtue— 

dynamic life. The Mk3 is a warmer, 

more gemütlich amplifier than the Mk1. 

Though scarcely the equal of a good 

tube amp in tone color, it is sweet from 

top to bottom, making it a genuine 

pleasure to listen to on all music. And 

while it may not be the dynamo that the 

Mk1 was, it is still quick and hard-hitting 

and retains the well-defined bass 

and midbass of the original D 200. 

As for the amp’s limits, they are 

more generic than specific. Though I am 

admittedly a tube lover, I see both solidstate 

and tube amps as legitimate alternatives—the 

choice between them 

depends largely on the speakers you use 

and, to a lesser extent, the music you 

prefer to listen to. That said, to my ear 

transistors are better on the uptake—on 

the starting transients of notes, no matter 

what their pitch or intensity—and 



better at the frequency extremes, where 

they are clearer and more extended. 

(Which makes them great on beat-driven 

music, because of the clarity they 

bring to rhythm-marking instruments 

like drums, cymbals, synths, and Fender 

bass.) Tubes are better in the midrange 

and on the steady-state tone of notes no 

matter what their pitch, and on their 

harmonics and their decays. They are also 

superior at recovering very low-level 

information, the constant micro-changes 

in pitch, timbre, intensity, and duration 

that psycho-acousticians call “jitter” and 

that go so far toward creating the human 

touch of an actual performer playing real 

music on a real instrument in a real 

space. When it comes to jitter, it’s as if 

solid-state amps have a “resolution 

floor,” below which they simply cannot 

go. They tend to plane down the characteristic 

little details that convey the varying 

pressure of fingers on strings, or the 

fluctuations of breath through a reed, or 

the coiled metal of a string itself, or the 

rosiny grip of a horsehair bow—turning 

what is quintessentially organic into 

something vaguely mechanical, like a 

drum machine or British hi-fi. (When it 

comes to dynamics, it might fairly be 

said that tube amps have a “resolution 

ceiling,” which limits their ability to 

reproduce hard transients realistically.) 

In addition to its closer to neutral 

balance, the original Gamut D 200 

seemed to me to slightly lower the transistor 

amp’s resolution floor. It did seem 

to recover some of the jittery little details 

that other transistor amps just didn’t 

make present. The Mk3 version of the 

Gamut still has a good deal of this signal 

clarity and transparency, though I think 

it has a bit less of both than its predecessor. 

Whereas the Mk1 did not sound like 

a MOSFET amp, the Mk3 ever so slight- 

ly does. I associate MOSFETs with an 

easy, attractive, but unmistakable homogeneous 

presentation, an evenness that 

seems to smooth dynamic contrasts 

down to a polite median, rather in the 

same way that single-bit CD players do. 

With the Mk3 you hear this as a bit of 

dynamic compression, a bit of politeness. 

For instance, on the great Mercury 

recording of the Brahms Cello Sonatas 

[SR 90392] with Starker and Sebos, 

Starker’s cello, though detailed, lovely, 

and present, loses some of its dynamic 

range through the Mk3. As a result 

Starker’s playing sounds tamer—less passionate, 

dramatic, and colorful than it 

actually is—and his Stradivarius sounds 

smaller in tone and flatter in volume than 

it actually is. I don’t want to overemphasize 

this. The Mk3 doesn’t sound overly 

FET-like, just a little compressed, and it 

is, as noted, considerably more realistic in 

timbre than the original. 

Since, as with the rest of life, there 

are no free lunches in audio, I’d judge 

the Gamut D 200 Mk3 to be an overall 

improvement. The trade-offs that 

Christensen has made—a slight sacrifice 

of dynamic contrasts, a slightly more 

obvious MOSFET signature—to achieve 

superior tone colors have not come at the 

price of a marked reduction in the amp’s 

distinctive clarity or liveliness or neutrality. 

Moreover, the Gamut D 200 

Mk3’s soundstaging and imaging continue 

to be first-rate. 

I recommend the Gamut D 200 

Mk3 to those of you looking for a reasonably 

priced high-power transistor 

amp that will give you a taste of the lowlevel 

resolution of tubes and a high 

measure of neutrality (similar though 

not equal to that of the Halcro amps), 

while retaining the transient superiority 

and ease of use of transistors. I would 

also note that this amp requires some 

break-in, sounds better through its balanced 

inputs, and should, as was the case 

with the original, be used with speakers 

whose impedance curve does not dip 

below 4 ohms. & 


Input impedance: 40k ohms, balanced; 20k 

ohms, single-ended 

Power: 2 x 200W into 8 ohms; 2 x 400W 

into 4 ohms 

Dimensions: 16.75" x 6" x 17.4" 


Price: $6500 


Walker Audio Proscenium Gold turntable and 

tonerarm; Clearaudio HarmonyMg cartridge; 

EMM Labs DAC-6e, Weiss Media DACs; EMM 

Labs Philips 1000 and C.E.C transports; Krell 

KPS25sc CD player/preamp; Aesthetix 

Callisto, The Messenger, Lamm L2 linestage 

preamps; Aesthetix Io, Xanden Phono, Lamm 

LP2 phonostage preamps; Tenor 75Wp, 

Lamm ML-2, Tenor 300Hp, Ming Da 

MC300B/845A, Krell FPB650 monoblock 

amplifiers; Kharma Reference Monitor 3.2, 

Sonus-Faber Stradivari, Epiphany 12-12 loudspeakers; 

Nordost Valhalla, Kharma Enigma, 

Purist Audio Dominus, Xinden speaker 

cables; Nordost Valhalla, Kharma Enigma, 

Purist Audio Dominus, Silent Source, Xinden 

interconnects; Clearaudio Matrix record cleaner; 

Walker Velocitor and Richard Gray Power 

Company power conditioners 


GAMUT INTERNATIONAL 

Oesterled 28 

DK-4300 Holbaek 

Denmark 

(+45) 70-20-22-68 

gamut@mail.dk 

www.gamutaudio.com 

LOMBARDI SALES (DISTRIBUTOR) 

390 Cheerful Ct. 

Simi Valley, California 93065 

(800) 759-5842 

(805) 444-6130 

Rjlombardi@aol.com 

www.rayofsound.com 



Romantic at Heart 

Valve Amplification Company 

Avatar Super Integrated Amplifier 

Wayne Garcia 

Like people, all audio components 

have a character of their 

own. For instance, in our last 

issue I wrote about Krell’s 

KAV-400xi, a $2500 integrated 

amplifier that boldly, proudly, firmly 

resides in the solid-state camp. A rather 

masculine-sounding device, the Krell’s 

strengths lie in its high power, dynamic 

punch, taut bass response, and upfront 

musical presentation. What that unit 

lacks—delicacy, warmth, air, and tonal 

complexity—are things that the model 

under review today, VAC’s Avatar Super, 

delivers in spades. 

Part of VAC’s “Standard Series,” the 

Avatar Super is an extension of the work 

that VAC’s chief designer Kevin Hayes 

began in 1988 with the original Avatar, a 

60W-per-side all-tube unit that sells for 

$5000. The regular and super Avatars 

share many features, including a decidedly 

retro look, but the Avatar Super 

departs from the original in many ways. 

Power is rated at 80Wpc, and rather than 

using four EL34s in the output stage 

(which can be switched to 27-watts triode 

operation) as the Avatar does, the 

Super uses a quartet of KT88s. The Super 

also uses a new circuit VAC calls “Beam 

Power Sentry,” which instantly senses and 

“limits current delivery to any KT88 

operating outside of its designed range, 

thus protecting the amplifier and allowing 

continued operation until the tube is 

replaced.” In addition, the Super uses a 

newly designed double-choke power supply 

that is said to lower noise while 

increasing dynamic wallop, as well as a 

freshly fashioned 12AU7 triode linestage 

and 12AX7 triode phonostage. (Its 39dB 

gain limits you to either moving-magnet 

or high-output moving-coil cartridges, 

which meant I couldn’t audition it. For 

low-output MCs, VAC makes an external 

step-up called the “Divinyl.”) Other features 

include a parts selection derived 

from VAC’s Renaissance Series, a Home 

Theater Mode that separates the preamp 

and amp sections (note that the preamp 

stage inverts absolute phase), enabling 

the unit to be used as the front-channel 

amplifier in a multichannel system, a 

simple remote control for volume and 

mute functions, preamp out, a frontpanel 

meter for adjusting output-tube 

bias, and a hidden well that houses the 

bias-adjustment switches. To adjust bias, 

simply depress the red button corresponding 

to a given output tube and rotate 

the adjacent switch until the meter’s needle 

is centered—a snap to do, and in the 

six months I used the amplifier the bias 

never once drifted. I should note that not 

only is the Avatar Super a very handsome 

design (if you like a classic look—think 

1950s Marantz—this baby has it), it is 

beautifully built—from the 3/8" aluminum 

faceplate finished in hand-rubbed 

silver metallic lacquer to the gold-plated 

aluminum knobs to the well-laid-out and 

finished chassis—and never malfunctioned 

or otherwise hiccupped while in 

my system. The Super is priced at $6000. 

Having read this far you’re probably 

open to the idea of tubes, or maybe even 

an aficionado. But let’s face it; glowing 

glass bottles are not for everybody. Even 

some well-seasoned audiophiles just 

don’t want the hassle (and sometimes 

considerable expense) of changing 

tubes—a full replacement kit for the 

Super will run you $374, $230 for output 

tubes only, and estimated tube life is 

8000 hours. Beyond that, some listeners 

simply prefer the sound of solid-state 

devices, which are often perceived as 

more “accurate,” with tubes, of course, 

being more “colored.” (For a fascinating 


glimpse at these differing points of view, 

you might want to check out last issue’s 

TAS Roundtable on tube vs. solid-state 

electronics.) So let me clarify exactly 

what I mean when I say that the Avatar 

Super is romantic at heart: this amplifier 

never fails to express music’s inherent 

beauty, the poetry of a singer or instrumentalist’s 

phrasing, the emotion captured 

in a recorded performance. And 

don’t make the mistake of thinking that 

the Super coats every recording in some 

molasses-like, homogenizing, euphonic 

goo. No, just because the VAC has 

“character” doesn’t mean it is “hopelessly 

colored,” “untruthful,” or “masked.” 

Yes, the VAC has certain identifiable 

sonic fingerprints, but it is also exceptionally 

transparent, readily transforming 

itself from recording to recording, 

musical style to style. Listen to Jeff 

Buckley’s Live at Sin-é [Columbia/Legacy 

CD], a very lifelike-sounding pop 

vocal/guitar recording, and you’ll know 

what I mean. First, the VAC, over the 

right speakers of course, is unusually 

holographic in that it will map out the 

shape of an acoustic space with exceptional 

clarity. Unlike most solid-state 

gear I’ve heard, which is generally better 

at lateral staging than suggesting layers 

of depth, the VAC casts excellent depth 

of stage (and an only slightly less 

impressive stage width). The original 

Sin-é was a dinky café in New York’s 

East Village, and when properly reproduced 

this excellent recording is akin to 

the proverbial time machine, transporting 

us back to those hot August nights 

in 1993. The VAC seems to make speaker 

cabinets disappear and walls fall 

down, opening up a very believable 

acoustic space. But what makes this 

sonic hocus-pocus meaningful is not the 

room’s ambience floated before us, or the 

small sea of percussion created by the 

crowd’s enthusiastic applause (and yes, 

you can tell who is sitting or standing or 

spilling out the front door), but the 

human presence that emerges when 

Buckley begins to play. With a voice 

capable of doing pretty much whatever 

he asked of it—from the rough and guttural 

to a sweet falsetto, from bluesy 

shouts to an angel’s whisper—and a 

near-equal talent on the guitar, Buckley 

makes solo electric music of remarkable 

complexity, range, and emotional 

expression. The VAC’s directness and 

way with small and large dynamic shifts 

(especially paired with the Epiphany 

model 6-6 speakers, pending review) 

bring this music so magically “there” 

before us, that you will, guaranteed, get 

goose bumps from this record. 

With a chamber orchestra recording 

like Stravinsky’s Pulcinella [Academy of 

St. Martin/Marriner, Argo LP], the 

Avatar Super also displays a knack for 

clarifying inner instrumental voices, 

with a natural range of tone colors and 

even greater dynamic delineation. Even 

so, when compared to something like 

Balanced Audio Technology’s identically 

priced VK-300XSE (reviewed in Issue 

138), the VAC isn’t as rhythmically incisive 

with individual or massed violin 

bowing, where it can sound ever so slightly 

slurred. But I would submit that the 

dividends paid in air around instruments, 

the trailing edges of notes lingering 

on and on, and this model’s depth 

and dynamic nuance are worthwhile 

tradeoffs. The same could be said of the 

sound of Martha Argerich’s piano on the 

Ravel Gaspard de la nuit [DG Originals 

CD], where the VAC softens trills, powerfully 

struck chords lose a bit of their 

gusto, and the amp audibly clips at the 

loudest fortissimos. But goodness, then 

listen again to her breathtakingly beautiful 

palette of instrumental color, notes 

that float in mid-air, ghost-like, long 

after being struck, a top-to-bottom balance 

that seems so right, and a dynamic 

ebb and flow that grabs and keeps you 

musically intoxicated. 

The midrange then, is as beautiful 

as I’ve heard from any integrated, and 

indeed from all but the very best separates. 

And the frequency extremes are 

much what one would expect from this 

classic tube array. The top end is a little 

soft and quite airy; violins are sweet 

and rosiny, flutes breathy and hollow, 

and cymbals, be they orchestral or 

rock, give a brassy shimmer without 

electronic tiz or bite. The bottom end 


(down to my speakers’ roughly 35Hz 

roll off) is very good too, the bowed 

basses on the Pulcinella showing a nice 

sense of the body, texture, and warmth 

they have in life, while electronic samples 

on OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The 

Love Below [Arista] have remarkable 

weight and rhythm. Compared to the 

VAC, the BAT is close in soundstaging, 

has more pinpoint imaging, 

greater perceived clarity, a tighter bass, 

and slightly tighter rhythmic precision, 

if not quite the sheer beauty of 

the VAC. Give it a listen. & 

Note: At press time we learned that the power 

supply had been modified slightly to match 

with a wider range of speakers, and a new 

KT88 has been sourced. A follow-up will 

appear in the future. 


Power output: 80Wpc (2, 4, 8 ohms) 

Inputs: MM phono, CD, Tape, Cinema, 3 linelevel 

Dimensions: 17.5" x 8" x 16" 



Rega P25 turntable (tricked out); Cardas 

Myrtle Heart cartridge; Manley Steelhead 

and Sutherland Ph.D. phonostages; 

Balanced Audio Technology VK-D5 CD player; 

Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 21 DAC; Sonus 

Faber Cremona Auditor, MartinLogan Aeon i, 

and Epiphany Audio 6-6 speakers; Harmonic 

Technology Magic Link interconnects and 

Magic Tweeter speaker cables; Finite 

Elemente “Spider” equipment rack; ASC 

Tube Traps; Richard Gray’s Power Company 

400S and 600S 


VALVE AMPLIFICATION COMPANY 

1731 Northgate Boulevard 

Sarasota, Florida 34234 

(941) 359-2066 

info@vac-amps.com 

www.vac-amps.com 

Price: $6000 

Warranty: Three years transferable 

(excluding tubes) 


Multichannel overcomes a fundamental limitation of stereo, 

which is that it tries to create a 360° soundfield from two loudspeakers 

spaced 60° apart. Let’s explore this idea with a thought 

experiment. Suppose we are in a concert hall enclosed in an 

acoustically isolated shell. If we cut two holes in the front of the 

shell facing the stage, we’ll hear mostly direct sound from the 

instruments. If we cut additional holes in the back of the shell, 

reflections from the back of the concert hall can enter the shell 

and create a soundfield in the shell that is closer to that in the 

concert hall. How could anyone argue that putting more than 

two holes in the shell is a step backward? Reverberation and 

reflections arrive at our ears in the concert hall from behind us; 

why shouldn’t they in the home? 

I’ve attended many demonstrations of multichannel sound; 

I’ll tell you about two of them that exemplify the problems and 

promise of multichannel music reproduction. 

In one demonstration, the sound from the speakers behind 

the listening position was played as loudly as the sound from 

the front speakers. I heard a blasting trumpet just behind my 

left ear, and an electric guitar behind my right ear. Most of the 

rest of the band was reproduced by the front channels, giving 

Multichannel Audio Primer 

INTRODUCTION: 

Do We Want Multichannel Audio? 

Because technology now enables us to play back music in our homes with multiple channels, 

should we? Is multichannel audio a significant advance in sound quality, or a marketing 

gimmick foisted upon us? This issue is perhaps the most polarizing of any among audiophiles, 

the majority of whom consider two-channel music reproduction as sacrosanct—not 

something to be tampered with. Surround-sound for music is associated with surroundsound 

for film, in which explosions and special effects are presented all around the listener—fine for 

movies but justifiably abhorrent to the purist music lover. Moreover, two-channel listening can be 

immensely satisfying, so why bother with surround sound? Multichannel audio is viewed by many audiophiles 

as a fad, not a legitimate means of advancing the goal of recreating the original musical event in 

our homes with the greatest possible fidelity. On the other hand, some of the most ardent and dedicated 

audiophiles have championed multichannel as the most significant advance in audio since stereo. 

In my view, multichannel audio is a quantum leap forward in advancing the music-listening experience—with 

a properly set-up system playing recordings made with musical sensitivity. There’s no question in my 

mind that multichannel audio can greatly increase the spatial realism of reproduced music and deliver a 

more involving experience. The catch is that the system must be properly configured, and that the recording 

engineer uses the technology in a musically appropriate way rather than as an “effects” gimmick. 

the impression not of hearing a musical group performing in 

front of me, but of being surrounded by the musicians. Not 

only was this unnatural and musically distracting, but hearing 

loud sounds suddenly blare out from behind me caused me to 

turn my head toward the sound source. Human beings have a 

survival instinct that makes them turn around when they hear 

a sharp sound behind them. Putting the listener in an instinctive 

state of defensive readiness is not conducive to musical 

involvement. Moreover, hundreds of years of Western musical 

tradition call for the performers on a stage and an audience in 

front of those performers. (Some compositions call for instruments 

behind the audience, but those are the rare exception.) 

To top it off, the overall sound was far too loud. All of this 

added up to a most unpleasant experience. 

Now consider a second demonstration of multichannel 

audio I attended. For the original recording, five microphones 

had been placed in a large concert hall, three across the front 

and two in the rear. The five microphone signals were recorded 

in Sony’s DSD format (the encoding format of SACD), and then 

reproduced in the demonstration through five loudspeakers 

arranged similarly to the microphone placement. The re-cre- 


ation of the original acoustic space was breathtaking; instead of 

hearing reverberation come from the front channels along with 

the instrumental images, the warmth of the hall was reproduced 

from behind me. More precisely, I wasn’t aware of sound 

sources behind me, only of being inside a large acoustic space. 

Only ambience and hall reflections were reproduced by the rear 

channels, and at a very low level. Moreover, the front of the 

soundstage was more spacious, and the impression of air 

between instrumental images was greater than I’ve heard from 

any two-channel playback. I had a distinct impression of a high 

ceiling above me—far higher than the demonstration room’s 

ceiling. The soundstage didn’t stop at the loudspeaker boundaries; 

it instead gently enveloped me, just as in live music. This 

microphone array, along with the multichannel delivery path, 

captured the spatial aspects of musicians in a hall with far 

greater realism than is possible from two channels. 

The promoters of the first demonstration wanted to hit people 

over the head with the fact that they could place instruments 

behind them. They had absolutely no regard for whether the 


technology was being used in a musically appropriate way. In 

the second demonstration, multichannel audio technology 

increased realism and provided a more satisfying experience than 

was possible with two channels. Unfortunately, the first example 

is the rule, the second the exception. Those who conducted 

the first demonstration apparently believe that most listeners are 

not sophisticated enough to discern and appreciate subtlety. It’s 

demonstrations like the first one that will further polarize the 

audio community over the validity of multichannel audio. 

This comparison makes the point that multichannel audio 

is neither a miracle technology nor the evil that many twochannel 

“purists” consider it to be. Provided that it is used 

tastefully, multichannel audio has the potential of elevating the 

music-listening experience to a new level. If you have an 

antipathy toward multichannel audio, be sure your opposition 

is based on your own listening experience rather than on dogma 

or prejudice. Regrettably, it is extremely difficult to hear good 

demonstrations of multichannel audio, even at premier highend 

dealers. They tend to optimize the system for film-sound- 


track reproduction, not for music, and thus never exploit the 

format’s potential. 

How to Get Multichannel in Your Home 

If you have a two-channel system and decide to take the 

plunge into multichannel audio, you have several options. The 

first is to keep your existing music system and add multichannel 

capability by adding a few new components. This approach 

is best for those with fine-tuned systems who aren’t that concerned 

with home theater. The second option is to base your 

multichannel audio system on a home-theater controller that 

provides film-soundtrack reproduction as well as stereo and 

multichannel music playback. 

Adding Multichannel to Your 

Existing Equipment 

Looking at the first option, you’ll need a preamplifier that 

can handle six audio channels. This multichannel preamp can be 

used in place of your existing two-channel preamp, or in conjunction 

with it (more on this later). The high end has been slow 

to respond to the need for multichannel preamps, so there isn’t 

much choice in the market (see the sampling of available products 

on page 85). As time goes on, however, I expect to see a 

wider selection of multichannel preamps at all price levels. 

One of the multichannel preamp’s inputs is fed by the sixchannel 

analog output from a DVD-Audio, SACD player, or “universal” 

player that plays all formats. If you have (or plan to have) 

separate players for SACD and DVD-A, you’ll need a preamp with 

at least two 6-channel inputs. And if you’d like to use the system 

for home theater as well, you’ll need a multichannel preamp with 

three 6-channel inputs. This third input can 

accept the six analog outputs from a DVD 

player with built-in Dolby Digital and DTS 

decoding, or from an outboard home-theater 

controller. Your two-channel sources (phonostage, 

tuner, outboard DAC) feed the preamp’s 

stereo inputs. Alternately, you can keep your 

two-channel source components connected to 

your two-channel preamp, and feed the preamp’s 

stereo output into one of the multichannel 

preamp’s stereo inputs. Many multichannel 

preamps have a fixed unity-gain setting 

for this purpose. (Figure 1 shows a multichannel 

preamp in a two-channel system; 

Figure 2 shows a multichannel system without 

a two-channel preamplifier.) 

Now that we’ve handled the multichannel 

source switching and level control, we 

need five channels of amplification. If you 

are happy with your stereo power amplifier, 


you can add a three-channel amplifier (there are several on the 

market) to amplify the center and two surround channels, or a 

stereo amplifier and a monoblock, or even three monoblocks. 

Of course, you can simplify the system by buying a five-channel 

amplifier. Until recently, multichannel amplifiers suffered 

from compromised performance that made them unacceptable 

for high-performance music systems. But high-end companies 

have started building multichannel amps with the same highend 

circuit designs and parts quality as in their two-channel 

offerings. In fact, I’ve used a multichannel amplifier (the 

Plinius Odeon) in my system for more than a year and don’t feel 

shortchanged musically. Multichannel amplifiers actually have 

an advantage when called on for two-channel music reproduction; 

the power supply, which has been designed to supply five 

channels, is massively overbuilt when supplying just two chan- 

Bass Management 

Figure 1 

Bass management is a subsystem within a multichannel source machine (DVD- 

Audio, SACD, universal player) or digital controller that allows you to selectively 

distribute bass information among your loudspeaker array. For example, if you 

have full-range left and right loudspeakers, but small center and surround loudspeakers, 

bass management keeps bass out of the small center and surround speakers 

and directs that bass to a subwoofer (if the system uses one). Bass management is 

essential in a multichannel loudspeaker system because not all systems use fullrange 

loudspeakers, and small speakers are easily overloaded by low bass. 

A controller’s subwoofer output is a mix of the Low-Frequency Effects (LFE) channel 

plus bass from any number of the other five channels. LFE is the “.1” channel in 

5.1-channel sound, and is reserved for high-impact bass below 100Hz. Some multichannel 

music recordings use the LFE channel and others do not. Five-channel recordings 

without an LFE channel are called “5.0 channel.” 

Although bass management is provided in both multichannel players and controllers, 

you need set up only one device to perform bass management. Note that if 

you choose a system with a multichannel preamp rather than a digital controller, you’ll 

need to set up bass management in the DVD-A or SACD player, as most preamps do 

not this capability. 


nels, resulting in better sound. Examples of very good multichannel 

amps are the Plinius Odeon, BAT VK-6200, Theta 

Dreadnaught, Audio Research 150M, Krell Theater Amplifier 

Standard, and Ayre D-6. 

Next, you’ll need to add a center and two surround loudspeakers 

to your existing left and right speakers. The ideal 

loudspeaker configuration for multichannel music is five identical 

full-range loudspeakers in the locations shown in Figure 3. 

This array creates four separate but connected soundstages: 

between the left and right loudspeakers; between the surround 

loudspeakers; between the front-left and rear-left loudspeakers; 

and between the front-right and rear-right loudspeakers. 

This configuration isn’t always practical; if you have a 

home-theater system, the center loudspeaker must usually be a 

small, horizontal model to avoid blocking the video display. 

Moreover, large, full-range surround speakers take up lots of 

floor space. Consequently, many multichannel music systems 

employ a horizontal center channel, along with smaller surround 

loudspeakers mounted on the walls. Many multichannel 

recordings have far less information in the surround channels 


Figure 2 

than in the front, making small surround loudspeakers an 

acceptable compromise. These small surround speakers are protected 

from bass overload by a bass-management circuit, 

described in this article’s sidebar. 


Figure 3 


An important consideration in choosing surround loudspeakers 

is their radiation pattern. Surround speakers optimized 

for multichannel music have a uni-polar radiation pattern, just 

like the vast majority of front loudspeakers. Conversely, surround 

loudspeakers optimized for film-soundtrack reproduction 

have a dipolar radiation pattern. By producing sound equally to 

the front and rear, dipolar surround speakers create a greater 

sense of diffusion around the listener by “smearing” the surround 

information. This “smearing” occurs because the listener 

sits in the dipole’s “null” and hears the dipole’s output only after 

it has been reflected from the room’s boundaries. Dipolar surrounds 

will never create as precise a sense of space behind the listener 

as uni-polar models, but they will widen the sweet spot 

over which listeners hear a sense of envelopment and reduce 

their awareness of two sound sources located behind them. 

If you add a center-channel loudspeaker to your existing 

left and right loudspeakers, choose a center speaker with as 

close a tonal balance as possible to your left and right speakers. 

Start by first looking at center-channel speakers from the same 

company that made your main stereo pair. Close timbre-match- 


ing is essential to creating a seamless, rather than a discontinuous, 

soundstage across the front. It could be persuasively 

argued, however, that any horizontal loudspeaker is simply 

inadequate for high-performance multichannel music reproduction. 

(This is another example of the conflicting requirements 

of multichannel music and home theater.) 

In fact, some experienced multichannel engineers believe 

that the center channel is not only superfluous, but actually 

detrimental to good sound (see Peter McGrath’s comments in 

this issue’s TAS Roundtable). Unfortunately, if you play back 

five-channel recordings over a four-loudspeaker array, any information 

mixed to the center channel is simply not reproduced. 

The solution is to send the center-channel information equally 

into the left and right channels (with 3dB of attenuation to 

achieve the correct level) and allow phantom imaging to fill in 

the center. Unfortunately, multichannel preamplifiers don’t yet 

offer this feature (the Meitner Switchman 3 can be ordered with 

this feature hardwired and the Fosgate FAP-V1 comes with it 

built in). Without a center loudspeaker, however, the sweet 

spot in which you hear a full soundstage is as narrow as with a 

two-loudspeaker array, obviating one of the advantages of 

employing a center loudspeaker. 

The Digital Controller Approach 

The second route to getting multichannel audio in your 

home is to base your system on a digital home-theater controller. 

The controller incorporates the source-switching and 

level-control functions of the multichannel preamplifier, 

includes video switching, and provides additional capabilities 

such as bass management (filtering bass out of small 

loudspeakers and sending that bass to a subwoofer), digitalsignal 

processing, Dolby Digital and DTS decoding, and 

other features important in film-soundtrack reproduction. 

The controller will have a multichannel analog input to 

accept the output from your SACD, DVD-Audio, or universal 

disc player. 

The good news is that controllers are extremely functional 

and relatively inexpensive compared with most multichannel 

preamps; plus they are offered in a wide range of models at all 

price levels. The bad news? Controllers simply don’t sound as 

good as preamplifiers. Even the best of them can’t compete 

with a good dedicated analog preamplifier. With so much circuitry 

in the chassis, radiated digital noise is everywhere, and 

the need to spread the parts budget over so many additional circuit 

sub-systems puts the controller at a decided disadvantage. 

In addition, most controllers have only one multichannel analog 

input because of rear-panel jack-space limitations. This 

means you’ll have to use a universal disc player if you want both 

SACD and DVD-A playback. Further, some controllers convert 

analog input signals to digital, and then back to analog again. 


Figure 4 

Obviously, you don’t want the output of your high-resolution 

digital player or phonostage converted to digital. If you do 

choose a controller, make sure that it has an “analog bypass 

mode” that passes analog signals from input to output without 

digital conversions. Fig.3 shows the signal flow in a controllerbased 

multichannel system. 

Basing your system on a digital controller can work if you 

shop carefully for one of the better-sounding models (some are 

unlistenable; others approach high-end performance), are willing 

to accept some degradation of musical performance (generally 

a lack of transparency, harder timbres, less space and 

depth), and spend most of your listening time to film soundtracks 

rather than to music. 

If you want the controller’s functionality with the multichannel 

preamp’s sound quality, you can use both products in 

the same system. The controller’s six line-level outputs simply 

feed one of the preamp’s six-channel inputs. High-quality 

analog source signals from SACD, DVD-A, and a phonostage 

feed the multichannel preamp directly and never go through 

the controller. Other source signals that require decoding 

(Dolby Digital and DTS from DVD-Video players and satellite, 

for examples) are processed with the full functionality 

offered by the controller. It’s a bit cumbersome, but offers the 

best of both worlds. 

& 

Excerpted and adapted from The Complete Guide to High-End 

Audio, Third Edition. © 2004 by Robert Harley 

www.HiFibooks.com 


Audio Research MP1 

($6995) 

Considering the Audio Research 

Corporation’s tradition and history, it’s 

no surprise that its MP1, the company’s 

first multichannel preamp, is a purist 

product with an emphasis on sound 

quality. The Reference 2-sized chassis 

holds six removable cards (one channel 

per card) that plug into the mainframe 

containing a large power supply. Three 

sets of six-channel inputs are provided, 

two of them unbalanced and one balanced. 

In addition, four pairs of stereo 

inputs are provided on both balanced 

and unbalanced jacks, along with a 

stereo record-output. Output is on six 

balanced and unbalanced connectors. A 

front-panel display indicates volume setting 

(in 104 0.5dB steps) and the selected 

input. 

The MP1’s circuitry is derived from 

ARC’s Reference 2 MkII and LS25 MkII 

line-stage preamps. The dual-differential 

circuit is pure Class-A realized with 

all FET devices with unity-gain buffers 


SURVEY: 

Multichannel Preamplifiers 

Robert Harley 

For this special issue focusing on multichannel audio, 

we present a sampling of multichannel preamps on the market. 

between stages and a double-buffered 

output. The direct-coupled circuit uses a 

DC servo to eliminate offset. The power 

supply features ten regulation stages followed 

by local discrete regulation on the 

individual amplifier boards. 

The MP1 has the feature set and 

architecture of a conventional two-channel 

preamp, but with six-channel input 

and output. 

Bel Canto PRe 6 

($3990) 

Minnesota high-end manufacturer 

Bel Canto has put more of a home-theater 

emphasis in its PRe 6 multichannel 

preamp. The unit will accept not just 

the six-channel outputs from SACD and 

DVD-Audio players, but full 7.1-channel 

outputs from some DVD players 

with integral Dolby Digital EX and 

DTS-ES decoding (or from an outboard 

digital controller). In fact, the PRe 6 

can be configured through a menu system 

and front-panel fluorescent display 

to be a two-channel preamp with 12 

inputs, a six-channel preamp with two 

six-channel inputs and six stereo inputs, 

or an eight-channel preamp with two 

eight-channel inputs and four stereo 

inputs. A tape loop is offered in all configurations. 

The eight outputs are available 

on both balanced and unbalanced 

jacks; all inputs are unbalanced, except 

one stereo balanced pair. When used as 

a stereo or six-channel preamp, a Zone 2 

output is available with its own volume 

adjustment. 

The PRe 6 is software-controlled, 

with a pure analog signal path. 

Consequently, individual channel-level 

settings can be stored in memory for each 

input, and the inputs can be named and 

displayed on the three-line front-panel 

display. Unused inputs can be disabled. 

No bass management is provided. 

Volume control is realized with a stepped 

attenuator (0.5dB steps) under digital 

control. The unit is supplied with a 

machined aluminum remote control. 

This advanced feature set and custom 

configurability provides great flexibility 

for a wide range of systems. 


Fosgate FAP V1 ($13,000) 

Most people don’t know that Jim 

Fosgate was designing and building 

multichannel audio products and surround-sound 

decoders for more than a 

decade before home-theater became a 

household word. In fact, he did much of 

the design work for Dolby Labs on the 

original Dolby Surround format back in 

the 1970s, and contributed his design 

expertise to the new Dolby Pro Logic II 

decoding. 

That history, along with a strong 

high-end aesthetic, is embodied in the 

limited-edition Fosgate FAP V1, by far 

the tweakiest multichannel product on 

the market. Fosgate has taken a different 

approach in the FAP V1, combining 

useful home-theater features with highend 

music capability for stereo and multichannel 

music. 

The FAP V1 has an all-tubed signal 

path and offers one eight-channel 

input as well as eight stereo inputs. 

The eight-channel input can accept 

the analog output from an SACD or 

DVD-A player; alternately, a DVD 

player with a built-in Dolby Digital 

and DTS decoder can feed this input 

for discrete, multichannel surround 

sound. This input can also be fed by 

the six (or eight) line-level outputs 

from a digital controller. A Dolby 

Pro Logic II decoder, implemented 

in the analog domain, can be 


invoked on any of the other eight inputs 

for listening to two-channel sources in 

multichannel. This PL II decoder is 

bypassed for signals fed to the multichannel 

inputs; those signals are sent 

directly to the FAP V1’s volume control. 

Front-panel controls adjust the PL II 

decoder for Center Width and 

Dimension. Rear-panel switches engage 

high-pass filters for the front, center, 

and surround channels independently 

(80Hz). A surround and surround back 

low-pass filter at 8kHz can be invoked 

on those channels (which increases the 

apparent channel separation in Pro Logic 

decoding). Another rear-panel switch 

engages a noise signal for calibrating 

individual channel levels. 

This feature set is unique. Although 

the FAP V1 accepts only one multichannel 

source, the inclusion of PL II 

decoding, bass management (the 

switchable high-pass filters), and an all- 

tube signal path give the product more 

functionality for home-theater users, yet 

simultaneously offer potentially super 

high-end performance for stereo and 

multichannel music. 

The FAP V1’s execution is stunning; 

the chassis is copper-plated aluminum 

mounted in a cabinet of bubinga and 

wenge wood. Each unit is hand numbered 

and signed by Jim Fosgate. 

McCormack MAP-1 ($2995) 

The McCormack MAP-1 is the least 

expensive and most straight-forward 

multichannel preamp of the group. It 

offers three unbalanced multichannel 

inputs as well as three two-channel 

inputs. Output is unbalanced only. 

Unique in this group is the optional 

phono plug-in board, which is the same 

circuit found in McCormack’s Micro 

Phono Drive. An analog-domain circuit 

called Ambience Retrieval Mode (ARM) 

extracts center and surround information 

from two-channel recordings and 

feeds those extracted signals to the 

appropriate loudspeakers. Individual 

channel-level adjustments are provided, 

but not bass management. The MAP-1 

is supplied with a remote control. 

EMM Labs Switchman 3 

($7500) 

Ed Meitner, one of the most talented 

and innovative designers in high-end 

today, has adapted his professional multichannel 

switching unit to audiophile 

use in the EMM Labs Switchman 3. The 

original Switchman was developed for 


switching and controlling levels in 

Direct Stream Digital (DSD, the 

encoding format used in SACD) 

recording and playback chains. It has 

become the reference in professional 

applications, and is found in the 

“who’s who” list of top recording and 

mastering studios. 

The audiophile version offers 

four sets of six-channel inputs, and 

two sets of six-channel outputs (balanced 

and unbalanced signals are 

accommodated). The Switchman 3’s 

front panel holds only a power 

switch; all level control and individual 

channel-level adjustment is performed 

via a wired remote control. The 

remote also contains a display showing 

the volume setting, selected input, and 

muting information (any channel can be 

muted independently). The Switchman 

3 will store multiple “templates” of different 

settings, such as individual channel 

levels, muting, and overall volume. 

The signal path is fully balanced, 

and the analog gain control is reportedly 

the most transparent Meitner has yet 

designed. 

Theta Six-Shooter 

($2000) 

Theta Digital has devised an interesting 

solution for adding multiple multichannel 

analog paths to its Casablanca 

digital controller. Called the Six- 

Shooter, the device is an outboard multichannel 

switcher that is controlled by 

the Casablanca. The Six-Shooter is 


inserted between the Casablanca and a 

multichannel power amplifier, with the 

Casablanca’s output feeding one of the 

Six-Shooter’s multichannel analog 

inputs. The Six-Shooter’s two additional 

six-channel analog inputs can be driven 

by multichannel sources such as SACD 

or DVD-A players. (One input gives you 

the choice of balanced and unbalanced 

connection; the second input is unbalanced 

only.) 

No volume control, source switching, 

or individual channel-level adjustments 

are provided on the Six-Shooter. 

Rather, these functions are performed in 

the Casablanca, which outputs digital 

control signals to the Six-Shooter to 

switch sources and adjust volume. Note 

that the signal path, including the volume 

control, is all analog, and that multichannel 

analog signals never leave the 

Six-Shooter. The Casablanca simply controls 

these analog functions via a communications 

link. 

If you’d like to use your two-channel 

preamp with a Casablanca and the Six- 

Shooter, one of the Six-Shooter’s multichannel 

inputs can be driven by the twochannel 

preamp, and the Six-Shooter put 

into a unity-gain bypass mode. 

The Six-Shooter is an interesting 

approach to the problem of accommodating 

multichannel audio in a highend 

system. The external chassis solves 

the rear-panel real-estate limitation; 

there are only so many jacks that will fit 

on one panel. And by using the 

Casablanca for source switching, individual 

channel-level control, and overall 

volume adjustment, the Six-Shooter’s 

external box becomes a non-issue. The 

obvious limitation is that you’re stuck 

using the DACs in the SACD or DVD- 

A player, not the high-quality DACs in 

the Casablanca. Theta built a business 

around delivering superior digital-toanalog 

conversion, and it’s a shame that 

the Casablanca’s DACs go to waste on 

multichannel sources. That 

state of affairs is not unique to 

Theta; without a high-resolution 

multichannel digital 

interface standard, we’re stuck 

with the analog stages of 

today’s SACD and DVD-A 

players. (An exception: EMM 

Labs can modify a Philips 

1000 player to output a DSD 

signal directly to the EMM 

Labs DAC6 converter.) Theta 

is, however, working on a multichannel 

digital interface. 


t a s r o u n d t a b l e 

ROBERT: I’d like to start by asking each of you what sonic 

advantages you hear in multichannel compared with twochannel. 

HARRY: Well, I can tell you one thing: you will hear a bass on 

an organ that you won’t get on any two-channel recording. 

PETER: The low frequencies are liberated—freed from the box. 

HARRY: It’s astounding. You listen to something like this fourchannel 

recording that Columbia did of the organ in 

Germany. You listen to that sucker, and I’m telling you, I 

never heard the lower octaves of an organ reproduced this 

correctly. Ever. And multichannel does one more thing—it 

lets instruments float above the orchestra, as they do in life, 

easily. Now, you can hear this sometimes on two-channel, 

but in multichannel it’s routine to have percussion floating 

up above the orchestra like at a concert. 

ANDY: I have this wonderful sense of the music being in the air 

between myself in the listening position and the performers 

on stage, and furthermore I can differentiate between 

different spaces. That experience is different at the 

Metropolitan Opera than the Concertgebouw, than 

Symphony Hall in Chicago, than Symphony Hall in 

Boston, and that difference really provides that sense of 

occasion which pulls you into a musical performance. 

PETER: Right. At its very best you can only describe two-channel 

as looking at a picture through a transparent window. When 

you then turn the back speakers on, you’ve been transported 

through that window into the venue space. You’re no longer 

outside looking in; you’re inside experiencing it; and for me 

that’s really what multichannel is all about. 

ROBERT: Given that, why is there such an audiophile bias 

against multichannel? 

PETER: Simply because, Robert, I doubt if most of its critics 

have actually ever heard it done properly. 

ANDY: I think audiophiles have many reasons for resisting multichannel, 

some of which are spoken and some of which are 

not. The primary one that isn’t spoken is that most audio- 

Multichannel Audio 

In our continuing series of panel discussions of important audio topics, 

Robert Harley, recording engineer Peter McGrath, Harry Pearson, and TAS 

classical-music editor Andrew Quint explore multichannel audio. 

philes have carefully, incrementally built a system up over 

years, and making a switch to multichannel involves 

changing a lot of stuff and, frankly, often spending a lot of 

money. You’re dealing with many new pieces of equipment 

and perhaps addressing some room issues which you 

haven’t had to address before. So audiophiles, and unfortunately 

a significant corner of the audiophile press, haven’t 

embraced multichannel really, because of a series of misconceptions 

and rationalizations and even frank lies about 

multichannel music, like there’s no software available, or if 

you get multichannel you’re going to hear clarinets coming 

from behind you, or you need five equal speakers and 

you have to sit at the exact center of the room, or that you 

need a television to play back DVD-Audio. 

PETER: These are all misleading concepts, and they create an 

impossible barrier to entry into multichannel sound. 

HARRY: What do you see, Peter, as some of the other misconceptions 

and distortions? 

PETER: Well, what I’m going to say might be deemed a bit controversial. 

I have very strong feelings against the need for a 

center channel. I have very strong feelings against the need 

for a subwoofer track. I feel that both of those are, indeed, 

carry-overs from film soundtracks—from the lack of a distinction 

being made between surround sound and multichannel. 

This is the issue we’ve been struggling with from 

the get-go. 

To back up a bit, the misconception that really 

started the whole process was the assumption that it was 

going to be a slam-dunk to get multichannel established in 

the homes of music lovers, because most of them already 

had a good theater multichannel loudspeaker system. 

What we failed to take into account is the distinct division 

between the type of people who enjoy listening to music 

and the type of people who enjoy watching films. Each has 

a different psychology, a different mindset. What we really 

should have thought about is how to expand the mindset 

of those people who listen to music on a two-channel system 

in their home—in much the same way that we ushered 

in the transition from mono to stereo. 

For me, multichannel is of no use if you don’t get 

the front two channels right. With two very high-quality, 


The extra channels should bring you a greater sense of realism, a greater sense of the absolute 

sound, and with most recordings I don’t think we have begun to see that potential realized. 

—HP 

phase-coherent loudspeakers in front and a recording with 

careful miking—minimal miking preferably—minimal 

processing, no compression, etc., you can render an orchestra, 

a piano, a chamber ensemble, trio, quartet with phenomenal 

precision and beauty and delicacy. Looking at 

multichannel from the point of view of the audiophile, I 

have a real challenge in trying to add a third speaker in 

between, because if you do you have to spread those two 

speakers out and, then, where in the heck are they going to 

place that third speaker? How are you going to get past the 

wife? How are you going to get past the budget constraints? 

Invariably that third speaker should be at least a 

match of the left and right. And that creates a nightmare 

for a lot of people. 

HARRY: There’s one more aspect you should mention: the dispersion 

pattern. 

PETER: Absolutely. 

HARRY: Because if you have to have a projection screen behind 

the speaker, normally you cannot have a speaker that stands 

as tall as the left and right speakers. 

ROBERT: Quite apart from that argument, I think it could be 

said that hard panning of instruments to the center rather 

than phantom imaging sounds less natural. 

PETER: It never integrates properly. 

ROBERT: You can do this experiment with James Taylor’s 

Hourglass on SACD. The vocal is panned exclusively to the 

center channel in the multichannel mix. When you switch 

to two channel and let the phantom imaging take over 

between the left and right channels, the voice sounds much 

more natural and integrated, and there’s space around the 

vocalist that you just don’t get from the multichannel 

recording. 

PETER: Exactly, Robert. 

HARRY: You seem to almost be heading, Peter, towards saying 

that we don’t need the center speaker. 

PETER: I don’t want it. I’d rather not have it. 

HARRY: So how about the four-channel systems? Where you 

have two up front, left and right, and two in the rear? 

PETER: That’s how you do multichannel. That for me is the 

ultimate. A pair in front, a pair in back, and that’s it. 

ANDY: By the way, Peter, wouldn’t you say, when it comes to the 

subwoofer channel, that easily half of classical recordings 

are 5.0 [five channels with no subwoofer]. 

PETER: That’s correct. 

ANDY: People don’t really see a need for it necessarily. 

PETER: Yes, and I’ve talked to mastering engineers and the 

recording engineers and they’ve confirmed that little if any 

information is actually put in there that is not already 

included in the four main speakers or the five main speakers. 

ANDY: I think there’s something psychoacoustic going on here. 

When you’re immersed in the sound in a natural fashion, 

you seem to need less bass slam. I’m suddenly satisfied with 

how low my WATT/Puppies go, and I can turn off the subwoofer. 

PETER: Exactly. I don’t know the real reason for that, but I think 

a lot of it has to do with the fact that you’ve got the bass 

emanating from four different points and it’s breaking down 

the normal room modes that cause all kinds of cancellations. 

ROBERT: That brings up another audiophile bias against multichannel—the 

current multichannel loudspeaker array is 

dictated by film-industry standards, which may not be 

optimal for music. 

HARRY: That’s the big problem—and it leads to others. We 

really should be referring to multichannel sound as that— 

and not as surround sound. Surround sound is a phenomenon 

peculiar to movies. In listening to multichannel systems, 

I have found only one speaker system, I think, that 

sounds equally good with surround and multichannel. 

Most of the time a system sounds great with one or the 

other but not both, and I’m not quite sure why there 

should be such a distinct difference. 

PETER: In my view, there shouldn’t be any fundamental difference 

in the speakers or in the deployment of the speakers, 

although if you look at the so-called format of some multichannel—for 

instance, when you look at the manuals 

that come along with SACDs—you see they suggest 

extremely wide separation of the left/right channels, and 

then placement of the rear speakers more forward, up along 

the sides almost, and not really in the rear. You get into a 

peculiar situation if you have speakers deployed in this 

fashion, as it precludes listening to two-channel music, 

because you’ve got your left and right so far apart and—if 


Audiophiles are biased against multichannel because the current standard is dictated by the 

film-industry, which may not be optimal for music. 

—Robert Harley 

you’re really doing it right by using the same speaker in the 

middle as you do on the front sides—you may well have a 

very large speaker in the center that’s going to interfere 

with the imaging of the outer pair in two-channel mode. 

HARRY: Well, the point I meant to make is that, even in a fouror 

five-channel setup, there is very little correlation between 

what makes for good movie surround sound and what will 

work for music with more than two channels. And I think 

that is a part of why home-theater folks and audiophiles 

alike resist multichannel. Plus, many multichannel recordings 

really aren’t very good. I don’t think that engineers in 

general have mastered the potential of the medium. 

PETER: Well, the same could be said about going from mono to 

stereo. 

HARRY: Well, it could and couldn’t. We got some pretty good 

recordings back then, from the three-channel Mercurys to 

the RCAs and Deccas. It seems to me it was not as difficult 

a transition as going from two channels to multichannel is 

turning out to be. 

ANDY: At the same time, I think for classical listeners, especially 

those who still value the live-concert experience, multichannel 

audio is a big deal, because multichannel audio gives you 

three things in relation to the spatial presentation of the 

musical event that are really important. First, there’s a more 

dimensional representation of the players on stage; second, a 

sense of the venue—the size, the shape, the nature of the construction, 

whether there are people there; and third, and most 

ephemeral, a sense of the music in the air around you. I agree 

that you can get some of these things from some recordings 

on some stereo setups, especially a sense of soundstage. 

Occasionally you can get a sense of the room and very rarely 

a sense of the air around you. But these things come routinely 

with well-made, multichannel recordings, and, this may 

be another unspoken reason why audiophiles are suspicious, I 

think there’s something very democratizing about multichannel 

audio, because you can realize these difficult-toachieve 

effects in smaller rooms at lower volumes and frankly 

with less fancy equipment. 

HARRY: Well, there’s one more thing that I’ve noticed. When 

you’re using a multichannel speaker system, the flaws in 

the speaker system itself seem to me to be canceled out or 

be vastly reduced. In other words, critical distinctions 

about the sound are harder to make. 

ANDY: There’s a forgiving aspect. 

HARRY: Yes, well, that’s one way of putting it. Things I’ve heard 

on two channels—like the distortions in the Coincident 

Technology’s Total Victory speakers I reviewed—are not at 

all obvious if you’re listening to a multichannel system. 

You can never quite tell on a two-channel basis how a 

speaker system is going to work when you put it into a 

multichannel configuration. 

PETER: Andy mentioned the democratizing effect of multichannel, 

and I happen to agree with that, but I also look at 

it another way. The way I see it any really good, highly 

evolved, highly refined, two-channel system can be taken 

to the fullest extent of its capabilities if you can somehow 

find a way to put two more quality speakers in the back. 

And I don’t really believe that the back speakers have to be 

equal to the ones in front, just something that can give you 

some kind of tonal matching to the front. I think the addition 

of such rear channels will give you perhaps the 

biggest single increase in musical pleasure that you can 

derive from that system, if, of course, you have the quality 

recording to do it with. And I also agree with Andy 

that there are many, many wonderful recordings coming 

out that really do bring the quality of halls, the quality of 

orchestras, and the quality of soloists into a playback situation 

in a much more revealing fashion than any twochannel 

system could in the past. For instance, if I start by 

playing my recordings with just the two channels in front, 

listeners will say, “My gosh, that’s extraordinary, that’s 

beautiful!” People even comment, “That sounds better 

than what I heard when I was in the hall.” Then I turn the 

back speakers on, and they say, “Wow, that’s terrific! It’s 

so much better still!” Then I turn the backs off again, and 

they say, “What happened? It died.” 

ANDY: I think there’s a reason for that. I think most listeners, 

Recommended Multichannel Recordings 

The following recordings were mentioned in the full discussion 

from which the transcript was edited, and all were highly praised 

by the panelists. Here are catalog numbers and TAS issue numbers 

in which the title was reviewed. —RH 

Bach: The Four Great Toccatas and Fugues, Sony 87983 (TAS 143) 

Adams: Fearful Symmetries, Ccn’C 01912 (TAS 137) 

Antill: Corroboree (three channel), Everest VSD 512 (TAS 136) 

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon, Capitol 82136 (TAS 142) 

Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony, Telarc 60588 (TAS 138) 

Mahler: Symphony No. 3, SFS Media 821936-0003 (TAS 145) 

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, Telarc 60600 (TAS 146) 


audiophiles and non-audiophiles, would agree that the most 

memorable music experiences of their lives don’t involve 

records, they involve live performances, and it’s that sense of 

occasion that you get from well-made, multichannel recordings. 

HARRY: [Chuckles] From the back channels as opposed to the front 

mix? 

ANDY: That’s right. 

HARRY: Well, you know, I’ve compiled a list of good multichannel 

recordings, I guess you’ve seen it [HP’s Super Surround 

SACD List in Issue 141], but I don’t think all that many are 

great. I still think engineers are fooling around trying to 

get used to the medium. Look, I’ll tell you what I think: 

The extra channels should bring you a greater sense of realism, 

a greater sense of the absolute sound, and with most 

recordings I don’t think we have begun to see that potential 

realized. 

ROBERT: I attended a workshop on multichannel audio at an 

AES convention and the panel was a Who’s Who of the top 

pop and rock recording engineers. John Eargle was the 

moderator, and he asked for everyone’s approach when they 

mix in multichannel, and each engineer had a totally different 

view about how to use the center speaker and how to 

use the surrounds. Some engineers said to put the vocal in 

the center channel only; some said to put it in the mix of 

the front three channels; some said don’t pan anything 

hard to the center channel. There’s no consensus, so it creates 

confusion for a consumer trying to play back these 

recordings on a standardized system, when there is no standardized 

system for mixing, and no standardized aesthetic 

for how to use those extra channels. 

HARRY: Well, there isn’t, and I think that’s a problem that we 

have to get over in order to sell this to the public. 

ANDY: But at the same time, the naysayers out there are saying 

that there are no recordings [being released], and that’s 

patently ridiculous. 

HARRY: Well, that is patently ridiculous, but here’s a further thought 

about that. Did you see some of the original SACD releases? 

Sony went back and re-did these horrible old Bernstein recordings—I’m 

talking really trashy-sounding Columbia recordings—and 

not their newest, most state-of-the-art things. Sony 


There’s something very democratizing about multichannel audio, because you can realize 

these difficult-to-achieve sonic effects in smaller rooms at lower volumes and frankly, with 

less fancy equipment. —Andy Quint 

was not picking material to show the medium off. And I think 

that’s part of the reason there’s a kind of cynicism out there. A 

lot of people are not looking at the new recordings because of 

disappointment about the older ones. 

ANDY: It’s worth observing that the Grammy winners for Best 

Classical Recording the past two years are available as multichannel 

recordings. In 2002, the Vaughan Williams A 

Sea Symphony on Telarc, and this past year, the Michael 

Tilson Thomas Mahler Third, which is available only as a 

hybrid multichannel SACD. 

HARRY: I think that A Sea Symphony is one of the great multichannel 

recordings. I really do. It’s a beautiful performance 

and the sound is…well, it’s gotten better. I mean, Telarc’s 

most recent recording, like the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet, 

which you [Andy] think dry and I don’t, has an astounding 

sense of dimensionality. Some of the earliest multichannel 

recordings I heard did not have depth of imagery. 

PETER: Again, that’s part of the learning curve. 

HARRY: That’s what I’m saying: We’re at the beginning of the 

learning curve. 

PETER: Yeah, but I would also say that listeners have to listen 

to the new Telarcs, the Pentatones, and indeed even some 

of the newer Deutsche Grammophons that are coming out 

repackaged in SACD. 

ANDY: And the Channel Classics. 

PETER: Yes. All of these. I have yet to find any of these discs on 

which, when I played it in multichannel and then in two 

channel, I gained anything by switching to two channel. 

It’s always for me a net loss. And in that sense we’re clearly 

making progress. 

ROBERT: An impediment to the wider adoption of multichannel 

audio is a lack of products that allow the audiophile with 

a two-channel system to go to multichannel without having 

to use a digital controller with DSP and signal processing. 

It doesn’t seem like there’s a simple hardware solution 

that addresses the audiophile’s needs. 

PETER: There are a few coming. Harry I believe uses the 

Meitner. 

HARRY: You know, that Meitner stuff is what convinced me that 

SACD really had a future, because I’ve head SACD before and 

I really could not stand the high frequencies, especially on 

massed string fortes. When I got the Meitner stuff, I saw the 

future. But what bothers me is how can I recommend it? It 

isn’t widely distributed. Where can I tell listeners to go get it? 

ROBERT: Yes, this is a big problem facing the industry and facing the 

magazine—to provide a path for audiophiles and music lovers 

to try multichannel. There’s no easy way to do it. By turning its 

back on multichannel, it seems to me that the high end is not 

offering a wide array of affordable, easy solutions for people to 

get into multichannel. It’s forcing those people who are interested 

in multichannel to turn toward Japanese products. 

PETER: Or second-tier gear. 

ANDY: And it really necessitates that many people maintain two 

blended systems, so that when you go back to two-channel 

you don’t feel as though you’re compromising. So I have a 

two-channel preamp and a multichannel preamp, and 

there’s about three or four minutes of wire switching when 

I go back and forth. 

PETER: Which shouldn’t have to be. If anything meaningful comes 

out of this discussion, maybe some of the manufacturers who 

read it will recognize some of the issues that we’re talking 

about, and that there is a ready market for addressing them. I 

know, and I can help promote it, the magazines can help promote 

it, and I think it should be our goal, those of us who have 

experienced it as Harry has, as Andy has, as Robert has in his 

home, and as I’ve been doing multichannel music presentations 

for years at shows, to expose more and more people to 

how good it can really, really be, and this is the big challenge. 

ANDY: I have another point, too, and that is that the three of us 

are focused on classical music, but we have to understand 

that most people enjoy other kinds of music. And I hear a 

lot of complaints from audiophiles oriented towards other 

kinds of music about what’s available to them, and how 

egregiously such multichannel recordings have turned out. 

ROBERT: I agree completely that there’s way too much information 

in the rear channels. 

HARRY: They’re doing what they did in the early days of stereo; 

when you got two speakers in stereo you had all these 

recordings with sounds ping-ponging back and forth 

between the speakers. And now they’re doing exactly the 

same thing on a larger scale. 

ANDY: There are some exceptions. I mean, there are some older 

pop recordings that sound as though they’ve been waiting 

around for twenty years for this technology. & 


The Sonus Faber 

Stradivari is not 

the kind of 

loudspeaker 

that will make 

you say, “Wow, I never 

heard that before!” every ten 

seconds. Nor will it throw 

the widest, deepest soundstage. 

Nor will it “disappear” 

the way, say, HP does 

when the check arrives. 

All the Stradivari will 

do, in fact, is sound astonishingly 

beautiful on record 

after record, disc after disc. If 

you can imagine a Spendor 

BC-1 with greater authority, 

more lifelike image size, far 

superior dynamics, detail, 

and extension, more seamless 

driver-to-driver continuity, 

and considerably less boominess 

and boxiness, then you have 

an idea of what these Sonus Fabers are like. 

Though the Strads won’t turn sow’s-ear recordings into silkpurse 

ones, they’ll certainly make every disc more listenable— 

and great ones breathtakingly lovely. Along with the diminutive 

$20,000 Kharma Reference Monitor 3.2s and the humongous 

$91,000 Rockport Hyperions, they are the most musical 

dynamic loudspeakers I’ve auditioned in my home. 

At $40,000 the pair, these things ought to sound as fabulous 

as they do. What you might not expect—especially, if you 

are unfamiliar with other Sonus Faber speakers—is how fabulous 

they look. Feasting eyes upon them for the first time, my 

wife, who has seen thirty years’ worth of stereo equipment come 

and go, quipped: “Who cares how they sound!” With their 

graceful curves and gorgeous red lacquer finish, they put you in 

mind of exactly what Sonus Faber was aiming for: the burnished 

look of a Stradivarius violin. 

The company Sonus Faber (the name literally means “sound 

the cutting edge 

Drop-Dead Gorgeous 

Sonus Faber Stradivari “Homage” Loudspeaker 

Jonathan Valin 

craftsman” in Latin) is located in Cremona, Italy—famously the 

home of the great seventeenth-century violin- and lute-making 

families of Amati, 

Guarneri, and Stradivari—and 

Sonus Faber’s 

Franco Serblin takes his 

Cremonese heritage very 

seriously. Over the past 

decade or so, he has created 

a series of “homage” 

speakers (including the 

one under review) that 

were inspired by the work 

of these great Cremonese 

masters. Indeed, Serblin 

makes speakers rather in 

the same way that Andrea 

Amati, Giuseppe Guarneri, 

and Antonio Stradivari 

made lutes, cellos, and 

violins, mixing artisanal 

techniques with contemporary 

science and 

focusing on the beauty 

of the sound first and 

foremost. 

The Stradivari is 

Serblin’s chef d’oeuvre, 

and a departure in several 

ways from his previous “homage” designs. First of all, the 

Stradivari is larger than either the Amati or the Guarneri “homage” 

speakers—a massive, ported, four-driver, three-way floorstander 

that weighs roughly 165 pounds. Second, unlike the 

Amati and the Guarneri, which are narrow-baffle loudspeakers 

(considerably taller and deeper than they are wide), the Strad is 

much wider than it is deep. Third, again unlike the Amati and the 

Guarneri, whose guitar-shaped enclosures are modeled on 

Cremonese lutes, the Stradivari’s cabinet is elliptical, shaped like 

the arched body of the king of instruments, the violin. The 

Stradivari’s external walls are exquisitely fashioned from multiple 

layers of maple and other high quality woods, artfully arranged 


in a constrained-layer sandwich designed to reduce resonances. In 

addition, the enclosure is braced internally with violin-like structural 

ribs, has tuned ports for the midrange and woofers (analogous 

to the violin’s F-holes), and is finished, as noted, in a gorgeous 

red lacquer derived from Antonio Stradivari’s own formula 

(and said, like the lacquer of a Stradivarius violin, to enhance 

the beauty of the speaker’s sound). 

The Stradivari is an “infinite plane” loudspeaker, in which the 

considerable breadth and elliptical shape of the speaker’s baffle is 

claimed to work “synergistically” to improve the dispersion of its 

ring-radiator tweeter, to augment dynamic scale and range in the 

bass (by effectively increasing the radiating area of its two teninch 

woofers), and to greatly reduce diffraction effects. At the 

same time the superb enclosure and vented subenclosures for the 

six-inch midrange and twin bass drivers are said to ideally terminate 

backwaves. I will have more to say about these claims anon. 

On to the listening. 

As a reproducer of stringed instruments, from doublebass 

to acoustic guitar to violin, the Stradivari is peerless in my 

experience—rivaled among dynamic loudspeakers only by the 

Rockport Hyperion and the long-discontinued Spendor BC-1. 

The Strad is simply voluptuous sounding, combining fine 

dynamic nuance and superb large-scale “snap” with drop-deadgorgeous 

timbres. For example, on a “difficult” recording like 

Speaker’s Corner’s marvelous reissue of Vienna 1908-1914 

[Mercury], which can (like so many other Mercurys) sound a bit 

edgy on tuttis, the Strad makes the London Symphony 

Orchestra strings in Schoenberg’s 5 Stücke sound positively 


diaphanous. On a much smaller scale 

the Strad turns Ildikó Hajdu’s sumptuous 

fiddle and György Déri’s 

equally sumptuous, plum-colored 

cello from the Kodály Duo on 

Hungaroton’s digital LP into things 

of exquisite beauty. Given the variable 

nature of recordings, this may 

not be the way basses, cellos, violas, 

or violins should sound on these LPs, 

but it is certainly the way we want 

them to sound—the way, at their 

finest, we remember these instruments 

sounding. In saying this, I 

suppose I’m conceding that the 

Stradivari—like the Hyperion—errs 

toward the warm side. Indeed, I 

would say that it is warmer than the 

more neutral Kharma Reference 

3.2—about as warm as the Hyperion 

but a little darker in balance. 

(Because of its buttery smoothness in 

the upper mids and treble and the 

beguiling fullness of its mid-to-low 

bass, the Strad tends to sound as if it 

is weighted just a bit toward the bottom 

octaves.) And yet, despite the added warmth, the Strad 

does not obscure the flaws of lesser recordings so much as make 

them more livable and listenable. 

As you might expect, the Stradivari is also a superb reproducer 

of the human voice, from basso to soprano. On large-scale 

multimiked studio recordings, like Elektra [Decca] or Showboat 

[Angel], it makes soloists and chorus sound just as beautiful as 

it does solo and massed violins and cellos, though, as with these 

string instruments, the Strad tends to sweeten vocal timbres 

attractively and, because, of its slight darkness, to make performers 

sound less freed up from the speakers, less “there-inthe-room-with-you” 

and more “there-in-the-recording-studioor-concert-hall.” 

On smaller-scale, minimally miked recordings, 

it may be even more impressive, particularly on discs 

where voices are accompanied by strings, such as the guitar, 

auto-harp, and upright bass on Cisco’s remarkable LP reissue of 

Ian and Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds [Vanguard]. 

I suppose I could go through all the instruments, from piccolo 

to grand piano, and say just about the same things I’ve said 

about the way the Stradivari reproduces strings and voices. 

When it comes to timbres and dynamics, it is superb—as good 

or better than anything I’ve yet heard. And because of its high 

sensitivity, low distortion, harmonic richness, treble smoothness, 

and extraordinary dynamic ease, it will play very softly or 

very loudly without falling apart. Indeed, for those who like 

their large-scale music played large (and have the large), the 

Strad is an obvious must-audition. And for a guy like me, who 

is very sensitive to the upper midrange roughness, driver discon- 


tinuities, and speaker/room interactions that are exaggerated at 

high volumes (in much the same way that video artifacts on DVD 

are exaggerated when an image is projected on a big screen), the 

Strad is, along with the Rockport Hyperion and the Kharma 

Exquisite 1-B, the only three-way dynamic loudspeaker I could listen 

to contentedly at concert-hall levels and beyond. 

Perhaps because of its inherent richness and ripeness, the 

Strad is as good as anything I’ve heard at realistically reproducing 

instruments that play in the bass. Though it is a large speaker, it 

isn’t gigantic like the Hyperion or some of the bigger planars, and 

yet it generates truly deep bass at least as well as these others do. 

In my medium-sized listening room (17.5 x 16 x 12 feet), the 

Strad plays down into the low 20s (no small feat), and though it 

does not have the crisp definition and leaned-out midbass that 

some audiophiles seem to demand from their bass reproducers 

(neither does the Hyperion), it manages, like the Hyperion, to 

combine a high measure of performance-and-instrument-related 

detail with an even higher measure of the dynamic authority and 

richness of timbre that grand pianos, doublebasses, bassoons, 

tubas, and cellos have in life. The Strad also has unusually good 

transient response in the bass—which is, frankly, something the 

Hyperion did not—so that basses played pizzicato or staccato, like 

those doubled by bass drum near the close of Britten’s Variations 

and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell [Cisco], have the sensational impact 

they have in a concert hall. (The Strad is, by the way, just as fast 


on transients in the mids and treble—e.g., on the amusing whip 

and woodblock in this same Britten piece or the marvelous triplenote 

wind figure, with string pizzicato, in the third movement 

[“Farben”] of the aforementioned Schoenberg piece, which here 

really does sound, as Schoenberg intended it to, like a trout suddenly 

breaking the placid sunlit surface of a lake on a summer 

morning.) Its clarity on complex harmonies—for instance in the 

lyric passage late in the Allegro of the Brahms First Cello Sonata 

[Mercury] in which Starker double-stops his instrument, producing 

gorgeous counterpoint between the deep bass line and that of 

the mid-register—is amazingly high. 

So where’s the rub? Actually, there are just two, unless you 

count the speaker’s inherently sweet, warm, rich balance 

against it. (And those of you who do should consult a shrink.) 

First, the Strads seldom “disappear” into the soundfield the 

way my (admittedly much smaller) two-way Kharma Reference 

3.2 monitors do. I am generally aware of them as sound sources, 

no matter where they are placed (and John Hunter of Sumiko 

did a helluva job positioning them for fullest extension, highest 

detail, and widest soundstage in my room). In all likelihood, 

this would not have been the case in a larger space than my listening 

room (these are large speakers, after all), though it may 

also be that, Sonus Faber’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, 

those beautiful lacquered enclosures have a beautiful resonant 

signature of their own. I will find out for sure when I pay 


Sumiko a visit later in the year to hear the Strads set up in a big 

room. In the nonce, I would not let this reservation bother you 

overly much. The $91,000 Rockport Hyperions—the best 

speakers I’ve ever heard in my home (though the Strads give ’em 

a helluva run in some respects)—didn’t “disappear,” either. 

Second, in addition to what I would call the “transparency” 

question, the Strads do not soundstage quite as well as the 

Kharma Reference 3.2s do. Of course, no other speaker I’ve 

heard, save for the Nearfield Acoustics Pipedreams, does. 

Though stage depth is superior by anything but Kharma standards, 

stage width always seems a bit curtailed to me, even in 

comparison to other comparable speakers. While spreading the 

Strads more widely apart spreads the stage, they do not really 

image much “outside the box” (beyond the outer edges of their 

enclosures), the way the Kharmas do. (I should note, once 

again, that the Hyperion wasn’t a world-beating soundstager, 

either.) On the other hand, image size is extraordinary with the 

Strad, and inner detail is, as noted, excellent. 

The Strads sound best toed in greatly, so that you are listening 

virtually on axis with their drivers. They should also be 

set as far as possible from rear and side walls and at least five or 

six feet from one another (although setting them too far apart 

will rob you of midbass). Their tilt (which greatly affects the 


blend of the tweeter) must be carefully adjusted. (I could see 

where they could sound a bit bright or overly dark, if tilt 

weren’t dialed-in just so.) And, as cool-looking as they are, 

their “stringed” grilles must be removed for best sound. In my 

room, the Strads sounded their finest with moderate-power 

tube amplification, particularly with the 70Wpc Ming Da 

monoblocks (review forthcoming) and the 75Wpc Tenor 

75Wp’s. The 300Wpc hybrid Tenor 300Hp’s also did a superb 

job—allowing the speakers to “open up” more because of their 

enormous advantage in power. 

I should also note that switching cable and interconnect 

from my reference balanced Nordost Valhalla to single-ended 

runs of Synergistic Research’s new active X-2 Absolute 

Reference makes a good deal of the loudspeaker’s darkness go 

away, though it makes a bit of the midbass go away, too. 

In spite of any shortcomings, the Sonus Faber Stradivari, 

like the Kharma Reference Monitor 3.2 and the Rockport 

Hyperion, is a truly great high-end loudspeaker, as gorgeous to 

look at as it is to listen to. I cannot imagine any of you not loving 

it as much as I do—and as much as my listening panel does. 

(I’ve never had this many return visits from guys who are old, 

jaded hands when it comes to audio gear.) Its sound is so beautiful, 

so dynamic, so utterly, thrillingly, and addictively musical 

that it actually takes an effort to tear yourself away from the listening 

room. Frankly, I don’t know when I’ve last been able to 

say that—and mean it. For the music lover, this is a referencequality 

product. & 


Type: Four-driver, three-way, floorstanding dynamic loudspeaker 

Speaker complement: One-inch Neodymium ring tweeter, six-inch dynamic 

midrange, (2) ten-inch aluminum/magnesium alloy woofers 

Crossover: Multi-slope at 330Hz and 4kHz 


Impedance: 4 ohms nominal 

Frequency response: 22Hz–40kHz 

Dimensions: 25.5" x 53.5" x 10" 

Weight: 165 lbs. apiece 

Price: $40,000 


Aesthetix Io and Calisto, Lamm L2 and LP2, Messenger and Xanden preamps; 

Tenor 75Wp, Tenor 300Hp, Lamm ML-2, Krell FPB650, Ming Da 70 

amplifiers; Walker Proscenium Gold turntable and arm; Clearaudio 

HarmonyMg cartridge; emmLabs DAC6e/emmLabs modified Philips 

SACD1000 transport, Krell SACD Standard SACD players; Krell 25sc CD 

player/preamp; Nordost Valhalla, Synergistic Research X2 Absolute 

Reference, Purist Audio Dominus, Silent Source cable and interconnect; 

Walker Velocitor, Richard Gray Power Company 600S and Pole Pig power 

conditioners; Walker Audio Valid Points 


SUMIKO (DISTRIBUTOR) 

2431 Fifth Street 

Berkeley, California 94710 

(510) 843-4500 



Audio has reached a critical junction: It is clear that 

multichannel-music advocates are like children lost 

in a technological thicket, still trying to find their 

way to a higher expression of the absolute. Why, for 

instance, have all those extra channels if you don’t 

have a clear idea how to use them—to bring back, alive, an 

enhanced sense of musical realism? 

Part of the confusion is understandable: This time around, 

the extra channels become available, almost as an afterthought, 

in the wake of home theater’s “surround sound.” A generation or 

so ago, the recording industry’s venture into four-channel sound 

had a more or less rational basis for achieving greater concerthall 

realism. Now, thanks to “surround sound,” engineers find 

themselves with all those extra channels at their disposal and 

still no uniform or clear-cut notion how best to use them. 

Thus, we have: 

• Three-channel recordings—one from Vanguard/Everest 

and promised (at this writing) restorations of Mercury’s 

three-track originals, as well as a wellspring of most of the 

great recordings of the late 1950s and early 60s, from RCA 

to Columbia. 

• Four-channel recordings—the original Philips recordings 

(on Pentatone) from thirty-or-so years ago, as well as those 

from many independent small European labels (Opus 3 and 

others). Some engineers still argue that four channels are 

enough and make the most musical and technical sense. 

• Five-channel recordings—Telarc is a prime example. 

• 5.1 encodings. That “.1”—for very low bass notes—is one 

of the nightmares we inherited from the movie “surroundsound” 

big-auditorium approach. In music-only multichannel 

recordings that the so-called Low Frequency 

Effects (LFE) track is used either for augmented bass or, in 

some cases (as with certain Telarcs), to carry “height” information 

through wall-mounted small speakers. 

It’s enough to make your head swim. And that’s not to 

mention the incompatible formats for encoding that many 

tracks of musical information, the principal ones being SACD 

and DVD-A, which require entirely different technologies to 

en- and de-code. 1 

HP’s WORKSHOP 

The Dark Side of Multichannel Sound 

Consider the irony: A technology designed to 

be state-of-the-art isn’t being treated that way. 

And if you really want to put a spin on your head, then just 

read the technical descriptions of how SACD works or the data 

compression used in multichannel DVD-A. 

DVD-A got off on the wrong foot and hasn’t made the 

impact that Sony’s muscle afforded SACD. There are, to date, 

pitifully few classical releases in the DVD-A format, so it isn’t 

possible to make a judgment about its fidelity to an unamplified 

sound, if naturally recorded. On the other hand, several of 

the two-channel 96/24 DVD recordings—the Ravel and 

Gershwin collections promoted by Classic Records—are stunning, 

with a purity and clarity that approach the best analog. 

The situation with SACD is much more frustrating. None 

of the commercial players I’ve heard come anywhere near to 

showing what the medium can do. Heard at its current best, 

SACD is possessed of stunningly wide dynamics and, on the 

better vintage analog recordings, a density of information (fundamentals 

and their harmonic structure) that rivals the best 

analog. And, in one of two respects surpasses it. You’re not 

going to hear the promise of SACD from any of the commercial 

players I’ve auditioned: The mids are too resonantly colored, 

overly sweet; and the upper range gritty and textured, slopping 

hard edges on fortissimo strings. 

For now, to hear SACD at its best, you’d have to hear what 

wonders Ed Meitner of EMM Labs has worked with the technology. 

The folks at Sony (USA) brought Meitner in to build 

better en- and decoders because they weren’t satisfied with 

those coming out of Japan and Europe. And it is Meitner’s professional 

units that Telarc, Sony, and others have adopted as reference 

standards for both recording and playback. Only trouble 

here is that Meitner’s technology has not yet found its way into 

any commercial player, not even those marketed by Sony. 

Worse, Meitner’s long-promised SACD playback deck has been 

long a’borning and is still, as of this writing (late March), not 

on the market. His commercial version SACD decoder—the 

DAC-6e—is available, but at $9k. The two decks that Meitner 

has adapted for use with DAC-6e, multipurpose players from 

Philips, have been discontinued. The mechanically cranky 

Philips 1000 player, if you can find it, will, with Meitner mods, 

do the trick, letting you hear into what could be the future of 

multichannel music. Practically speaking, hearing SACD done 

1 You will note that I have made no mention of the Dolby 5.1 and DTS surround-sound techniques, both of which are now being used almost exclusively for movies and discs of filmed concerts. 


that well is, for nearly all music lovers, an unrealizable dream 

for the nonce. And if you ask me—and you didn’t—I think the 

situation stinks. Consider the irony: A technology designed to 

be state-of-the-art isn’t being treated that way. 

Sony’s other worst foot forward is shown by the way the 

SACD recordings were originally released, with what seems 

almost inexplicable disregard for audio quality. This corporate 

giant has thrown its considerable resources behind a system of 

the greatest sophistication—one, by the way, with some inherent 

and ferocious knots that must be untangled (Meitner’s 

ingenious algorithms to solve these, he says, are far from a finished 

journey). 

So to demonstrate its new sonic wonder machine, what did 

Sony do? 

Well, at first it released many older and not gloriously wellrecorded 

discs of best-selling catalog items. These were from 

the bad old days when Columbia’s sound would peel the paint 

from the walls and the wax from your ears. And even now, the 

Sony executives are insisting that old three- and four-channel 

recordings be remixed for the 5.1 system, instead of in their 

original form. To “show off” the medium, no doubt. So the 

impression the initial releases made was so underwhelming that 

even the stunning recent SACD issues from Sony and friends 

haven’t entirely erased the perception among serious listeners 

that there is less here than meets the ear. 

This is not to say that now there aren’t impressive multichannel 

recordings. There are. And from the most surprising 

places—Philips, for example, seems to have been inspired anew. 

I can count close to half a hundred that I use in demonstrations 

to show the potential of the medium. And these, often as not, 

come from either Telarc or Sony—not to mention the small 

independent labels (Channel Classics and Opus 3, for instance). 

Best foot forward to show multichannel’s promise? Check out, 

for starters, the Telarc recordings made in Cincinnati’s 

Orchestral Hall with either Paavo Järvi or the dreadful Erich 

Kunzel. Specifically, Järvi’s Ravel disc, his reading of 

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, or the stunning Berlioz Symphonie 

Fantastique; or Kunzel’s “The Epic,” big themes from H’wood 

blockbusters. 

But even of these 50 or so multichannel “wonders,” I find 

few that take to a new level of truth the absolute of “live” 

music. Almost all of my favored 50 use the rear channels for 

ambient sounds. In the best instances, canny use of the ambient 

sounds expand and stretch the acoustic bubble in which the 

players make the music out into the listening room, thus frequently 

forming a somewhat shallow concave curve to the 

soundstage. Only rarely do we get a real sense of depth of field 

in the way we do from good two-channel reproduction. You 

might well ask, as I do, why multichannel recordings don’t 

lend more “body,” more dimensionality, to the instruments and 

voices of the orchestra. As I hear it, only rarely do we get anything 

other than paper-flat images of the players upon a stage. 

You might think that the liner notes for these multichannel 

releases would be more helpful, given the novelty (thus far) 


and “newness” of the medium. That we don’t get (save for 

Telarc). Nor do we get much help from many of the companies 

letting us know how their recordings were made (Chesky, for 

instance) and how they would like to see the playback speakers 

set up. Record-liner notes (which blah-blah-blah about almost 

everything else) ought to give listeners useful information 

about the recording technology, vide, from the number of channels 

recorded to tech tips on how best to realize what the engineers 

were after. 

Once upon a time, I heard Tomlinson Holman (originally 

of Apt/Holman, then achieving fame with George Lucas’ enterprises) 

say, in a lecture, that his experiments suggested it would 

take at least one million channels to duplicate an original sound 

so exactly that no difference could be perceived between it and 

Reality. (There was much more to the lecture, including a fascinating 

look at how effectively people could pinpoint different 

sounds coming from different directions—there are some, practically 

speaking, “blind spots” acoustically.) Given this, how 

would an engineer squeeze more realism out of five supposedly 

full-range channels? That is the question. 

It is my contention that we are at the very beginnings of 

multichannel sound and that for it to be accepted as the highend 

medium, which I believe it inherently can be, some technically 

sophisticated acousticians and engineers are going to 

have to get down to work. 

At present, there isn’t that much of a consensus on the best 

placement of the speaker systems themselves. Oh yeah, three 

upfront and two in the rear, and the sub (or subs) hidden in a 

corner somewhere. But, we might ask, in what relationship to 

the listening position? Ought we, impractical as it probably is, 

be seated dead center in the room with all the speakers equidistant 

from our curly little heads? 

As a practical matter, in Room 1, we sit well back from the 

forward speakers, and measure to make certain the speakers are 

equidistant from the center-seat position. You have to imagine 

that the speakers are positioned in a slight arc to “see” how this 

would work. The rear speakers we keep close behind the listening 

area, simply as a practical matter (there isn’t, in this setup, 

that much space back there). You’ll find individual volume 

controls on every decent control center/processor so you can 

adjust the levels of the speakers to compensate for less-thanideal 

speaker positions. 

The next problem that presents itself, other than the attendant 

jumble of interconnects (this assuming you haven’t had a 

home-install “expert” bury everything under the carpet or 

floor), is whether the speakers should all be full-range. Given 

the origins of the 5.1 system in home-theater surround, we 

immediately face the problem of the center speaker that, if as 

tall as the left-right pair, would block the viewing screen. So in 

virtually every 5.1 multichannel system, we have a center 

speaker that has been shrunk and turned on its “side” so it 

won’t block the picture. This makes it, in most systems, a virtual 

impossibility for the center channel to be full-range. And 

this presents a problem not only for the home-theater folks but 


for the music-only people as well. In movie “surround” use, 

more than half (some say as much as 80 percent) of the sonic 

information comes from the center channel. While the percentage 

may not be as great for multichannel, it still has to be, 

given the bunching of instruments center stage, more than onethird. 

Is a monophonic Low-Frequency Effects (LFE) subwoofer 

supposed to compensate for this, as well as any bass coming 

from the rear channels? And what if, as is so often the case in 

smaller rooms, none of the five speakers is full-range, but rather 

something just a bit above a mini-monitor size? 2 

But then: What about the dispersion patterns of the individual 

speakers? It is a certainty that the center speaker will 

not have the radiation pattern of the two front speakers. 

Moreover, the rear speakers may well be almost like afterthoughts 

with radiating patterns (read: sound-distribution 

patterns) at odds with the front speakers. You may be expecting 

me to argue what I will not. In our listening sessions, we 

have found a dipolar pattern for the rear speakers to heighten 

the sense of realism in reproducing an identifiable hall sound. 

(Maybe it’s heresy, but we never missed a full frequency range 

from some small Magnepan rear speakers that gave us the best 

rear channel sound to date.) We have also found that the less 

center channel the better. We have, in two separate speaker 

systems, partially disabled center-channel units that have 

duplicate drivers, and in both instances found less “phase” 

distortion (with its accompanying brightening of upper mids, 

particularly evident on vocals, which, of course, are always 

centered) and greater clarity. 

In addition to disabling duplicate center-channel drivers, 

we have lowered the center-channel level until the spread of 

sound is more like that you’d encounter in a good hall. 

I suppose it goes without saying that the quality of the subwoofer 

you use in such a system is of the utmost importance, or 

rather its sonic compatibility with the main left and right 

speakers is. If it’s a home-theater setup, I really don’t think the 

sonic “character” of the subwoofer is going to be any big deal 

for most folks, as long as it plays loud and low. In a true multichannel 

system, when the LFE speaker is used to provide a 

greater bass foundation, you’ll want a tight, articulate sound, 

with plenty of dynamic snap at the lowest frequencies, which is 

the opposite of what you’re going to get with many woofers, 

whose response grows woollier as the notes go lower. Pending a 

bit of further experimentation, I’m inclined to suggest something 

fairly unconventional—placement of the subwoofer near 

or under the center-channel speaker. 

If you take one step back in the chain, you’ll find yourself 

face-to-face with one of the least discussed of all the problems 

in a multichannel setup, and that is the power amplifier. 

At the present stage of our sessions here in Sea Cliff, and 

especially with SACD recordings of the widest dynamics—try 


the three-channel Everest/Vanguard recording of Antill’s 

Corroboree—no five-channel amplifier (on a single chassis) can 

handle the widest dynamics without clipping. 

Think about it. You can’t have a behemoth in your listening 

room, so all five-channel amplifiers have size and weight 

limitations, which will mean compromises in their output 

power, and the power supplies that regulate those outputs. 

You’ll probably never “see” this problem if you live in a small 

apartment or have a testy landlord, but if you’re free to let ’er 

rip, and experience the full dynamic capabilities of SACD, then 

you’ll going to have to think about some other way around this. 

What we did in Sea Cliff was to combine a stereo Edge NL-10 

with three of the six channels on the Plinius Odeon to superb 

effect. (This will appear in our yet-to-be-published test results 

on the new Genesis multichannel loudspeaker system.) In a 

quite efficient multichannel speaker system, say the units from 

Coincident Technology, amplifiers of the Plinius’ capabilities 

are up to the task. The Plinius has the further advantage of 

excellent solid-state sound. Early on, we set up a surround system 

with tubed amplification and, boy, all I can say, is that the 

New York winter got a lot, lot warmer. Except for the extremists 

among us, multichannel playback would seem to rule out 

tubed amplification. 

Backing further up the chain, we come across the players. 

And this must give us pause. The current trend is toward 

multipurpose players that will play not only DVD-A, but 

SACD, as well as video, including DTS and Dolby 5.1 

soundtracks. These units often include progressive scanning 

for a better video image, and at least one can decode MPra3 

recordings (which, I can promise you, I won’t ever review). So 

far, we’ve spent time with a Pioneer Elite unit and the new 

Teac/Esoteric deck. 

In both cases, if you want to get the best out of them, you’ll 

have to isolate the players (use the Walker isolation devices or 

the Nordost or wooden blocks—and I still prefer to add the 

VPI magic bricks, though we have also had good luck with 

some other “weights”). You might consider this a back-handed 

comment on the build-quality of the multi-purpose players. 

One small irony, and one that I will explore at greater 

length in a review of the Esoteric, is that this Teac unit does a 

most exceptional job with the video and the Dolby/DTS 

decoding, as opposed to its less-than-stellar playback of SACD 

discs. Again, with many of these units, there are sonic shortcuts, 

often at the expense of the bottom octave, always at the 

expense of one of the formats these multipurpose players are 

trying to reproduce. 

I have no words of wisdom, since we here in Sea Cliff have 

been feeling our way along into multichannel playback. We’ve 

used, to my great satisfaction, Bobby Carver’s Sunfire Theater 

Grand III processor/control unit. But getting the hang of its 

2 One ingenious solution to this comes in the Genesis 6.1 multichannel system, in which designer Arnie Nudell uses three subwoofers, each crossed over to the center and rear 

speakers so that you can be engulfed in sound from five full-range speakers. Alternately, the system can be hooked up so that one or more subs act, in the home-theater mode, as 

conventional LFE units. 


operation, or rather learning how to access its many features, is 

no small feat. The instruction manuals have turned into booklets, 

which, in some cases, seem as long as a short novel, much 

to my gritching aggravation. Who wants, I mutter, to spend 

years learning how to operate the increasingly complex controls 

of either a multichannel or surround system? Small wonder that 

the “home-install” business is booming (caveat emptor!). 

If you were to climb into a time capsule and go back to the 

days when Audio Fidelity’s Sidney Frey started the stereodisc 

gold rush prematurely (late 1950s), you’ll find the industry, 

then as now, not really prepared for the implementation of a 

novel technology. There were add-ons made available for single-channel 

preamps. The stereodisc itself could not have wide 

bandwidth and wide dynamics at the same time—RCA opted 

for the wide dynamics (The Reiner Sound); Mercury waited until 

the Westrex cutters of the day improved enough to accomplish 

both. Turntables were practically made obsolete because no one 

had to worry about the vertical component of rumble. The 

bookshelf speaker, notably those from AR and KLH, became 

paramount, because folks felt they couldn’t have two 

Klipschorns or JBLs in the same room. Low-powered amps gave 

way to higher-powered ones because of the power requirements 

of those small boxes. Outside of the recreation of space, early 

stereo was a step backward in terms of the overall fidelity 


achieved on monophonic discs. (It was a long while before the 

cutting technology reached monophonic heights, and the bass 

transients of the best mono were never achieved on stereo LPs.) 

So, in a sense, nothing new, just more complex. And looked 

at with today’s two-channel reproduction in mind, a sign of 

hope. Things will get better and they will get simpler. And 

with that, will come the revolution. 

Still, the switch from mono to stereo was, this writer believes, 

more profound than that of stereo to multichannel. We have two 

eyes; two ears. And to hear sounds recreated with three dimensions 

of space coming from two speakers was a revelation. In the 

case of the transition we are now living through, the differences 

are less revolutionary. At least for the nonce, given the level of 

“realism” we can get now from the best two-channel systems. 

There are recordings out there that, played back on, say, 

Meitner’s gear, paint the sonic future in rainbow hues, and you 

will see that the high end is far from finished for the music 

lover (who doesn’t need his classics illustrated). 

But for multichannel music reproduction to seem as revolutionary 

as stereo, its full potential has to be realized, and that, as 

I have argued in this essay, isn’t at present in the cards, given the 

inexperience of the technologists and/or engineers—or us as listeners, 

who must learn entirely new set-up and listening skills. 

And that is the “dark side” of the picture. For now. & 


Manufacturer Comments 

AudioQuest CV6 (from cable survey, 

Issue 147) 

I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the 

mouth, and I do appreciate many of the 

insights and applied professionalism 

evident in Paul’s and Neil’s comments, 

but I can’t resist complaining about a 

misplaced concept of “reference” and 

about the normal-to-our-industry 

imprecise use of amplitude/tonal analogies 

to describe the perceived effect of 

non-amplitude related distortions. 

We “subjectivists” are willing to 

acknowledge distortion for which a 

proper measuring system has not yet 

been developed…but why as a group 

do we tolerate incorrect and inappropriate 

use of technical language to 

describe what we hear? 

There is good cause for why we are 

tempted to use tonal analogies…the 

loss of ambient information due to 

phase shift in an amplifier’s output 

transformer, or due to skin-effect in a 

cable, does bear a perceived relationship 

to turning down the treble…saying 

“sounds AS IF the treble were turned 

down” is a useful comment. However, 

as soon as the “as if” is dropped, understanding 

goes out the window. 

The energy hitting the eardrum is 

undiminished, but the corruption 

of the information package prevents 

the brain from processing 

the auditory vibration 

into something which 

can be “heard.” 

Many of the 

mechanisms 

causing 

audio distortion 

either compromise 

the information 

package, 

turning it into something 

unrecognizable 

which can’t be heard…or 

into something more akin to 

the fake edge called “sharpness” 

in the video world. That fake edge 

can certainly make some sounds more 

obvious…but it has nothing to do with 

amplitude. Noise such as tape-hiss is 

“understandable” and can be heard, 

while unintelligible noise (such as phase 

errors due to dielectric) can’t be “heard,” 

but when reduced, we hear a quieter 

background, as if the noise floor was 

lowered, even though we never “heard” 

the unintelligible noise. 

For all practical purposes, all the 

cables reviewed have identical flat frequency 

response. I seriously doubt that 

there was significant amplitude variation. 

This is where the techies come in 

and say that there are only amplitude 

differences between cables due to interaction 

with the electronics and loudspeaker…to 

which I say that just 

because it is so easy to measure amplitude 

doesn’t make it anywhere near as 

important as the phase and other distortion 

mechanisms which dominate audible 

differences between amplifiers and 

between cables. 

As for the notion of reference cable; 

the only proper reference is “no 

cable”…a bypass test, not another 

cable. All cable is flawed and should be 

doubted. The only trustworthy method 

for understanding a cable’s absolute 

quality is to add an extra unnecessary 

cable and hear how it damages the 

sound...remove the cable and learn the 

same thing from the other side; how 

the sound is improved when the cable 

is removed. Listening this way removes 

aesthetic compatibility problems. 

What is learned about a cable is then 

applicable to all systems (except most 

Naim and Exposure amps and a few 

other pieces with specific electrical 

compatibility requirements). 

For speaker cable, the existing cable 

can be treated as if it were part of the 

speaker; the cable under test is then 

inserted and removed from in-between 

the amp and the amp-end of the existing 

cable. As XLRs are female to male, 

it is very easy to add and subtract an 

additional interconnect cable. 

It’s depressing to hear how 

bad all cables are…and 

very enlightening. 

William E. Low, 

AudioQuest 

Portal Panache 

I’d like to thank Jerry Sommers for 

this very real-life-down-to-earth 

review, and to thank TAS not only for 

this review but for putting high-performance 

reasonably priced gear in the 

spotlight. As part of our QC, I listen to 

every Portal amp just before it is 

shipped to the new owner. We rotate 

different speakers into this test system 

but every amp has to pass the final torture 

test of driving my Apogee Duetta 

lls—one of the more difficult-to-drive, 

lowest-sensitivity loads ever to grace a 

music room. 

Lack of remote: Yes, we knew that 

some potential buyers would be put off 

by this, but our intention on the 

Panache was to put all the bucks into 

performance and none into bell ’n’ 

whistles. One happy user described it as 

a hot rod, with all the nonessentials left 

off, but with go-fast and performance 

above what you’d expect to find in this 

price class. Joe Abrams 

VAC Avatar Super 

Our thanks to TAS for the insightful 

review that captured Avatar Super’s 

essence of presenting the “music’s inherent 

beauty” and “the emotion captured 

in a recorded performance.” 

While the review observes that 

Avatar Super can produce “amazing 

weight and rhythm” and “a very believable 

acoustic space,” it also notes that 

another amplifier delivers slightly 

tighter bass and more pinpoint imaging. 

I often find that listeners have become 

accustomed to reproduced bass that 

emphasizes the transient but has less 

body and ring-out than the real thing, 

possibly because we so often hear music 

reproduced via the ubiquitous highfeedback 

amplifier. Similarly, I tend not 

to voice for “pinpoint” imaging, as in 

real life I tend to hear more “flesh on the 

bone” than that would imply. 

As noted, Avatar Super was updated 

in February 2004 for broader speaker 

matching, enhancing its already 

excellent performance. Kevin Hayes 

VAC/Valve Amplification Company 


m u s i c popular 

Pop Caps 

RECORDING 

O F T H E 

ISSUE 

Wilco: A ghost is born. Wilco and Jim 

O’Rourke, producers. Nonesuch 

It’s no coincidence that the only song on 

A ghost is born resembling Wilco, circa 

1998, is a succinct subterranean-grooved 

adrenaline rush called “I’m A Wheel.” 

An older concert favorite, it’s also unique 

because it marks the lone instance where 

Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy’s voice threatens 

to explode with uncontainable 

excitement and is the solitary track on 

which as few as four musicians conspire. 

Leroy Bach is among them, but having 

since departed, he’s no longer part of the 

ever-evolving contingent that, now as a 

sextet, is radically different from the 

Wilco that recorded 2002’s genius Yankee 

Hotel Foxtrot, let alone the fresh-faced 

quartet that debuted nine years ago. 

With this, its fifth album and third 

consecutive masterpiece, Wilco has 

emerged unrivaled as the late 20th /early 

21st century’s most talented rock band 

that, like The Beatles did with pop in 

the ’60s, is pushing into new frontiers 

while bringing its entrenched musical 

roots along for the ride. The approach 

has netted rich aural swatches in which 

the old and new meet not in an irresolvable 

collision but in wholesale communion 

where not even the identifiable past 

sounds as such. Much of this melding is 

due to the increasing participation of 

Sonic Youth member Jim O’Rourke, an 

invaluable silent partner who tweaks 

knobs, unfurls electronic loops, and 

scribbles instrumentals on piano, guitar, 

and organ with supreme confidence, 

never obstructing the “official” band. 

Resultingly, Wilco sounds bigger, 

more organic and experimental, and stands 

on surer ground than it has in the past. 

The group has extended a wider psychedelic 

bent to its off-balance pop-rock and 

spruce ballads, traveling a paisley highway 

that extends from the Grateful Dead’s 

floating “Space” deserts (“Hell Is 

Chrome”) to Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s 

marching warpath (“At Least That’s What 

You Said”). Greater involvement of pianos, 

Farfisa organ, and hammer dulcimer lend 

profound depth to the band’s roots-based 

music. Complex arrangements regularly 

spawn several songs within another, fostering 

a deceptively relaxing and unconsciously 

unsettling ambiance. Several compositions 

unassumingly begin as whimsical 

pop or plaintively strummed folk 

before twisting, morphing, and emerging 

as altogether different species. 

For the accusations that maintain 

Tweedy turned Wilco into his dictatorial 

enterprise, the music on A ghost is born 

towers over his shivering, breathy but 

mostly subdued voice, usually heard in 

reflective storytelling mode, professing, 

or poetically waxing. On “Spiders,” 

words function as bookends between a 

metronomic rhythm achieved via electric 

guitar, vintage RMI Rock-si-chord 

synth, swimming electronica, and 

drums. Like archaeologists on a fertile 

dig, Tweedy and O’Rourke scrape and 

sift with their instruments, the former 

answering the latter’s wheeze and whir 

with skronk solos that evoke a loose, 

sparking car muffler dragging down a 

street. Walls of stack-riffed guitars serve 

as transitory bridges, building in tempo 

until the pace settles down and the band 

catches its breath before the collective 

moves towards further exploration. 

Recorded almost entirely live in two 

studios, the album is one of the most 

organic-sounding efforts to come down 

the pike. Similar to the ethereal atmospherics 

on Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind 

the sonics here are at one with the music 

they frame. Notes exist in misty spaces, 

instrumentals crackle like ancient radio 

broadcasts eeking through transmitters, 

songs unfold like dreams. Immediacy 

and presence are hair-raisingly spooky; 


Wilco 

PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH


tonal decay, imaging, and impact are 

tremendously realistic. 

As what may be Wilco’s grinning 

revenge against Reprise, the label that 

famously refused to release the almostgold 

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot because it 

allegedly didn’t have radio potential, the 

catchiest tune on the band’s latest newmillennial 

masterwork arrives like the 

calm after a storm, following a 12minute 

eruption of electronic effects and 

high-frequency chirps that conclude 

“Less Than You Think,” the album’s 

original closer. Titled “The Late Greats,” 

the song has the drop-the-quarter-inthe-jukebox 

feel of an instant classic, a 

perfect pop melody, and pulses with life 

as it shimmers to the electro-metallic 

plunk of Tweedy’s acoustic guitar. It’s a 

short allegory of how the best band 

exists, but how “they’ll never get signed” 

and that “you can’t hear them on the 

radio.” After digesting the lyrical truths, 

you’ll know that you’ll never depend on 

radio for anything again. BOB GENDRON 

Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand. Tore 

Johansson, producer. Domino DN027 

Today’s pop 

music scene is 

so exciting, so full 

of fresh talent 

exploring such a 

diversity of styles 

that for those, like 

me, of a certain age, it’s enough to bring 

to mind the spectacular explosion of the 

mid-to-late ’60s, when each week 

buzzed with news about yet another 

band or album one just had to check out. 

The Scottish quartet Franz 

Ferdinand (named after the Austrian 

archduke whose assassination set off the 

First World War) has been getting that 

kind of buzz lately, and based on its selftitled 

first album I’d say deservedly so. 

Melding punk rhythms with surf guitars, 

snippets of influences reminiscent 

though not derivative of The Clash, 

Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, occasional 

Beatlesque harmonies with Euroennui 

lyrics, and catchy as hell pop 

melodies, chief writers Alex Kapranos 

(lead vocal/guitar) and Nick McCarthy 

(vocal/guitar), bassist Robert Hardy, and 

drummer Paul Thomson have assembled 

one impressive debut. Like those albums 

of yesteryear, this one clocks in at a brisk 

38 minutes, and each three-to-four 

minute song is straightforward and 

pulses to a most danceable beat. Though 

the songs are often composed of seemingly 

unconnected fragments (“Jacqueline”), 

dark (“Take Me Out”), and loaded 

with self-involved irony (“Cheating on 

You”), there’s an infectious, joyful abandon 

to the music-making that frequently 

belies the lyrics. 

The sound of the record—also available 

on vinyl—is terrific, with a great 

clarity to the twin guitars (jolty rhythm 

chords peppered with fleeting two-tothree 

note chattering lead riffs). Bassist 

Hardy’s now puttering, now skittering 

runs have real power and weight behind 

them, as does, though not quite to the 

same degree, Paul Thomson’s rather 

manic drum support. 

It remains to be seen whether Franz 

Ferdinand can grow from here and 

mature into a group that sustains our 

interest or if this effort is ephemeral, but 

then that’s always been part of pop 

music’s allure, no? WAYNE GARCIA 

Sigur Ros: Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do. Jon Thor 

Birgisson, Orri Páll Dyrason, et al., producers. 

Geffen B0002158 

Sigur Ros obviously 

doesn’t 

mind working with 

a limited musical 

vocabulary. On 

2002’s breakthrough 

( ), the Icelandic quartet 

explored a narrow spectrum that was 

two parts prog-rock and one part cool 

Nordic jazz, with just enough liturgical 

spirit to deepen the mystery. Even when 

handed a free pass—to improvise twenty 

minutes of music for new choreography 

by Merce Cunningham in 2003 

(sharing the assignment for “Split Sides” 

with Radiohead)—the quartet limited 


its palette to a pair of sheet-fed music 

boxes, a glockenspiel, a percussion rack 

of miked point shoes, and pre-recorded 

tracks of Cunningham’s voice and the 

sounds of tapping feet. 

Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do, the 20-minute 

studio version of that effort, seems to have 

been fleshed out with additional instruments 

and electronics (as with ( ), there 

are no notes or credits). The looped and 

tweaked music box sounds provide the 

through-line for the three sections (“Ba 

Ba,” “Ti Ki,” and “Di Do,” meant to be 

played in any order, in keeping with the 

Cunningham-John Cage tradition). 

Though it’s impossible to know how 

much was randomly generated, it’s clear 

that little was left to chance in the placement, 

layering, and stereo panning of 

chiming keyboards (with inescapable allusions 

to “Tubular Bells”), chopped-up 

speech, and static-like white noise, all ultimately 

more rewarding as a pure audio 

experience than a substantial musical one. 

DERK RICHARDSON 

Broken Social Scene: Bee Hives. Various 

producers. Arts & Crafts 006 

In less than three 

years, Toronto’s 

Broken Social Scene 

grew from a male 

duo into a coed 

eleven-piece collective, 

loosely associated 

with a number of other Canadian 

indie-rock bands, including the electropop 

Stars, whose Evan Cranely is also a 

BSS member. Working relationships with 

other musical artists are not the only 

things BSS members have in common: 

most are gay. While the band doesn’t 

flaunt its homosexuality like another 

Canadian pop group, The Hidden 

Cameras, BBS’ sense of sexual identity 

fuels the group’s relationship-shaped songwriting 

and New Order-like dance 

rhythms. In “Lover’s Spit,” included on the 

Queer As Folk soundtrack, BSS has produced 

an anthem that in a matter of time 

may be worshipped by the gay community 

on the same scale that Gloria Gaynor’s 

“I Will Survive” is. 

“Lover’s Spit” is recast here as a 

heartbreaking lament—a grand, slow 

piano ballad with disarming vocals by 

Emily Feist. Her whisper-close voice 

makes Norah Jones sound like a Holiday 

Inn chanteuse, and her unflinching 

delivery of the intimate lyrics would 

make the tame Jones blush. It’s one of 

the highlights from Bee Hives, a ninesong 

collection of b-sides, rarities, and 

instrumentals that serves as a solid stopgap 

until BSS returns with a studio LP. 

But as long as the band’s 2002 release 

You Forgot It In People continues to sell 

well—spurred by word of mouth and by 

the 2003 Juno award that it won for 

Best Alternative Album—a new studio 

LP won’t happen for some time. 

Encompassing nearly the same lush 

eclecticism as its predecessor, Bee Hives is 

made for curling up in windowsills to 

watch sunlight pierce through clouds. 

The electronic frizzle of “Ohadjam” is 

what bubbling champagne would sound 

like it if had a voice, while underneath 

Emily Haines’ lighter-than-a-feather 

crooning the trip-hopped bluegrass 

“Backyards” ravishes, tailing off in a 


stream of frazzled loops the way a latenight 

conversation often does. 

With BSS’ emphasis on electronic 

tapestries, guitars play a lesser role, and 

ambient tweaks have been turned up 

higher. The resultant airy mix sparkles 

and lightly fizzes, engaging the listener 

with deep resonances, warm textures, 

and a generous amount of headroom. BG 

Sam Phillips: A Boot and a Shoe. T Bone 

Burnett, producer. Nonesuch 79807 

When Sam Phillips 

stepped 

back to a simpler 

style of pop production 

on 2001’s Fan 

Dance (her comeback 

from a five-year hiatus 

after Omnipop), it didn’t make for her 

most memorable album. That honor still 

belongs to 1994’s Martinis and Bikinis. 

But those who give A Boot and a Shoe a 

thorough listen (which only takes about 



35 minutes) will find it nigh on impossible 

to get these thirteen frugal new 

tunes out of their heads. This is due 

partly to T Bone Burnett’s canny production, 

which puts thumping bass and 

boomy drums below (or in the corner 

opposite) Phillips’ briskly strummed 

acoustic guitar, while moody keyboards, 

Marc Ribot’s evocative electric guitar, 

and rattling hand percussion are spread 

across a wide and radically detailed 

stereo soundstage. Patrick Warren’s prudently 

romantic string arrangements 

provide ideal ornamentation for Phillips’ 

more bittersweet lyrics. Less murky and 

self-conscious than Mitch Froom’s lauded 

atmospherics, and less gnarly and 

cranky than Tom Waits’ idiosyncratic 

noise-scapes, this intimate 21 st -century 

parlor sound is a big part of A Boot and 

a Shoe’s appeal. 

But what seals the deal is the way 

Phillips laces words to melody in her 

subtly expressive voice with its gripping, 

splintery timbres. Mostly she 

sings about the beginning, ending, 

gravity, restorative qualities, and disappointments 

of romantic relationships, 

directly addressing her lover—“I was 

broken when you got me/With holes 

that would let the light through”; 

“Every time you look at me you’re in 

disguise”; “We can’t fix what’s broken / 

So let’s leave it here and walk on.” 

Phillips also lightens up with the 

Memphis Minnie-like double entendres 

of “Drawman” (“The harder I make it for 

you, the better you like it”) and the surprise 

lust-triangle ending of “I Wanted 

to be Alone.” Exemplified by the flapper-era 

swing of “Infiltration” (where 

she almost turns Betty Boop into latterday 

Marianne Faithfull) and the waltztime 

of the poignant “Reflecting the 

Light,” her words and music find a perfect 

fit. DR 

Patti Smith: trampin’. Smith, producer. 

Columbia 90330 (CD and LP) 

Throughout her 

30-year career, 

Patti Smith has 

found inspiration in 

Biblical characters 

and religious symbolism, 

fusing 

sacred references with beat poetry, 

underground literature, and antiestablishment 

politics to create a 

musical language that’s all her own. 

On her ninth album, she continues 

this approach while trading in the 

agit-politics of 2000’s aggressive Gung 

Ho for a deepened spirituality that 

finds her “trying to make heaven her 

home” on the album’s traditionalgospel 

title track. 


Smith has retreated into this reflective 

priestess mode before, most recently 

on 1996’s Gone Again. But she’s never 

sounded so mellow or close to salvation. 

Steeped in mystic poetry and laid-back 

moods, trampin’ celebrates personal fortitude 

at the occasional expense of the 

firebrand urgency that defines her best 

work. After kicking off her shoes and 

forgetting her troubles on the Dixie 

Love it Live 

Bob Gendron 

Lou Reed: Animal Serenade. Reed, producer. 

Reprise 48678 (2 CDs) 

Lou Reed says that his sixth live 

album, recorded on June 24, 2003, at 

Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre, is the best 

concert document he’s heard since 

1974—not coincidentally, the year his 

legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal was 

released. In typical New York fashion, 

Reed is exaggerating, but not by as far a 

margin as one might guess. Animal Serenade sounds fabulous, 

and finds the former Velvet Underground singer in 

top form. 

Most interestingly, Reed plays without a drummer. He 

relies instead on the muscular tones of guitarist Mark 

Rathke and bassist Fernando Saunders, the shapely warble of 

cellist Jane Scarpantoni, and vocalist Anthony’s ethereal 

tones. This drum-less approach gives Reed’s music a new and 

haunting beauty and vulnerability. Another draw is the depth 

of material. Reed primes forgotten wells from Berlin, Blue 

Mask, and Street Hassle, and mixes in a few songs from 2003’s 

The Raven. If you’re expecting “Walk on the Wild Side” or 

“Sweet Jane,” skip this. But if you want Reed at the best he’s 

sounded in over a decade, with sonics so vivid, present, and 

uncluttered that they top what you hear at some concerts, prepare 

to be awed. 

Allman Brothers: One Way Out. Peach/Sanctuary 84682 (2 CDs) 

Puzzlingly, 14 of the 18 tracks on this set appear on the 

band’s Live at the Beacon Theatre DVD, which was taped 

during the same week last spring in New York. But if you 

still need convincing that the 21st century Allmans’ lineup 

can go toe-to-toe with the original, here’s indisputable proof. 

It may take the combination of Warren Haynes and 

waltz of “Jubilee,” she cures all pain 

with the tender sparkle of “Mother 

Rose.” Smith talks of eradicating the 

blues on the twirling “Cartwheels,” and 

preaches about conquering despair with 

joy on the washboard-scraping rhythms 

of “My Blakean Year.” The singer’s spiritual 

muse flows to and from the tributary 

“Gandhi,” a swelling improvisational 

centerpiece that closes with gui- 


tarists Lenny Kaye and Oliver Ray 

thwacking out tree-chopping riffs 

against which Smith, locked into one of 

her trademark trances, roars for people 

to rise from their slumber. 

But on a record that has a midsection 

saddled with an imbalance of gentle 

grooves and patient tempos, Smith fails 

to rouse us as she has in the past. 

“Peaceable Kingdom” and “Cash” are 

Derek Trucks to equal what Duane did alone, but the 

chemistry, vibe, and fiery musicianship are undeniable. 

Old favorites like “Whipping Post” and “Statesboro 

Blues” are taken for wild rides. Liberated from his drug 

habit, Gregg’s organ playing and soulful vocals scorch. Yet 

it’s the songs from 2003’s superb Hittin’ the Note that broil, 

particularly “Instrumental Illness” and “Rockin’ Horse.” 

The bass is a little soft, but the sonics are warm, the 

soundstage is spacious, and the bluesy tones sock you right 

in the ears. 

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Volume 6: Live 1964. Jeff 

Rosen and Steve Berkowitz, producers. Columbia/Legacy 

86882 (2 CDs) 

If you’re a Bob Dylan fan, you probably 

have this on bootleg. Staged two 

months before he recorded Bringing It 

All Back Home, Dylan’s Halloween concert 

at Philharmonic Hall is an ageless 

window into the Hibbing native’s peak 

protest period. The acoustic performance 

is infallible, not because it’s faultless but precisely 

because of the humanity and naked emotion of its imperfections. 

Dylan forgets words, cracks himself up, and, while 

wowing the crowd with the then-unreleased “It’s Alright 

Ma,” has trouble remembering the verses. His caustically 

voiced social commentary cuts like a knife to the gut. It’s a 

portrait of a magic, transitional time: Dylan’s amicable and 

jocular state would, along with his music and myth, soon 

and forever change. 

Sonically, Legacy’s edition brings a clarity and depth that 

were missing from previous issues. That said, the sound is 

very good, but not superb—the bootlegs never sounded bad, 

and the upgrade isn’t as revelatory as it is on Bootleg Series 

Volume 4. Yet the real stumper is why, after its successful 

Dylan Revisited series, Sony did not release this on SACD as 

originally promised. Prepared months ago, the 5.1 and 

stereo SACD versions remain in the vault. Legacy’s 56-page 

booklet is (again) on the money. 


land footnotes in the career of a woman 

famous for celebrating rock ’n’ roll niggers 

and social outcasts. Try as it might, 

“Radio Baghdad” doesn’t ignite the 

activist spark of “Land” or “Gung Ho.” 

Smith opens the epic with a brief raga 

chant and tells of a city that was an 

intellectual center, rambling and rumbling 

until, ten minutes later, the song 

erupts in a maelstrom of guitar feedback 

and cymbal smashes over which she 

shouts about how we’re robbing the cradle 

of civilization. It’s passionate and 

energetic, but she’s taken us here before; 

the resulting familiarity snuffs out some 

of the ferocity and danger. 

As the wide-open sonics attest, the 

57-year-old turns in a fine vocal performance, 

emphasizing syllables with 

stretched Dylan-esque accents, deep 

murmurs, and breathy stops. A cavernous 

soundstage gives Smith’s voice an 

echo, and the instruments’ earthy tones 

breathe and linger. Guitars are crisp, 

drums have dynamic punch, and keyboards 

shiver. 

On trampin’, Smith is clearly in a 

better place. With repeated listens, its 

hypnotic songs sometimes take us there, 

but one hopes that the future finds this 

punk legend renewably enraged rather 

than persuading us to see the good in the 

world outside. BG 

Keb’ Mo’: Keep it Simple. Mo’, producer. 

Epic/Okeh 86408 

Eric Clapton: Me and Mr. Johnson. Clapton 

and Simon Climie, producers. Reprise 

48423 

I 

suppose it’s a 

sign of the 

times—you know, 

“lite” beer, “fat 

free” potato chips, 

Janet Jackson’s 

flash-frozen 

breast—that a guy 

like Keb’ Mo’, a 

talented onetime 

studio guitarist 

and okay singer, is 

considered one of 

the shining lights 

of contemporary blues. But then given 

the above, and the shallowness of our 

corporate-sponsored world, maybe it’s 

not his fault that today’s most-hailed 

young bluesman would be a yuppie 

bluesman, with about as much grit in 

his soul as, uh, James Taylor. Actually, 

Taylor is an apt comparison—because 

like Mo’ he sings frothy, often humorous 

tunes of love and adulthood. But no 

matter how many apostrophes Mo’ 

adorns his name and songs with in order 

to christen his shtick with a down-home 

feeling, no matter how many photographs 

his album cover shows with him 

posed, Dobro guitar in hand, designervintage 

shoes resting on a dirty shack’s 

wooden floorboards, da’ blues dis’ ain’t. 

Not that I would expect a contemporary 

blues artist to write pseudodepression 

era songs about women’s 

drawers or going down to the crossroads, 

but, man, when a blues singer writes 

about taking his girlfriend on a vacation 

to France and searching for tickets on 

the Internet, or tells her “Go ahead and 

be wild and free/You don’t have to shave 

your legs for me,” or croons, as Mo’ does 

in “I’m Amazing,” “I’m incredible /I’m 

a miracle/A dream come true/I’m beautiful/I’m 

marvelous/Guess what—so are 

you”…well, a pose only goes so far. 

Leave it, then, to another contemporary 

blues/pop/rocker, one who’s created 

plenty of his own froth over the years, to 

deliver his finest solo effort to date. The 

hints that he’d finally snapped out of a 

decades-long slide began with the 

Concert for George and John Mayall’s 70th 

Birthday Concert (reviewed last issue), 

two live recordings that contain Eric 

Clapton’s most inspired guitar work in 

years. Now, on Me and Mr. Johnson, his 

tribute to his hero Robert Johnson, 

Clapton has delivered the record he was 

born to make. 

Featuring 14 of the 29 tracks 

Johnson recorded in his absurdly brief 

life, Me and Mr. Johnson begins with a 

guitar-drenched and rollicking “When 

You’ve Got A Good Friend,” careens 

around some unexpected arrangements 

(some acoustic- or slide-based, but most 

remarkably lacking in fiery solos) of 

other Johnson classics, before wrapping 

with a spirited “Hell Hound On My 

Trail.” Examining each detail is unnecessary; 

let it instead be said that Clapton 


and his excellent band play with passion 

and abandon, that the man sings each 

song very well and with great conviction, 

and that, though he is respectful of the 

originals, there’s a looseness and joy in 

this music making that will bring a huge 

grin to your face, so obviously fired up is 

Clapton for each and every moment. 

Sonics are excellent, too, with impressive 

clarity, image placement, instrumental 

weight and texture, and a great sense of 

the musicians’ presence. Though the CD 

is reviewed here, it will also be available 

on LP. Skeptics, take note. WG 

Kanye West: The College Dropout. West, 

Brian Miller, Evidence, producers. Roc-A- 

Fella 2030 

Diverse: One A.M. RJD2, Madlib, Prefuse-73, 

et al., producers. Chocolate Industries 039 

With a sonic 

foundation 

that typically relies 

on sped-up vocal 

samples of classic 

soul songs, Kanye 

West has emerged 

as one of hip-hop’s 

premier producers. 

In the last few 

years, he earned 

production credit 

on a number of 

smash singles, 

including Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” 

“Girls Girls Girls,” and “’03 Bonnie & 

Clyde,” and more recently, on Alicia 

Keys’ soulful “You Don’t Know My 

Name,” Twista’s seductive “Slow Jamz” 

(on which West also raps), and Ludacris’ 

forceful “Stand Up.” But the Chicagoan’s 

master plan was to segue from A-List producer 

to headlining rapper. Mission 

accomplished with The College Dropout, 

one of the best rap albums of the year. 

Built off of Chaka Khan’s “Through 

the Fire,” West’s first single, “Through the 

Wire,” details his near-fatal 2002 car crash 

in Los Angeles and has enjoyed a slow burn 

on radio stations across the country. But it 

was the song’s good-natured video, which 

shows West in various stages of recovery 

from the accident, that endeared him to 


hip-hop fans as a rapper. His subsequent 

light-hearted appearance on “Slow Jamz” 

demonstrated that West had the same type 

of inventiveness as a rapper that he has as a 

producer. On The College Dropout, both of 

his skills are on full display, as he delivers 

insightful, comedic lyrics about his affinity 

for material items (“All Falls Down”), his 

need for a religious foundation (“Jesus 

Walks”), and how gold-digging women 

can land the millionaire man of their 

dreams (“The New Workout Plan”). West’s 

flow is sometimes awkward, giving him a 

charmingly unrefined style as a rapper, but 

his powerful production always delivers, as 

his soulful soundscapes, always crystal clear 

and remarkably crisp, make for a stirring 

sonic experience. 

As Chicago hip-hop enjoys a commercial 

renaissance thanks to the success of 

West and Twista, the city’s underground 

acts show that the Windy City is chockfull 

of top-tier talent. One such artist is 

Diverse, whose strong debut One A.M. is 

somewhat like an underground version of 

West’s album. Whereas West has big choruses 

and such A-List guests as Jay-Z and 

Ludacris, Diverse rocks over scratchbacked, 

gritty boom-bap beats, and teams 

with such lyrical lords of the underground 

as Jean Grae and Vast Aire. Diverse’s sonic 

tapestries are so intoxicating that it may 

take multiple listens to appreciate the 

impact of his lyrical skill. He flexes his storytelling 

abilities on the non-gangster look 

at life in the ghetto on “Ain’t Right” and 

relates the stress of living in a society 

where everyone isn’t treated equally on 

“Under the Hammer.” 

For those sleeping on Chicago hiphop, 

these records serve as wake-up calls. 

SOREN BAKER 

Ellis Hooks: Uncomplicated. Jon Tiven, 

producer. Artemis 51502 

With a biography 

that reads 

more like fiction 

than fact—“Born 

in Bayminette, 

Alabama…the 

thirteenth of sixteen 

children to an 

African-American sharecropper and his 

Cherokee/African-American bride…left 

home at the age of fifteen…hitchhiked 

around America performing odd 

jobs…relying on just his voice and 

acoustic guitar for meals and a place to 

sleep”—the 29-year old Ellis Hooks is 

being touted as the great black hope of 

contemporary soul music. Not without 

reason. Hooks’ sweet ’n’ raspy voice, sexysoulful 

delivery, and way with a phrase 

conjure legends such as Wilson Pickett, 

Otis Redding, and particularly Hooks’ 

idol, Sam Cooke. 

Uncomplicated is Ellis Hooks’ second 

American release and third CD (a first was 

released in Europe only). More than last 

year’s Up Your Mind [Evidence], which 

melded equal parts blues, rock, and soul, 

Uncomplicated is a mostly straight-ahead 

soul record, and one that sounds deliberately 

and unapologetically retro. So much so 

that the opener, “It’s Gonna Take Some 

Time,” could be a recently unearthed Sam 

Cooke outtake, although, and I don’t say 

this to be cruel, watered-down and lacking 

Cooke’s genius. The pace and spirit lift 

with “40 Days and 40 Nights,” a song 

about a lost love with simplistic lyrics 

(which abound on the record) and a strong 

melodic hook. Now and then Hooks sends 

a few winks to English soul-rockers such as 

Steve Marriott and Rod Stewart; the title 

track sounds like an old Faces tune, sprinkled 

with perfectly delivered “woooooos!” 

and a guitar solo pick-pocketed from 

Ronnie Wood. 

And therein lies the complication 

with Uncomplicated. The production (by 

Jon Tiven, who has produced all of Hooks’ 

records) sounds too deliberately derivative 

of too many other artists. The sonics are 

nothing special either, with a flat perspective 

and limited dynamics. Too bad, 

Hooks is a real talent who, one hopes, will 

one day make a record that fully expresses 

what he is surely capable of. WG 

The Buzzcocks: Singles Going Steady. 

Martin Rushent, producer. 4 Men With 

Beards 505 (LP) 

The Saints: (I’m) Stranded. Rod Coe, producer. 

4 Men With Beards 502 (LP) 

While CD has adequately presented 

the sonic character of certain kinds 

of pop, it’s never wholly captured the 


ferocious bite, 

speed, and spur-ofthe-momentrawness 

of punk. That’s 

only one reason 

why these 180gram 

LPs are valued 

additions to a 

limited field that 

includes high-quality 

vinyl from The 

Fall, The Stooges, 

and Television. 

Though neither is a 

typical audiophilegrade 

production—the soundstages are 

too compressed, bass too spotty, amplifiers 

overly distorted, and microphone 

bleed-through too omnipresent—the 

LPs give these classics a renewed presence, 

rhythmic pep, and physical edginess 

that the cleaner CD remasters lack. 

If The Ramones were the Beach 

Boys of punk, then The Buzzcocks were 

the Brian Jones-era Stones. Released in 

1979, Singles Going Steady compiles six 

of the finest 7-inch singles ever made. 

Coming on as if there’s no tomorrow, 

The Buzzcocks cram a lifetime’s worth 

of desperate melodies, sexual anxieties, 

and snarling vocals into two-and-a-half 

minute songs that haven’t aged a day. 

The trio’s tight arrangements and fullthrottle 

guitars are just a few of the reasons 

that The Strokes, and seemingly 

every other current new-new-wave 

band, mimic these Brits in sound, style, 

and attitude. 

Lesser known to Americans are 

Australia’s The Saints, whose crackling 

1977 debut steams ahead like a freight 

train speeding into the night. Rushreleased 

to augment the album’s buzzing 

title-track single from ’76, eight of the 

album’s gasoline-lit songs are demos 

that appear in their original rough and 

ragged form. But nothing is inaccessible 

or unlistenable. Chris Bailey’s reckless 

vocals are entirely understandable, and 

the rhythm section pounds out a raucous 

soul that mates The Dead Boys’ hostility 

with The Vibrators’ scrappy grooves. 

Two years after (I’m) Stranded, The Saints 

morphed into a pop band. Never again 

would they sound so jaded, snotty, or 

bloody vital—after hearing this, one 

wonders how they possibly could. BG 


SACD 

Mission of Burma: ONoffON. Bob Weston 

and Rick Harte, producers. Hybrid stereo. 

Matador 613 (Sonic rating: ) 

Comebacks are 

precarious 

endeavors, especially 

when 

launched in the 

name of nostalgia, 

that eternal enemy 

of rock and roll. Twenty-two years ago, 

Mission of Burma recorded its only fulllength 

LP. Its career cut short by guitarist 

Roger Miller’s mounting tinnitus, the 

Boston trio sold few albums but still claims 

an influence that most artists who’ve sold 

millions will never have. In 2001, the three 

original members plus Bob Weston, filling 

in for retired tape-manipulator Martin 

Swope, started playing again and performed 

a handful of shows. Miller’s never 

shaken his condition, but now wears firingrange 

headphones so that Burma’s full 

sonic experience—high decibel levels are a 

key component in the band’s music—can 

be unleashed upon the crowd. 

After years of speculation, Burma has 

triumphantly returned with an album of 

blistering proportions that, not unlike 

Wire’s terrific Send from a year ago, will 

even jolt the band’s admirers. The group 

has lost nothing, sounding as uncompromised 

and relevant today as it did in the 

early ’80s. 

Against Clint Conley’s cascading bass 

lines and Peter Prescott’s mashing percussion, 

Miller pitches choppy guitar riffs 

and screeching metallic feedback, angular 

in shape and intense in impact. 

Unconventional time shifts and pressurecooker 

melodies keep songs edgy and 

directionally unpredictable. Vocals seethe 

with anger; heard in tandem, they’re like 

drill sergeants barking out orders. On 

“The Enthusiast” Miller sounds like a 

stalker high on multiple shots of espresso, 

stabbing at his guitar strings to produce a 

ringing/drilling that will sends the music 

off the edge. Loops inject air streams into 

“Falling,” in which the rushing vertigo of 

guitars and drums match the song’s 

theme. Equally effective are the sledgehammer 

farsifa of “Nicotine Bomb” and 

the thrilling freefall of “Playland,” material 

that’s on the same brilliant art-plane as 

the band’s 1980 post-punk anthem 

“Academy Fight Song.” 

Recorded directly to two-inch analog 

tape, ONoffON is available as a 

hybrid stereo SACD (Matador’s first), a 

fantastic-sounding CD, or an all-analog 

double-LP. Less a wall of sound and 

more of an artillery attack, the sonic 

presentation hints at the physicality and 

bludgeoning nature of the band’s live 

performances, while conveying textures 

that will make your arms fill with goose 

pimples. The louder it’s turned up, the 

better it sounds; the music’s blitzkrieg 

rolls over you until you’re battered and 

bruised. Short breaks and odd melodic 

twists provide occasional respite before 

the next round of shells is fired. And yes, 

it feels incredibly good. BG 

George Harrison: Live In Japan. Spike and 

Nelson Wilbury, producers. Hybrid multichannel. 

Darkhorse Records/Capitol 

94665 (2 SACDs) (Sonic rating: 6) 

This two-disc set, 

recently remastered 

for SACD by 

Doug Sax, vividly 

underscores a rarely 

spoken truth—that 

it was George 


Mission of Burma 

Harrison who sustained the most creative 

post-Beatles career. With Lennon’s 

career tragically cut short and Ringo 

semi-retired, McCartney might have 

been most visible but his artistic output 

crested with the Beatles. Today he’s all 

about gilding his legacy. 

When Live In Japan was recorded in 

December 1991 in Osaka and Tokyo, 

Harrison was on a roll: 1987’s Cloud 9 

was a comeback surprise, and the 

Traveling Wilburys followed in 1988. 

For the Japanese tour, Harrison’s band 

was composed of Eric Clapton and a blazing 

crew that included Ray Cooper, Greg 

Phillinganes, and Nathan East. The 

nineteen tracks are loose and enthusiastic 

takes on old chestnuts from both sides of 

Harrison’s career—from “Here Comes 

The Sun” and “Something” to a burning 

“Taxman” and the nostalgic “All Those 

Years Ago.” Harrison’s performance (his 

voice having grown darker and throatier) 

is filled with the eloquence and mature 

confidence that defined his later years. 

The sonics are clean—good, but not 

great. Dynamics and frequency extension 

vary from track to track, and Harrison’s 

voice is too deeply set back. The multichannel 

mix is noteworthy for its discretion, 

adding only the subliminal tug of 

audience energy, with the center channel 

used mostly for soundstage fill. This 

record may not make anyone’s best-sounds 

list, but it’s a must-have. NEIL GADER 


m u s i c FOLK 

Five Artists Putting a Fresh Sound on a Familiar Classic 

The “New Folk” 

While many still associate folk with Woody Guthrie and the 

subsequent ’60s revival, the style has weaved its way into 

nearly every segment of music imaginable. But for every 

Townes Van Zandt, there are a thousand singer-songwriter 

types whose prominent characteristic is how similar and 

bland they sound. Though folk isn’t currently undergoing a 

commercial resurgence, these artists—most relative newcomers, 

and all of whom have released new albums—play 

Jim White 

Storytelling comes 

naturally to Jim 

White. He unfolds 

nearly an entire 

tale into just the 

title of his new and 

third album, Drill 

a Hole in that Substrate and Tell Me What 

You See [Luaka Bop]. The 47-year-old 

Floridian grew up the youngest of five 

kids in a military family that settled in 

Pensacola; survived deep plunges into 

drugs and Pentecostalism; worked as 

both a fashion model in Milan and a professional 

surfer; studied filmmaking and 

spent four years making a “weird art 

film”; nearly lost three fingers in a 

machine accident at a chaise lounge factory; 

wrote most of the songs for his 

1997 debut recording, Wrong-Eyed Jesus, 

while bedridden with mysterious physical 

and mental ailments; was signed by 

David Byrne after a demo tape passed 

through the hands of Melanie Ciccone 

(Madonna’s sister and wife to Joe Henry, 

who produced six of the ten tracks on 

the new album.); and fathered a daughter 

he alternately calls Tiki-Bird, 

Rottina, Charmetto, and Scooter 

Medango (real name Willow) with his 

girlfriend Lori-belle, who descends from 

a family of “funny sharecropping psycho 

Southerners.” Out of that history stumbles 

a songwriting eccentric who connects 

the dots between Lyle Lovett and 

Tom Waits. Singing in a sometimes 

sweet, sometimes sinister, sometimes 

whispered, sometimes electronically 

processed croon, White spins yarns that 

seep from anxious dreams and ascend to 

Wuthering Heights of backwoods psychedelia. 

“My mythmaking is aimed at 

making myself a material object in the 

world,” he explained upon the release of 

his second album, No Such Place, “as 

opposed to what I’ve been all my life, 

which is sort of like this swamp gas.” 

With producers Henry, Tucker Martine, 

and White himself shaping the detailed 

musical, and musique concrete environment, 

Drill a Hole…—teeming with 

radio static, buzzards, spiders, specters, 

humidity, “Alabama Chrome,” and 

skeptical pleas and references to God 

and Jesus—is White’s most integrated 

sonic tableaux of electronica/Americana 

to date. DERK RICHARDSON 

Sufjan Stevens 

M ulti-instrumentalist 

and 

singer-songwriter 

Sufjan Stevens’ 

Greetings From 

Michigan was one of 

2003’s overlooked 

gems, a grand 15-song geographical and 

political tour through the singer’s native 

state. Stevens addresses Flint’s unemployment 

and Detroit’s decline, but he 

also dwells on the state’s Upper 

Peninsula, its tourism, wildlife, and out- 

music framed by acoustic roots, grounded in modesty, and 

carried by songwriting that speaks to everyday events and 

common people, including those society tends to forget. As 

such, they fall under an umbrella that is best called folk— 

or at the very least, a variant of. Purists may scoff at the 

pop, rock, and spiritual hybrids, yet those who do are holding 

tight to an outmoded coffeehouse mentality. 

—Bob Gendron 

doors appeal. On the record, he plays no 

less than 20 instruments in creating a 

mini folk-pop orchestra flush with 

horns, cascading voices, glockenspiels, 

pianos, organs, and guitars. But Stevens’ 

best asset is his banjo playing, bridging 

old-world Americana with matters contemporary 

and timeless. It’s the instrument 

he focuses on in the strippeddown 

Seven Swans [Sounds Familyre 

13]. Again, the songs have a unifying 

theme—love and religion. While Swans 

lacks the complexity and polyphony of 

its predecessor, it’s the more reflective 

set, displaying a calming rust-colored 

folk that blends with the spiritual 

strains and burnished melodies. Stevens 

strums his banjo as if delicately plucking 

the wires of an African thumb 

piano: shattering quietness during dramatic 

episodes, accenting moments of 

proclamation and realization, and coming 

on with the reverence of a person 

who’s heard the word of the Lord. 

There’s an understated grace and 

redemptive glory to the material, and 

it’s not difficult to imagine “In the 

Devil’s Territory” or “The 

Transfiguration” being scored for a 

church choir. But if the slightest mention 

of religion makes you writhe, check 

out Michigan instead—though prancing 

banjo licks, textbook guitar accompaniment, 

and rustic tones make Swans 

tempting to all but the most unyielding 

atheist. The sound is good, yet instrumental 

presence and definition could 

have been better portrayed. BG 


Ollabelle 

Taking its name 

from Ola Belle 

Reed, a traditional 

country singer, the 

strange and surprisinglycompelling 

self-titled 

debut [DMZ/Columbia 90572] from 

the New York City-based sextet 

Ollabelle offers up contemporary takes 

of gospel, blues, country, bluegrass, and 

pretty much anything else it feels like 

weaving into its very American tapestry. 

Originally a once-a-week side project for 

this very talented assemblage of vocalists 

and musicians—some with classical and 

jazz backgrounds—Ollabelle is a tantalizing 

tease, wrapped in so many guises 

as to be equal parts beautiful, convincingly 

played and sung covers, a few good 

but not great originals, and heavy does 

of Christianity. Although Christianity 

has always played a strong role in 

American folk forms, here it seems a little 

heavy-handed. Having said that, I 

must also say that this record has hooks 

in it, and ones that I find myself 

responding to despite its heavy religiosity. 

For one, with the exception of “Jesus 

on the Mainline,” nothing here sounds 

out of place or contrived. For another, 

there’s a sensuality to Ollabelle—from 

the earthy yet heavenly singing of Amy 

Helm (Levon’s daughter) and Australian 

Fiona McBain, to Glenn Patscha’s rich 

organ and piano, to Byron Isaacs’ 

Rubenesque bass notes, to Tony Leone’s 

drums, that is akin to comfort food for 

the ears. In addition, the sound is unusu- 

Further Recommended Listening 

Explore these albums, all recorded since the turn of the ’90s: 

Jeff Buckley: Live at Sin-E (Deluxe Edition). (Legacy, released 2003) 

Richard Buckner: Since. (MCA, released 1998) 

Ani DiFranco: Living In Clip. (Righteous Babe, released 1997) 

The Mekons: Curse of the Mekons. (Collector’s Choice, released 1991) 

Nina Nastasia: The Blackened Air. (Touch and Go, released 1998) 

Palace Brothers: Days In the Wake. (Drag City, released 1994) 

Amy Rigby: Diary of a Mod Housewife. (Koch, released 1996) 

Uncle Tupelo: March 16–20, 1992. (Columbia/Legacy, released 1992) 

M. Ward: End of Amnesia. (Future Farmer, released 2001) 

Lucinda Williams: Sweet Old World. (Chameleon, released 1992) 

ally fine. Instrumental textures are clean, 

textured, and full-bodied. Vocals are rich 

and well focused. There’s a notable suggestion 

of ambience, air, and depth, the 

bass is deep, fat, seductive, and cymbals 

sound remarkably life-like. One can’t 

help but wonder what this fascinating 

group will do next. WAYNE GARCIA 

Patty Griffin 

Of the endless 

stream of aspiringsinger-songwriters, 

Boston’s 

Patty Griffin possesses 

an irresistible 

combination so 

many desire: a comforting acoustic signature, 

simple melodies, storybook tales 

that descend from both the Woody 

Guthrie and Emmylou Harris traditions, 

and a warm alto that expresses 

phrases and syllables with a faint twang, 

gorgeous clarity, and lilting cadence. 

Having started with 2002’s 1000 Kisses 

(review, Issue 137) and advanced with 

last year’s live Kiss In Time, Griffin’s winning 

streak continues with Impossible 

Dream [ATO 21520]. While she 

remains wedded to a rural, wholesome 

style, the occasional support of a full 

band (including violins from Lisa 

Germano) provides her with a more 

expansive, bigger though not louder 

sound, and sonics that seem to float. 

Subtle bluesy shivers and ethereal background 

vocals result in greater degrees of 

heartrending emotion and spiritual elasticity. 

Mandolins and spare horns stir the 

music to dance or roll 

along a slow-flowing jazzinflected 

sea. Griffin’s 

magnetic pop-folk still 

seems air-mailed from a 

bygone era, yet the emotional 

qualities and lyrical 

situations belong to our 

own contemporary times. 

Love, hopeful contemplation, 

resolve, and joyous 

recovery remain Griffin’s 

primary muses, and while 

m u s i c FOLK 

she has plenty of competition, few match 

the effortless power and lantern glow of 

her voice or striking symbolism of her 

words. Firmly embracing other styles, 

Griffin has outgrown the folk tag, but 

there’s no doubting from what tradition 

her methods, singing, and ideas. BG 

Sarah Harmer 

Canadian Sarah 

Harmer began 

her musical career in 

college as the vocalist 

and songwriter 

for a band named 

Weeping Tile, 

debuted a solo CD in 1999 with the lightly 

distributed Songs for Clem—a cover 

album of popular country classics dedicated 

to her father—and released her first 

major solo effort, You Were Here, in 2000. 

You Were Here’s simply adorned tunes 

revealed a personal folk-pop songwriting 

style, a warm and pleasant voice that, 

while remaining individual, suggested 

the breathiness of a Suzanne Vega or Joni 

Mitchell, with touches of the latter’s jazzy 

phrasing, and a budding talent worth 

watching. Recognition followed with 

awards, top ten lists, and guest appearances 

with Indigo Girls and Bruce 

Springsteen. But four years have lapsed 

between You Were Here and the new All of 

Our Names [Zoë 01143 1039] and it’s 

hard to understand why. While this is a 

highly competent collection—actually a 

bit too slick and “produced” for my 

taste—and Harmer has developed into an 

even more versatile and savvy vocalist, the 

new record sounds much like the old, 

except it’s not as interesting or varied. The 

lyrics tend to center on themes of love and 

loss, are accompanied by a rather droning, 

rainy-day beat, and are surrounded by too 

much busy work from a battery of guitars, 

electric piano, drums, bass, synth, trumpet, 

and cello. In addition, almost every 

tune finds Harmer accompanying herself 

with one or more overdubbed vocals, 

which is rather disconcerting. Let’s hope 

this is a well-intentioned misstep and not 

the sound of things to come. WG 


m u s i c j azz 

Jazz Caps 

Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls: Breeding 

Resistance. Sirota, Robert G. Koester, 

Steve Wagner, producers; Griffin 

Rodriguez, engineer. Delmark 551 

Chicago Underground Trio: Slon. No producer 

listed. Bundy K. Brown, engineer. 

Thrill Jockey 136 

These Chicago 

bands have 

shared a few members 

and a willingness 

to test jazz’s 

boundaries, and 

their new CDs are 

driven by a sense of 

political outrage. 

C h i c a g o 

Underground 

Trio’s Slon is dedicated 

to victims of 

U.S. imperialism. 

Various compositions on Rebel Souls’ 

Breeding Resistance register objections to 

human-rights abuses from the execution 

rate in Bush’s Texas to the bombing of 

Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. 

Shades of 1960s jazz activism, but then 

it’s hard to shake that decade in a city 

run now as then by an imperial mayor 

named Richard Daley. 

Not that either CD is a bitter pill. 

The Souls’ leader/drummer Ted Sirota 

likes foot-wagging beats, from the fast 

swinging waltz time of bassist Clark 

Sommers’ “Pablo” to the deep-focus dub 

reggae of “This Is a Takeover,” goosed by 

guitarist Jeff Parker’s popping, reverbed 

exclamations. On the latter and the 

Nigerian-tinged “Saro-Wiwa” the blend 

of Geof Bradfield’s tenor sax and Jeb 

Bishop’s trombone owes more to 

Jamaica’s Skatalites than the Jazz 

Messengers. But all the populist rhythms 

and gestures of solidarity are musically 

convincing, and the ensemble balance 

tends toward the superb (sonically also: 

the drums aren’t too loud, but you can 

hear Sirota whisper with brushes). 

Parker, a sometime Chi Undergrounder, 

features his usual spiky jazz-guitar tone, 

off-the-chart dissonant chords, and a 

refreshing reluctance to jack up the volume. 

His presence gives the rhythm section 

a distinct feel, and Sommers has an 

excellent beat to match his boss’. 

Bishop and Bradfield mix it up well 

when they improvise, too, and the tenor 

occasionally evokes the volatile Dewey 

Redman (one of several echoes of Charlie 

Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, 

partly sparked by events in Chicago ’68). 

If the album seems about two tunes too 

long, that’s cause it’s stocked with good 

themes, including Bradfield’s “D.C.,” 

whose staccato phrasing is ready-made 

for an enterprising drummer like Sirota. 

That “D.C.” is for Don Cherry, 

another member of Haden’s LMO, and a 

firm believer in building bridges to other 

cultures through music. Cherry’s also a 

conspicuous influence on Slon’s pithy 

anthems, and Rob Mazurek’s raspy bugle 

tone on cornet. The Underground’s lineup 

is endlessly mutable, from duo to 

orchestra, but this trio may be the closest 

to ideal. Polyrhythmic drummer Chad 

Taylor and bassist Noel Kupersmith, 

who has an authoritative, woody sound 

and accurate pitch, make for an alert and 

pushy rhythm section. Mazurek is a clarion-clear 

and thoughtful horn player 

with a bebop background he doesn’t feel 

the need to flaunt. 

Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls 

Three tracks out of nine show off the 

acoustic trio’s lean ensemble profile, and 

how far they can take those elemental 

melodies. Kupersmith’s mixed lower 

(i.e., at a more natural volume) than bass 

players normally are nowadays, especially 

in bands this hip. He sounds all the 

more effective for it, his running lines 

well integrated with Taylor’s roving 

drums. It’s especially nice to hear a 

stretchy-but-structured limber trio that’s 

fronted by brass instead of a saxophone. 

Still, the Underground is rarely an 

all-acoustic band. Mazurek and 

Kupersmith (former Rebel Souls) double 

on computer electronics, and the Trio 

makes a pop band’s distinction between 

playing live and building music in a 

studio. On past projects this wasn’t 

always a benefit, but Slon integrates 

acoustic and electronic timbres in an 

exemplary way. A Steve Reichy shimmering 

background sneaks in under 

“Protest” when it’s already in full swing; 

more sneakily, that synthesized pulse 

gradually replaces bass and drums as the 

rhythm track under improvising cornet. 

And is the long-note layer in “Palermo” 

laptop-produced, or horn-and-bass 

processed and played backwards? 

Commendably, the software jocks forego 

the dreary gray static laptoppers love too 

well. Even the blurps and squiggles 

work. They make you believe in positive 

change in a precarious world. 

KEVIN WHITEHEAD 


Duke Ellington: Masterpieces By Ellington. 

George Avakian, original producer; Fred 

Plaut, engineer; Michael Brooks and 

Michael Cuscuna, reissue producers; Mark 

Wilder, remastering. Columbia/Legacy 

87043 

Recorded in 

1950, and out 

of print for 

decades, this was 

Duke’s first longplaying 

album and 

he used the new 

medium’s extended time to lay down 

full-length concert versions of his classic 

big-band songs that, on previous records, 

he’d chopped to a few minutes. The 

resulting arrangements are sumptuous, 

complex, startlingly modern. And— 

here’s the shocker—the sound quality is 

superb. The under-recognized Fred Plaut, 

who later engineered Kind of Blue, was at 

the controls; Mark Wilder transferred the 

tapes to DSD. (Is an SACD forthcoming?) 

Tonal colors are vivid—the woodwinds’ 

ensemble-bloom, the horns’ brash blare, 

the detail and dynamics of every touch on 

piano, bass, and drums. Sonics are very 

good by any standards; for 1950 mono, 

they’re hair-raising. 

All round, the album ranks among 

the two or three top Ellington albums 

ever. Its fifteen-minute “Mood Indigo,” 

which he’d composed twenty years earlier 

and recorded many times since, is 

without question the definitive rendition. 

Ellington explores whole new passageways 

in this tune. In one statement 

of the theme, he has a trombone play in 

unison with clarinets, to give the reed 

section a sonorous richness. He plays 

percussive, syncopated piano behind 

Johnny Hodges’ dreamy alto-sax solo, to 

stir tension. Halfway through the song, 

the brass section takes up the melody 

while the reeds flutter dissonant arpeggios; 

the mix sounds like impressionistic 

bars of Debussy. Toward the end, the 

reeds, again playing over the brass, 

segue from Tin Pan Alley exuberance to 

dark minor chords, anticipating harmonies 

that Sondheim would later 

write. The solos are riveting—Russell 

Procope’s rousing clarinet, Tyree Glenn’s 

wah-wah trombone, Hodges’ glorious 

sax, and (too often overlooked) 

Ellington’s own piano inventions. 

The sole shortfalls are the singing by 

the since-forgotten Yvonne Lanauze, but 

she’s on only two songs, and then for just 

a couple minutes; and three bonus 

tracks, two- or three-minute rarities 

recorded in 1951, which are merely fine. 

Otherwise, this disc is a revelation, a 

must-buy. FRED KAPLAN 

Brad Mehldau Trio: Anything Goes. 

Mehldau and Matt Pierson, producers. 

Warner Bros. 48608 

Joel Frahm with Brad Mehldau: Don’t 

Explain. Matt Balitsaris, producer. 

Palmetto 2096 

In a perfect world, 

Brad Mehldau 

would be instrumental 

jazz’s commercialblockbuster 

equivalent 

of the ubiquitous 

and platinum-gilded 

Norah Jones. 

The pianist has 

now recorded ten 

albums as a leader, 

and everything 

from 1995’s 

Introducing Brad Mehldau through 2002’s 

electronically-tweaked Largo is marked 

by the balance of ear-pleasing tunefulness 

and challenging musicality. 

On Anything Goes, Mehldau steps 

back from Largo’s sonic experimentation 

and returns to his tried-and-true trio 

format with bassist Larry Grenadier and 

drummer Jorge Rossy. The new CD’s 

title, from the Cole Porter classic that 

gets a seven-minute workout, may refer 

to the repertoire that time-travels from 

“Get Happy,” “Nearness of You,” “I’ve 

Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” and 

“Smile” to Monk’s “Skippy,” Paul 

Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These 

Years,” and Radiohead’s “Everything In 

Its Right Place.” But it also captures the 

essence of the harmonic, melodic, and 

rhythmic strategies the trio employs to 

make each piece ring with original 

authority. As with an Ornette Coleman 

m u s i c J AZZ 

harmolodic group, the interplay is so 

subtle and intuitive, it’s rarely obvious 

who is triggering a shift, even in the 

slowest and most spacious passages. 

The conversation is easier to follow 

on Don’t Explain, a delightful set of 

duets with Mehldau’s old Hartford, 

Connecticut, chum, tenor and soprano 

saxophonist Joel Frahm. Fitting 

unsquarely into a tradition that stretches 

from Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines 

to Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron, and 

essaying a similar range of songs as the 

trio session (including “East of the Sun,” 

two versions of “’Round Midnight,” 

Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo,” the Beatles’ 

“Mother Nature’s Son,” “Get Happy,” 

and “Smile”), Don’t Explain’s rhythmsection-implied 

improvisations are models 

of relaxed concentration, underscored 

by Frahm’s lovely sax timbres and 

Mehldau’s mercurial single-note runs 

and full-fisted chordal surprises. 

Throughout Anything Goes, everything 

is indeed in its right place, with 

cymbals and skins separated crisply from 

ripe bass pulses and piano notes and 

chords reproduced with uncommon 

warmth and richness (you can practically 

hear the decay); Don’t Explain was recorded 

with slightly brighter and edgier sonics 

and less reverb on the piano, allowing 

for pleasing space and clarity in an almost 

holographic weave with Frahm’s saxes. 

Although neither features the original 

writing that made 1999’s solo Elegiac 

Cycle and 2000’s Places stand out in 

Mehldau’s catalog, Anything Goes is an 

ideal introduction to the pianist’s trio aesthetic 

and Don’t Explain is a merry 

reunion of musical pals. Each is perfect in 

its own moment. DERK RICHARDSON 

Fred Hersch: The Fred Hersch Trio +2. 

Hersch, producer; A. T. Michael McDonald, 

engineer. Palmetto 2099 

Fred Hersch is 

often pigeonholed 

as a romantic, 

given his lyricism, 

precisely calibrated 

touch, and refined 

and exacting ear for 

jazz harmony. But the pianist has an 

adventurous side, too. Both inform the 


self-explanatory Trio +2, with his longtime 

bassist Drew Gress and drum phenom 

Nasheet Waits (reunited from 

2002’s bumping Live at the Village 

Vanguard, Palmetto), plus two horns. 

Tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, usually 

heard on less harmonically rigorous 

tunes, plays with a more incisive attack 

and individuated tone than elsewhere. 

Cast against type, he finds his own way 

through the standard chords and along 

the serpentine melodic contour of the 

piano/tenor duo “Lee’s Dream” (Lee as 

in Konitz). Ralph Alessi sounds like 

what he is, a classical trumpeter who 

came to jazz later. He’s not the swingingest 

cat, but has a beautiful tone, and 

makes wide-interval melodies like the 

stately “Black Dog Pays a Visit” peal 

from the rooftops. 

Another plus is Hersch gets to comp 

for the horns while they solo: “sampling” 

a tenor trill, amplifying an 

improvised phrase’s rhythms, or jabbing 

out isolated notes that kick with the 

ruthless efficiency of a rimshot. You hear 

what excellent timing he has. 

Hersch writes nice pieces that tweak 

the usual forms and solo routines. 

“Down Home”’s descending line suggests 

a domesticated blues cadence, 

which may make you overlook its subtly 

off-kilter 9-9-8-9 beat cycle. “The 

Chase” (for Boston saxophonist Allan 

Chase) is folksy in a Haden/Ornette way, 

but is played as a rondo, setting up a 

leapfrogging triple-solo for trumpet, 

tenor, and piano. It’s amiable and unassumingly 

smart, and shows its depth by 

working well on several levels (all very 

like its dedicatee, by the way—this 

chase is a subtle portrait). 

Gress’ strengths mirror the leader’s, 

and he adds a fat sound and driving 

attack of his own. He and Waits have an 

excellent relationship: they follow different 

routes through a form but their 

underlying beat is always synchronous. 

Waits’ cracking snare attack can make 

the time float as effectively as a ride 

cymbal. He’s so creatively forceful it’s a 

pity he’s often submerged in the mix. 

Studio sound is most realistic when it 

mimics the natural balance of acoustic 

instruments. Recording in isolation is 

fine, but the drums shouldn’t sound like 

they’re in the next room. KW 

Jason Lindner: Live/UK. Lindner, producer; 

Paul Nickson, engineer. Sunnyside 1130 

Through much of 

the ’90s, 

pianist-composer 

Jason Lindner led a 

Monday night big 

band at Small’s, a 

(now-defunct) 

nightclub in the West Village, and 

became a force among Manhattan jazz 

musicians in their twenties who were 

seeking a middle ground between the 

uptown traditionalists and the downtown 

avant-garde. Outside the neighborhood, 

much less the borough, Lindner, who has 

just recently turned 30, remains largely 

unknown, a situation that this live quartet 

album—released on the tiny 

Sunnyside label, four years after the 

recording date—is unlikely to rectify. 

This is too bad, as Live/UK is a delight, 

full of uptempo ballads, Latin-hued 

rousers, and hook-rich urban soundscapes 

at once lyrical, graceful, and intense. 

Lindner could hardly be called a minimalist, 

but his music does tend to start with 

the repetition of a couple chords (one track 

here is called “Meditation on Two Chords”). 

Yet his compositions are so finely poised 

that even slight variations, in cadence or 

dynamics, have an explosive effect. His 

longtime bandmates—Jimmy Greene on 

tenor sax, Omer Avital on bass, Marlon 

Browden on drums—are so finely attuned 

to one another, they slide in and out of each 

other’s roles without notice: Lindner and 

Avital trade off harmony, counterpoint, and 

time-keeping; Browden rarely hits the beat 

but swooshes around it in a way that makes 

it all the more potent; Greene blows the 

melody with a forceful lilt reminiscent of 

early Coltrane, but he can also build to 

crescendos that bring to mind Trane’s later 

era. All of them play with an insouciant 

authority. Each of their parts is elegant, even 

simple; the interplay creates the complexity, 

even while the music remains accessible, the 

fundamentals—melody, rhythm, beauty, 

and wit—intact. 

Sound quality is well-balanced, spacious, 

and tonally true. The recording 

lacks a certain palpability—you never 

imagine that you’re hearing a real saxo- 


phone in a real club—but it’s pleasantsounding 

nonetheless. FK 

Miguel Zenón: Ceremonial. Branford 

Marsalis, producer. Marsalis 

Music/Rounder Records 11661-3308 

Having come to 

prominence in 

the sextet of tenor 

saxophonist and fellow 

Puerto Rican 

David Sanchez, 27year-old 

Miguel 

Zenón is quickly establishing himself as 

a major voice in the acoustic-jazz mainstream. 

Born more than three decades 

after jazz harmonies and Afro-Caribbean 

rhythms took their first steps toward 

Latin Jazz, alto saxophonist Zenón 

moves so naturally through both that 

attempts to sort out the elements are 

futile. Tutored at the Berkelee and 

Manhattan Schools of Music and, more 

importantly, on gigs in the company of 

Bob Moses, the Either/Orchestra, Ray 

Barretto, and others, Zenón buoyantly 

comes into his own in this intuitively 

melded quartet with pianist Luis 

Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig, 

and drummer Antonio Sánchez. 

Ceremonial, Zenón’s second album as a 

leader, opens with Cuban legend Silvio 

Rodriguez’s “Leyenda,” on which he 

makes his reed sing with elegance and 

emotional conviction. The album closes 

with a traditional hymn “Great is Thy 

Faithfulness,” its contemplative temperament 

and lyricism calling to mind the 

recent work of Charles Lloyd. In between, 

Zenón offers seven variegated originals, 

four with additional percussion and two 

featuring ethereal vocals—by the entire 

quartet on “Morning Chant” and by the 

enchanting Brazilian singer Luciana Souza 

on “Transfiguration.” Zenón’s sax is the 

star throughout, distinguished by its airtight 

vibrato and tonal equanimity, only 

occasionally breaking into a cry in the 

upper range, and hewing to ingenious 

melodic lines even on the mathematically 

concocted changes of a burner like “Ya.” 

Marsalis’ horn-friendly production 

keeps Zenón placed foremost in a nicely 

spread mix that sometimes distances and 

blunts the edges of the other instruments 


while accentuating the altoist’s impressive 

qualities as a tonemeister and melodist. DR 

Andy Bey: American Song. Herb Jordan, 

producer; Dave Kowalski, engineer. Savoy 

17330 

Andy Bey sings 

in a husky baritone 

with an eager 

tremolo, a combination 

that isn’t 

always to my taste, 

but American Song 

is his instant classic, the highpoint of 

Bey’s 30-year career. His inspiration 

comes, first, from the material (blueromance 

standards by Ellington, 

Strayhorn, Arlen, and Bernstein) and, 

second, from the horn arrangements by 

The Best in New-Format Software 

(All titles multichannel unless otherwise noted) 

Geri Allen. The latter is a surprise: 

Allen is a stellar jazz pianist, but who 

knew she did horns? Her harmonies are 

alternately dissonant and lush, depending 

on the desired effect, but always rich 

and subtle. 

Bey basks in them without ever losing 

focus. His vocal embellishments, frilly on 

some earlier albums, serve here to heighten 

his emotional power, which on some of 

the songs—“Never Let Me Go,” “Angel 

Eyes,” and “Lonely Town”—is shudderingly 

strong. Bey is a specialist in the slow 

ballad, most affectingly so with songs of 

sorrow, loneliness, and unrequited passion. 

He is less suited to spicy, upbeat 

numbers; his takes on “Satin Doll,” 

“Caravan,” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” 

could have been spiked with no loss. 

The sound quality is quite good. The 

horns are properly resonant and well bal- 

SACD 

Bach: Christmas Oratorio. Netherlands Bach Society Channel Classics 20103 (9) 

Bach: The Four Great Toccatas and Fugues. Biggs, organ. Sony 87983 (9) (TAS 143) 

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin. Praga 250184 (9) (review, this issue) 

Patricia Barber: Modern Cool. Mobile Fidelity Hybrid Stereo 2003 (8) (TAS 137) 

Beck: Sea Change. Geffen 0694935372 (9) (TAS 141) 

Big Brother and the Holding Company: Cheap Thrills. Legacy 65784 (8) 

John Coltrane: Soultrane. Mobile Fidelity 2020 (8) (TAS 143) 

Sam Cooke: All 5 ABKCO Remastered Collection Hybrid Stereo titles (TAS 144) 

Dvorák: Symphonies 8 and 9 (Fischer). Philips 470 617 (9) (TAS 142) 

Bob Dylan: All 15 Bob Dylan Revisited hybid SACDs. Columbia Legacy (Golden Ear, TAS 145) 

Bill Evans: Waltz For Debby. Analogue Productions Hybrid Stereo 9399 (8) (TAS 136) 

Alison Krauss: Now That I’ve Found You. Rounder Hybrid Stereo 0325 (9) (Golden Ear, TAS 139) 

Love & Lament (Cappella Figuralis). Channel Classics 17002 (9) (TAS 137) 

Natalie MacMaster: In My Hands. Rounder Hybrid Stereo 7025 (8) (TAS 137) 

Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (Tilson Thomas). SFS Media 0002 (10) (TAS 139) 

Music of Turina and Debussy (Lopez-Cobos). Telarc 60574 (9) (TAS 135) 

Art Pepper: Meets the Rhythm Section. Analogue Productions Hybrid Stereo 7532 (8) (TAS 140) 

The Police: Outlandos d’Amour. A&M Single-layer Stereo 493 602 (8) (TAS 141) 

Poulenc: Concerto for Organ. Linn Records CKD 180 (9) (TAS 138) 

Rainbow Body. Barber. Copland. Theofanidis. Telarc 60596 (9) (TAS 144) 

Ravel: Orchestral Music (Skrowaczewski). Mobile Fidelity UDSACD 4002 (9) (TAS 146) 

The Rolling Stones: All 20 ABKCO studio records and collections. ABKCO Hybrid Stereo (TAS 138) 

Rossini: Famous Overtures (Marriner). PentaTone 5186 106 (9) (TAS 142) 

Roxy Music: Avalon. Virgin (9) 

Saint-Saëns/Tchaikovsky/Bruch: Cello Works. Channel (10) (Golden Ear, TAS 133) 

Vivaldi: La Stravaganza. (Podger) Channel Classics 19504 (10) (Golden Ear, TAS 145) 

Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony. Telarc 60588 (8) (TAS 138) 

DVD-A 

Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies (Abbado). DG B0001462/3/4/5/6 (9) (review, this issue) 

Deacon John’s Jump Blues. AIX 81004 (9) (TAS 144) 

The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Warner Brothers (10) (TAS 145) 

Grateful Dead: Workingman’s Dead. Warner Brothers 78356 (9) (TAS 135) 

Mickey Hart: Best Of: Over the Edge and Back. Rykodisc 10494 (10) (TAS 137) 

R.E.M.: Automatic for the People. Warner Brothers 78175 (8) (TAS 140) 

John Williams: A.I. Warner Brothers 48096 (9) (TAS 135) 

Zephyr: Voices Unbound. AIX 80012 (10) (Golden Ear, TAS 139) 

Key: Number in parenthesis refers to sonic rating, with 10 being the best 

anced with the rhythm section; Bey’s 

voice carries just a trace too much reverb, 

but otherwise seems right there. FK 

SACD 


The Great Jazz Trio: Someday My Prince 

Will Come. Yaoshachi Itoh, producer; 

Yashihiro Suzuki, engineer. Eighty-Eights 

18815 (Sonic Rating: ) 

Few jazz groups 

with names like 

The Great Jazz Trio 

really fill the bill, 

but this one does. 

Hank Jones on 

piano, Elvin Jones 

on drums, Richard 

Davis on bass—they don’t come much 

greater than this. The disc is the sequel 

to the trio’s wondrous album of last year, 

Autumn Leaves; all but one of its songs (a 

piano solo of “Smoke Gets in Your 

Eyes”) were recorded during the same 

two-day session in May 2002, but it is 

no way a disc of leftovers; it’s every bit as 

wondrous, maybe more so. Hank Jones 

was 83, Elvin Jones 74, and Davis 72 

when this record was cut. Some find it 

noteworthy enough that the album 

brings the Jones brothers in a rare joint 

appearance—and features a moving rendition 

of “A Child Is Born,” by their late 

brother Thad Jones, to boot. But they 

and Davis—who has anchored for musicians 

from Frank Sinatra to Eric 

Dolphy—play with more energy than 

most top-notch jazzmen half their age. 

Listen especially to drummer Elvin 

Jones; every bit as melodic as he is 

there’s nobody more rhythmic. 

The others are in top form, too. 

Hank Jones remains a spry and lush 

pianist, Davis a hard-plucking, agile 

bassist. The microphones pick up every 

subtlety with stunning clarity, dynamics, 

and air. Eighty-Eights is a Japanese 

label that records its sessions in analog 

and DSD, and releases its albums on LP, 

CD, and SACD. Sony has distributed 

many of the label’s albums (including 

Autumn Leaves) on CD, but not this one. 

The vinyl platters and Super Audio discs 

are available from Acoustic Sounds. FK 


m u s i c classical 

Classical Caps 

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas. Susan Graham 

(Dido); Ian Bostridge (Aeneas). Le Concert 

d’Astrée, European Voices, Emmanuelle 

Haïm, conductor. Alain Lanceron, producer; 

Jean Chatauret, engineer. Virgin 45605 

Britten: The Turn of the Screw. Felicity Lott 

(The Governess); Philip Langridge (Peter 

Quint). Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble, 

Steuart Bedford, conductor. John H. West, 

producer; Mike Hatch, engineer. Naxos 

8.660109 (2 CDs) 

Henry Purcell’s 

Dido and Aeneas 

reigned unchallenged 

as the 

greatest English 

opera for over 250 

years, until it was 

supplanted by the 

prodigiously talented 

Benjamin 

Britten’s series of 

stage works, as 

concentrated and 

inventive as the 

older composer’s. 

Both are represented in recent CD 

issues. The Purcell has been recorded 

with such luminaries as Tatiana 

Troyanos, Janet Baker, and Lorraine 

Hunt, among many others. So why this 

new one? 

One reason is Susan Graham, a Dido 

to rank alongside her predecessors—the 

voice warm and full, the emotions vivid. 

Graham’s “Ah! Belinda” is a heart-stopping 

lament, her final scene, the ultimate 

in disillusioned resignation. Another reason: 

conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, who 

tears into this music with a ferocity that 

startles after staid interpretations of the 

past. The dance music bursts with vivacity 

and the period instruments crackle 

with fresh crispness. Fate’s unfolding is 

portrayed with a devastating inevitability. 

That would be enough to set this 

version apart, but there’s more. Luxury 

casting has countertenor David Daniels 

in a tiny walk-on part that he imbues 

with character; contralto Felicity Palmer 

is a Sorceress who actually sings instead 

of mugging her way through; and tenor 

Paul Agnew’s rendition of the Sailors’ 

Song is gorgeous. It’s not all on this 

level, though. Tenor Ian Bostridge is 

miscast as an Aeneas unconvincing both 

as hero and as lover, and Camilla 

Tilling’s chirpy, bright Belinda isn’t to 

my taste, though it may not bother you. 

Well-balanced, transparently detailed 

sound is another reason to get this disc, 

though there’s some hardness on loud, 

high soprano notes. 

Far from Purcell’s late seventeenth 

century is Britten’s Henry James-based 

opera, The Turn of the Screw, written in 

1954. Both operas have small, chamber 

orchestras and seven-member casts. In a 

sense, they’re both ghost stories: 

Purcell’s ghosts are made visible in the 

persons of the sorceress and her minions, 

Britten’s in the presence of the dead 

Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, and inhabiting 

the mind of The Governess, here 

wonderfully sung by Felicity Lott. 

Steuart Bedford, who worked with 

Britten at Aldeburgh, leads a tight, but 

flowing performance, striking just the 

right moods and portraying the 

tragedy’s inexorable progression with a 

vividness that makes for hypnotic listening. 

The many instrumental interludes 

glow in Britten’s amazingly apt orchestrations. 

The thirteen players sound like 

a full orchestra at times; at others, 

extended instrumental solos capture 

moods and move the story along. The 

singing is virtually flawless—Philip 

Langridge is a properly oily Quint, but 

also a firmer devilish presence than the 

higher-voice Peter Pears in Britten’s own 

recording. The bewitched children, 

Miles and Flora, are portraits of malevolence 

disguised as innocence. 

This recording was part of a 

Bedford-conducted series of Britten 

operas on the defunct Collins label, now 

being reissued by Naxos. The original 

1993 engineering was first-rate, and it 

emerges as such here—Act II’s “The 

Bells” sequence is a sure-fire audiophile 

feast. The Turn of the Screw has fared well 

on disc, but this one’s superb, and a steal 

at Naxos’ price. DAN DAVIS 

Anonymous 4: American Angels. Robina 

G. Young, producer; Brad Michel, engineer. 

Harmonia Mundi 907326 

Trio Mediaeval: Soir, dit-elle. John Potter, 

producer; Peter Laenger, engineer. ECM 

New Series 1869 

After seventeen 

years and more 

than a dozen goodselling 

CDs, 

Anonymous 4 is 

calling it a day. 

This season’s tour 

will be its last; 

American Angels and 

a still-to-be-released 

disc of Hildegarde 

of Bingen material 

are its final recordings 

for Harmonia 

Mundi. The current disc, subtitled 

“Songs of Hope, Redemption & Glory,” 

explores the Anglo-American sacred 

music tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries. 

There are psalm settings, fuging 

tunes, hymns, camp revival, and gospel 

songs—material that originated from the 

New England countryside, the rural 

South, and Northeastern cities. Included 

are “shape-note” compositions, which 

employ an early American system to 

facilitate music reading (different pitches 

had differently shaped note heads, representing 

the traditional European solmization 

syllables: do, re, mi, fa, sol, etc.). 

Some folk music purists may be suspicious, 

assuming that A4’s approach to 


Trio Mediaeval 

this music will be stiff, too refined, too 

“perfect” in terms of intonation and 

enunciation. And it’s true. You won’t 

confuse Anonymous 4 with Ralph 

Stanley. But these artists have devoted 

their entire career to music with a spiritual 

content, and the results are 

absolutely convincing. The singing is 

beautifully shaped, heartfelt, and stylistically 

apt, with appropriate inflections 

to the beginnings and ends of notes. 

They delineate well the varied tone of 

the selections—the insistent, fervent 

promise of salvation offered in “The 

Morning Trumpet”; the gentle resignation 

of “Wayfaring Stranger”; the shining 

and ultimately triumphant gospel 

tune “Shall We Gather at the River.” 

The program was recorded at Skywalker 

Ranch and captures the moderately 

reverberant but non-obscuring acoustic 

Anonymous 4 has favored on disc and in 

concert all these years. 

Soir, dit-elle is only the second release 

from Trio Mediaeval, but these three 

Scandinavian women are already widely 

regarded as A4’s logical successors. 

Individually, they probably have even 

more distinctive and flexible voices— 

soprano Anna Maria Friman can really 

nail a high note when required—but 

TM’s most salient strengths are those of 

the American group: a flawless vocal 

blend, a profound musical intelligence, 

and a deep spiritual connection to the 

texts. Soir, dit-elle intersperses the four 

sections of a fifteenth-century mass 

(“Alma redemptoris mater”) by the 

English composer Leonel Power with 

new works written for Trio Mediaeval by 

Oleh Haravyy, Gavin Bryars, Andrew 

Smith, and Ivan Moody. The effect of the 

program is spellbinding, as the Trio 

moves effortlessly back and forth across 

the span of 600 years without ever 

breaking the musical mood. All of the 

new music is exemplary, but the two 

pieces by Moody, The Troparion of 

Kassiani and A Lion’s Sleep, which set 

ninth- and tenth-century texts that give 

voice to the two Maries associated with 

Christ (His mother and Mary 

Magdalene), are especially wonderful. 

The exquisite recording, taped in an 

Austrian church, offers a closer perspective 

than HM, with excellent resolution 

of the three voices but a pleasing spaciousness 

as well. ANDREW QUINT 

The 1950s Haydn Symphonies Recordings. 

Vienna Symphony, Volksoper Orchestra, 

Hermann Scherchen, conductor. James 

Grayson and Kurt List, producers. 

Deutsche Grammophon 471256 (6 CDs) 

At last—reissues 

of Hermann 

Scherchen’s inimitable 

Haydn symphony 

recordings 

for Westminster. 

Nineteen are here, 

all bearing the personal stamp of a conductor 

with encyclopedic interests, a 

champion of the new who excelled in 

making the old sound as radical as it did 

in the days when these works burst upon 


an unsuspecting world. 

That’s how Scherchen plays these 

symphonies, with wide dynamics, energetic 

allegros, whiplash prestos, expressive 

slow movements, and minuets that 

take the music out of palace ballrooms 

and into their contemporary equivalents 

of discos. Attacks are fierce; slow movements, 

as in the glorious Symphony 

No.88, are taken at tempos that would 

drag in other hands, but have a timestopping 

power in his. All the while, he 

makes us aware of structurally important 

details others gloss over. Scherchen’s 

Haydn doesn’t have the charm of 

Beecham’s, the warmth of Walter’s, or 

the precision of Szell’s, to mention a few 

of his contemporaries. But he’s their 

equal, saving the composer who revolutionized 

the symphonic form from the 

stereotyped “Papa Haydn” image. 

Such originality, from composer and 

conductor, demands to be heard, and 

this well-transferred, generously filled 

budget-priced box is the way to do it. 

All but one of the symphonies are in 

clear, well-defined mono; the exception 

is a wide-ranging “Farewell” Symphony 

from 1958 where stereo enhances the 

device of the players saying auf wiedersehn 

as they leave the stage at the close. 

There’s more Scherchen where this came 

from; here’s hoping DG gives it to us.DD 

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5. Romeo and 

Juliet. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 

Daniele Gatti, conductor. Robina G. Young 

and Stephen Johns, producers; Brad 

Michel, engineer. Harmonia Mundi 

907381 

The first time I 

played Daniele 

Gatti’s new recording 

of Tchaikovsky’s 

Fifth Symphony, 

I felt almost 

the same excitement 

I experienced when I heard the 

work the first time four decades ago. 

Gatti pays unusually careful attention to 

the score’s tempo markings and dynamic 

indications. The first movement opens 

more quickly than is traditional, but its 

tone and tread are so appropriately 

weighted that it has the requisite feel of 



an objective prologue to the drama of 

fate and romantic perseverance that follows. 

The great melancholy song on the 

French horn that opens the Andante is 

played with such quiet beauty and 

hushed intensity as to make one catch 

his breath. This movement must be 

for Gatti the emotional center of the 

whole work, individual anguish 

crushed by implacable fate when the 

motto theme returns with shattering 

power. The Valse then follows like a 

distant dream of happier times, but 

they too are dispatched by the fate 

motif. In the finale Gatti eschews the 

customary display of mere orchestral 

virtuosity in favor of a sobriety that, 

despite the overall tonal shift from E 

minor to E major, never lets us forget 

that Tchaikovsky’s is a true tragic 

vision. Thoughts of Yeats’ great 

rough beast slouching towards 

Bethlehem fill the imagination, the 

coda’s march suggesting less clarion 

triumph than exhaustion, the hero 

most vanquished when, paradoxically, 

he is most victorious. This marvelous 

performance is a triumph: at once as 

literal as any score watcher could desire 

and yet completely individual. 

The makeweight Romeo and Juliet, an 

earlier recording on a different label that 

Harmonia Mundi licensed for release here, 

exhibits the same virtues—note, for 

example, the carefully controlled dynamic 

levels in the exciting central section. Gatti 

is clearly a superior conductor, with a keen 

rhythmic sense and fine ear for orchestral 

textures. He has the ability to shape 

phrases and melodies with great warmth 

and plasticity, and to build climaxes with 

extraordinary inevitability. The Abbey 

Road recording is excellent: the perspective 

forward, the soundstage a bit short on 

depth but very, very wide, the dynamic 

range considerable. PAUL SEYDOR 

SACD 

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin. Two 

Pictures. Sonata for Two Pianos and 

Percussion. Jean-Francois Heisser, Marie- 

Josèphe Jude, piano; Florent Jodelet, 

Michel Cerutti, percussion. Pierre Barbier, 

producer; René Gambini, engineer. Hybrid 

multichannel. Praga 250184 

(Sonic rating: 9) 

Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle. Laszló Polgár, 

Bluebeard; Ildikó Komlósi, Judith. 

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, 

conductor. Hein Dekker, producer; Roger 

de Schot and Carl Schuurbiers, engineers. 

Hybrid multichannel. Philips 470633 

(Sonic rating: 8) 

The first half of the Twentieth Century 

brought an explosion of possibilities 

to the musical exploitation of instru- 


mental color and 

timbral combinations. 

No composer 

of that era 

loomed larger in 

this expansion of 

sonic resources 

than Béla Bartók, 

so it’s a distinct 

pleasure to see 

some of his masterpieces 

beginning 

to appear on highresolutionmultichannel 

recordings. Praga’s new SACD 

encodes Bartók’s magisterial 1937 

Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion in 

a potent and expert performance by 

musicians who know this music in their 

bones, and attains a vivid immediacy 

and tonal truthfulness I’ve never heard 

on any previous recording. I listened to 

it on both my home multichannel setup, 

and with Jonathan Valin on his worldclass 

SACD stereo system (Sonus Faber 

Stradivari speakers, Aesthetix preamp, 

Tenor amps, EMM Labs/Meitner player); 

both renditions were thrilling. 

Praga’s engineering—which doesn’t 

hesitate to put a perhaps-rather-largerthan-usual 

amount of information into 

the surround channels—reveals subtle 

nuances in drum timbres as they bounce 

back and forth almost polyphonically at 

times, and filigree details in the ricocheting 

piano martellato interplay, that 

had simply never been audible before. 

Attacks are crisp, charged with energy, 

and the percussion fully integrated into 

the musical discourse rather than (as too 

often) seeming an extraneous seasoning 

sprinkled on at random. The hard-edged 

athleticism, the mystery, and the fierce 

joy of this music come to life as until 

now only possible in a fine concert performance. 

This is one of those dazzling 

recordings that triumphantly validate 

SACD technology. 

Praga fills out the program with twopiano 

arrangements of Bartók’s early Two 

Pictures—not a particularly memorable 

effort—as well as of his lurid and bizarre 

1925 ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin. 

On the keyboard the Mandarin reveals 

more clearly inner voices and accompanimental 

figures submerged in the orchestral 

panoply—but as a stand-alone com- 

position it’s not really a success. Those 

lascivious clarinet pirouettes, diminished 

to the piano’s dry neutrality, just don’t 

have the same seductive entrancement. 

But who cares? The great Sonata’s easily 

worth the price of the disc. 

Enigmatic and troubling, haunted 

and haunting, Bartók’s only opera—a 

one-act, hour-long psychodrama from 

1911—conveys its forlorn majesty with 

an astonishing and still-unsurpassed 

array of orchestral invention. The music 

emerges from deep-velvet, enshrouded 

gloom, now slowly and sadly, now in 

florid, rhapsodic fanfares, now grandly 

(breaking out into an unforgettable 

paean of exultation in the “fifth door” 

scene where Judith gazes out over the 

vista of Bluebeard’s vast estates), now 

erupting into tragic fury, now in rapid, 

flame-like flickerings that trace the air 

with lingering sonic afterimages (in the 

mournful “sixth door” that opens onto 

Bluebeard’s lake of tears), now rising to a 

shattering final threnody before sinking 

into desolate exhaustion as Bluebeard 


solemnly intones “Henceforth all shall be 

darkness, darkness, darkness.” 

Iván Fischer conducts with absolute 

command of this music (I heard him 

lead a performance here in Cincinnati’s 

Music Hall that left the audience so 

moved they sat in stunned silence for 

several seconds before breaking out into 

thunderous applause), and Polgár and 

Komlósi are superb vocal embodiments 

of Bartók’s persistent, doomed Judith 

and sinister, tormented, fatalistic, alsodoomed 

Bluebeard. 

Bluebeard’s Castle is one of the greatest 

operas of the modern or any other era— 

even though it renounces one of the key 

elements of musical drama: spectacle. 

There is so little to see that the staged and 

concert versions are equally effective. 

This makes it ideal for recording; there’s 

no sense of an incomplete experience 

lacking a crucial visual component. All 

the better, then, that this new Philips 

SACD is terrific. It has gorgeous tonal 

richness and purity, sharply-focused 

detail, encompassing ambiance, huge 



dynamic range, and powerful impact. Try 

track 7—the “fifth door” scene—to come 

as close as you dare to importing the aweinspiring 

glory of the full orchestra on 

open throttle into your listening room. 

The multichannel sound is so deep and 

wide, it’s positively oceanic. MARK LEHMAN 

Mahler: Symphony No. 3. Lilli Paasikivi, 

mezzo-soprano. London Philharmonic 

Chorus Women; Tiffin Boys’ Choir. 

Philharmonia Orchestra, Benjamin 

Zander, conductor. Elaine Martone and 

David St. George, producers; Jack Renner, 

engineer. 2 Hybrid multichannel SACDs + 

1 CD. Telarc 60599 (Sonic rating: 7) 

I 

have a knowledgeable 

friend 

whose wife is fond 

of remarking that if 

you ask him a question 

about something, 

he can’t resist 

telling you everything he knows about 

it. I’ve sometimes thought of this fellow 

as I’ve listened to the spoken essays that 

accompany Benjamin Zander’s ongoing 

Mahler cycle for Telarc. Zander’s vast 

knowledge and erudition, his deep 

insights, his teeming energy, and his 

ebullient love for all aspects of Mahler’s 

work make these bonus discs exceptionally 

rewarding. 

Fortunately, Zander’s performances 

have also been excellent. Almost no conductor 

relishes Mahler’s orchestral colors, 

his strange combinations of instruments to 

produce the most expressive dissonances, as 

keenly as Zander. His balances and textures 

are among the most translucent of all conductors, 

and he has in the Philharmonia an 

instrument with which he enjoys a rare 

unanimity of purpose. The middle four 

movements come out strongest. In the 

Scherzando, he is the only conductor on 

record to use an actual post horn—instead 

of the flugelhorn specified in the first edition—and 

it sounds with a peerless evocation 

of pastoral innocence. The shifting 

variations of the second movement, by 

turns bucolic and sinister, are vividly characterized; 

in the fifth, Telarc’s engineers 

place the children’s chorus above and 

behind us to delightful effect. 

Doubts arise principally in the large- 

scale structures of the first and last movements. 

The former has countless beautiful, 

exciting passages, yet they feel like a 

succession of events that never quite hold 

together over 33 minutes. Also missing is 

a degree of Pan-like exuberance. And if 

the final, transcendent Adagio doesn’t 

overwhelm and transport, then it doesn’t 

matter how gorgeously played or recorded 

it is. Here it doesn’t, despite Telarc’s spectacular 

medium-distance sound that’ll 

thrill those with multichannel rigs. 

If Zander’s Ninth—the one indisputably 

great performance in his series 

so far—is any indication, concerts 

appear to liberate him in a way studios 

do not. That disc gives the impression 

Zander has moved beyond a thoroughly 

mastered score to a living, breathing 

realization of the music. In this Third, as 

in his Fourth and Fifth, the music seems, 

in some subtle and difficult-to-define 

way, tyrannized by his attention to the 

score and his desire to make sure we 

appreciate it as fully as he. PS 

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition. Night 

on Bald Mountain. Excerpts from 

Khovanshchina. Borodin: In the Steppes of 

Central Asia. St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, 

Leonard Slatkin, conductor. Joanna 

Nickrenz and Marc J. Aubort, original producers. 

Hybrid multichannel SACD. Mobile 

Fidelity UDSACD 4004 (Sonic rating: 6) 

Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible. St. Louis 

Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, 

conductor. Joanna Nickrenz and Marc J. 

Aubort, original producers. Hybrid multichannel 

SACD. Mobile Fidelity UDSACD 

4003 (Sonic rating: 8) 

There is surely a 

Pictures at an 

Exhibition for 

everyone out there 

among its gazillion 

recordings. Beyond 

Arturo Toscanini’s 

incandescent mono 

performance, 

which will probably 

never be 

equaled, Fritz 

Reiner (RCA), Sir 

Georg Solti 

(Decca), James Levine (Deutsche 

Grammophon), and Yoel Levi (Telarc) 

should certainly rank near the top of any 

short list. Reiner’s recording is so well 

known in audiophile circles that no further 

comment is necessary. Solti’s performance 

is similarly bright and virtuosic 

with some amazing brass sonorities 

from the same Chicago Symphony 

Orchestra, and flashy sound that nicely 

complements the orchestration. Though 

his tempos are similar to Solti’s, Levine 

sounds more expansive, and the Met 

orchestra matches the CSO. The generous 

coupling includes an underrated Le 

Sacre du Printemps in what may be the 

best-sounding DG CD I have ever 

heard. Levi’s Pictures should be heard for 

his flawless terracing of the dynamics in 

the successive climaxes of “The Great 

Gate of Kiev,” and Telarc’s well-integrated 

bass drum. 

In comparison, Slatkin sounds too 

tame. He does project the grotesquerie 

of “Gnomus” effectively, but 

“Bydlo” sounds more like a NASCAR 

event than a lumbering oxcart. “The 

Great Gate of Kiev” is quite good. 

Slatkin gets the bells and gong just 

right. His main SACD competition is 

Valery Gergiev, who manages to draw 

a rather coarse Russian sound from the 

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra 

(Philips). The St. Louis Symphony 

Orchestra does better by Ravel’s 

suave, sophisticated orchestration. 

The principal controversy with Ivan 

the Terrible centers around the version the 

conductor utilizes. Abram Stasevich (the 

soundtrack conductor) arranged an oratorio 

for narrator, soloists, chorus, and 

orchestra which Riccardo Muti plays 

with the Philharmonia Orchestra in a 

spectacular EMI recording that essentially 

reproduces his amazing live 

Philadelphia performances, one of the 

few highlights of his tenure there. Muti 

captures the power and grandeur better 

than anyone, but his recording is 

plagued by the ubiquitous shouting narrator. 

Valeri Polyansky conducts the 

complete score on Chandos without the 

narrator, but the music is episodic and 

the sound cavernous. Neeme Järvi gets 

around the narrator problem with a concert 

scenario arranged by the late, great 

Christopher Palmer. It’s quite good on 


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its own terms, even if it omits too much 

substantive music for purists. Gergiev, 

on Philips, and Slatkin offer the best 

solution by basically playing Stasevich’s 

oratorio (or something close to it) without 

the musically irrelevant narration. 

Again, Gergiev is very dramatic, despite 

some ragged orchestral playing and 

murky sound. Slatkin’s orchestra is better, 

but his swiftly paced, relatively civilized 

interpretation lacks the unrestrained 

wildness inherent in this music. 

Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies. Berlin 

Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, conductor. 

Otto Gerdes and Otto Ernst Wohlert, producers; 

Günter Hermanns, balance engineer. 

Six hybrid stereo SACDs. Deutsche 

Grammophon 474601/2/3/4/5/6 (Sonic rating: 6) 

Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies. Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio 

Abbado, conductor. Christopher Alder, producer; Klaus Hiemann, 

balance engineer. Six individual DVD-As. Deutsche Grammophon 

B0001462/3/4/5/6 (Sonic rating: 9) 

One record label, one great orchestra, one incomparable 

cornerstone of the symphonic canon; two conductors— 

and two competing modern high-resolution technologies. These 

Beethoven cycles, one on SACD and the other on DVD-A, were 

released within weeks of one another. It’s as if Universal were 

saying, “We have no idea how this whole new format business 

is going to turn out, either.” 

Karajan’s classic integrale, recorded in 1961 and 1962, is 

generally regarded as the best of his several Beethoven sets. It 

was his first major recording project with the BPO and more than 

four decades later, it remains recommendable as a first introduction 

to the music. These are electric performances, bursting 

with an exuberant warmth and energy. They are colorful, yet carefully 

voiced and articulated—there’s none of the fussiness and 

overrefinement that many hear in the conductor’s later output. 

Karajan delineates the heroic ethos of No. 3 and perfectly renders 

the movement from darkness to light in the Fifth. There 

may be nothing in the conductor’s enormous recorded legacy 

that’s superior to this reading of the Fourth Symphony with its 

lightness, clarity, beautifully shaded dynamics, and carefully 

modulated tempos. The sixth bonus disc documents Karajan 

rehearsing sections of three movements of the Ninth—fascinating, 

though best if you understand some German. 

Much had happened in terms of Beethoven interpretation 

In the final analysis, when you consider 

conducting, orchestral execution, and 

sound, Slatkin gives the best performance 

of the preferred version of Ivan. 

In typical Nickrenz-Aubort fashion, 

the sound of both of these recordings is 

strong on ambient and spatial information, 

and presented from a mid-hall perspective. 

The resemblance ends there. 

The engineers capture the huge forces 

required for Ivan the Terrible with clarity 

and ease. Whereas Pictures sounds exces- 

sively smooth and muffled, the highs in 

Ivan have real bite. Multichannel further 

enhances natural hall sound with 

no important directional distortions, 

but does little to intensify the impact of 

these colorful showpieces. In sum, stick 

with any of the previously mentioned 

Pictures in standard stereo. Slatkin is a 

good choice for the most musical version 

of Ivan the Terrible with fine sound, 

but I will never part with Muti’s powerhouse 

performance. ARTHUR B. LINTGEN 

SACD and DVD-A Tackle Beethoven's Nine Symphonies: 

Which Fares Better? 

Andrew Quint 

by the time Claudio Abbado, Karajan’s 

immediate successor in Berlin, made his 

recordings in 2000. Jonathan Del Mar’s 

new edition of the works had introduced 

many significant corrections (Abbado 

makes what he calls “informed choices”) 

and the conductor utilizes a smaller number 

of players for his performances than in the past. The result 

is a leaner sound, especially transparent orchestral textures, and 

rhythmic propulsiveness. Abbado’s Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth are 

high points of the set. 

Sonically, Karajan’s cycle has never fared better than with 

these SACD transfers. (Universal does not create a multichannel 

mix, as it has with other older recordings, including Karajan’s 

Mozart Requiem and his 1977 version of the Ninth.) The nature 

of the sound is really quite close to the original LPs, though a 

bit smoother on top, with a fuller midrange and more assertive 

dynamics. The SACD layer, as expected, offers more dynamic 

nuance and headroom, and more detail than the CD program, 

though the latter is superior to the bargain-priced CD box that’s 

also available [DG 429036]. 

With Abbado’s DVD-As, Universal has finally taken full sonic 

advantage of the medium. Both the stereo and multichannel programs 

are 96kHz/24-bit. We get an extended top-end with gorgeous 

wind sonorities and—even in stereo—a dimensional portrayal 

of the musicians on stage. Karajan and Abbado were recorded 

in different venues (Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche versus the 

Philharmonie), but the DVD-As are more spacious and airy sounding, 

with more “bloom.” The 5.1 multichannel is terrific. The space 

of the hall is defined by loud orchestral outbursts and the expanded 

spatial representation of the players has a clarifying effect on 

the music—in the Ninth, for instance, the solo singers are placed 

in front of the orchestra, with the chorus clearly in back. One has 

a thrilling appreciation of all the individual elements of 

Beethoven’s magnificent creation, as well as of the totality of this 

enormous edifice. Nicely done. ANDREW QUINT 


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m u s i c 

Absolute Audiophilia 

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 “Scotch.” 

Overture The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave). 

London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Maag, 

conductor. Ray Minshull, producer; 

Kenneth Wilkinson and Alan Reeve, engineers. 

Speakers Corner Records Decca 

SXL 2246/45 (four 45 RPM LPs) 

Sonic issues 

aside, before 

laying out the not 

inconsiderable asking 

price for this 

beautifully produced 

Speakers 

Corner set—the four thick, one-sided 45 

RPM discs, holding under 50 minutes 

of music, will set you back around 

$55—you’d want to be sure that the 

performances they hold warrant the 

expense. And, indeed, they do. The 

Swiss conductor Peter Maag built his 

reputation as a Mozart specialist, but his 

Mendelssohn recordings with the LSO 

(this program and A Midsummer Night’s 

Dream) could be what he’s best remembered 

for. Maag creates the ideal composite 

of lyrical elegance, playfulness, 

and formal clarity that makes for successful 

Mendelssohn playing. There may 

be more dramatic versions of these two 

works, but none that are more melodically 

ingratiating and so rightly proportioned. 

There’s an organic flow to 

Fingal’s Cave and a vivid sense of place. 

In the symphony, the first movement 

Allegro moves along but is never overdriven; 

the opening of the Adagio is 

handsomely sculpted. In Maag’s hands, 

the “Scotch snap” figurations in the 

Finale give the music a full measure of 

propulsive elasticity. 

Mendelssohn in Scotland, as the disc 

was originally titled, was recorded at 

Kingsway Hall, London in April of 

1960 and was once a London 

“Blueback,” prized by audiophile collectors. 

The sound is clear, open, dynamic, 

and wonderfully transparent—perfectly 

suited to the composer’s orchestral tex- 

tures. Many reissues have appeared over 

the decades, including a gold compact 

disc from Classic Records (for around 

half this price), and the symphony is 

currently available (paired with A 

Midsummer Night’s Dream) on a Decca 

Legends 96kHz/24-bit remastered CD 

that typically goes for $11.99 or so. No 

question about it: the Speakers Corner 

product sounds better, with more 

relaxed and richly characterized string 

sound, and more dynamic nuance. The 

Classic CD is not far off the mark, but 

for the vinyl enthusiast seeking the last 

degree of refinement and detail, the 

musical value of the program entirely 

justifies the price of admission. 

ANDREW QUINT 

John Lennon: Imagine. John & Yoko and 

Phil Spector, producers. EMI/Mobile 

Fidelity MFSL 1-277 (180-gram LP) 

Aimee Mann: Lost In Space. Michael 

Lockwood and Ryan Freeland, producers. 

SuperEgo Records/Mobile Fidelity MFSL 

1-278 (180-gram LP) 

Midobile Fidelity 

Sound 

Labs, backed by the 

distribution of 

Music Direct, has 

returned to the 

risky business of 

cutting lacquer. No 

question these 

longtime keepers of 

the audiophile 

flame mean business—the 

company 

enlisted the skills 

of tube-electronics guru Tim de 

Paravacini and original MF legend/engineer 

Stan Ricker, who have tricked out 

and massaged the Studer/Ortofon/ 

Neumaann mastering chain within a 

baby’s breath of nirvana. The results 

speak, or rather sing, for themselves. 

Imagine, John Lennon’s follow-up to 

his painful, redemptive Plastic Ono Band, 

has been refreshed to the point of revelation. 

Compared to my original Apple 

LP, the surfaces are unimaginably quiet, 

the vocal suckout factor has been alleviated, 

and much of the EQ spotlighting 

has been vanquished. Strings finally 

have rich, natural timbres. Having shed 

its transistor-radio persona, the album is 

more involving and nuanced. 

Although the live and gritty feel of 

the original is still the main attraction, 

the recording session’s compressed 

dynamics still rob some of the inertia 

from Lennon’s vocals; a recaptured low 

end lends the soundstage a foundation 

but it’s strictly of the thick, vintage 

variety. All this takes nothing away from 

what Mobile Fidelity accomplished, as 

Imagine has been reinvigorated into one 

of the most intimate and insightful portraits 

of Lennon’s craft. 

Lost In Space, Aimee Mann’s second 

indie release, demonstrates from track 

one that she hasn’t lost her trademark 

melodic instincts, but her tunefulness 

can’t fully energize this bleak dustbowl 

landscape of isolation and addiction. 

The eleven songs—like the spacey 

arrangements—suggest rootlessness 

and transience. The album kicks off on 

a bracing note with “Humpty 

Dumpty” and “High On Sunday 51,” 

but by the second side it’s clear the 

effort is front-loaded. Arrangements 

hang like a dark blanket over a lightless 

mix. Bass is reduced to shudders of 

vibration wholly lacking in pitch. The 

talented Mann sings a series of streamof-consciousness 

diary entries with 

tired resignation, the occasional 

Chrissie Hynde snarl only a memory. 

Lost In Space was recorded primarily 

in co-producer Ryan Freeland’s L.A. 

apartment and has a work-in-progress 

feel. Its sonics are listenable but not 

audiophile-grade. An odd choice from 

MoFi, which can’t be expected to spin 

silk from fabric this raw. NEIL GADER 

158 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ APRIL/MAY 2004

Index to Advertisers 

Accuphase ..............................Cover II Page 1 

www.accuphase.com 

Acoustic Sounds ..............................100, 101 

www.acousticsounds.com 

Acoustic Zen..............................................54 

www.acousticzen.com 

Art Audio ..................................................64 

www.artaudio.com 

Audience ................................................152 

Audio Advisor ..........................................114 

www.audioadvisor.com 

Audio By Van Alstine ..................................82 

www.audience-av.com 

Audio Connection ....................................134 

www.audioconnect.com 

Audio Plus Services............................Cover III 


AudioQuest........................................Cover IV 

www.audioquest.com 

Avalon Acoustics........................................19 

www.avalonacoustics.com 

AvantGarde................................................93 

www.avantgarde-usa.com 

AVGuide Monthly ......................................146 

www.avguide.com 

Airtight ......................................................94 

www.axiss-usa.com 

Aydn........................................................134 

www.aydn.com 

B & W Loudspeakers............................17, 39 


Bluebird Music ..........................................14 

www.bluebirdmusic.com 

Calix ........................................................25 

www.calix.com.tw 

Cardas Audio ............................................88 

www.cardas.com 

Cisco Music ..............................................98 

www.cisco.com 

Conrad Johnson ........................................78 

www.conradjohnson.com 

Dali ..........................................................51 

www.dali-usa.com 

Definitive Technology..................................49 


DEQX ........................................................45 

www.deqx.com 

Ears Nova................................................144 

Edge Electronics ........................................26 

www.edgeamp.com 

Elusive Disc ............................................140 

www.elusivedisc.com 

Epiphany Audio ..........................................53 

www.epiphanyaudio.com 

Flat Earth Audio ......................................152 

www.flatearthaudio.com 

Focus Audio ..............................................32 

www.focusaudio.com 

Furutech....................................................61 

www.furutech.com 

Gallo Acoustics..........................................41 

www.roundsound.com 

Genesis ....................................................47 

www.genesisloudspeakers.com 

Gershman Acoustics ..................................57 

www.gershmanacoustics.com 

Glacier Audio ......................................90, 91 

www.glacieraudio.com 

Goodwin's High End ................................142 

www.goodwinshighend.com 

Graham Engineering ................................130 

www.graham-engineering.com 

GTT Audio and Video................................116 

www.gttgroup.com 

Guide to High End Audio ..........................148 

www.hifibooks.com 

HALCRO ....................................................35 

www.halcro.com 

Harmonic Technology..................................71 

www.harmonictech.com 

Hovland ....................................................63 

www.hovlandcompany.com 

Induction Dynamics....................................96 

www.inductiondynamics.com 

In Living Stereo........................................120 

www.inlivingstereo.com 

Innersound ................................................23 

www.innersound.net 

JVC Disk or America ................................136 

www.xrcd.com 

KEF America ..............................................73 

www.KEF.com 

Kimber Kable ............................................24 

www.kimber.com 

Legacy Audio ............................................11 

www.legacy-audio.com 

Magnepan ................................................15 


MB Quart ....................................................5 

www.mbquart.com 

MuRata ....................................................58 

www.murata.com 

Music Direct ....................................102, 112 

www.amusicdirect.com 

Musical Surroundings ................................69 

www.musicalsurroundings.com 

Nordost ....................................................74 

www.nordost.com 

Paradigm ....................................................7 


Pass Labs ................................................55 

www.passlabs.com 

Pierre Gabriel Acoustics ............................80 

www.pierregabriel.com 

PNF Audio..................................................10 

www.pnfaudio.com 

Profundo ..................................................18 

www.profundo.us 

Purist Audio Design....................................52 

www.puristaudiodesign.com 

Reference 3A ..........................................128 

www.reference3A.com 

Rocky Mountain Audio Fest ........................99 

www.audiofest.com 

Rotel ......................................................8, 9 

www.rotel.com 

Sakura Systems ......................................153 

www.sakurasystems.com 

Sanus Systems..........................................76 

www.sanus.com 

Signal Path................................................13 

www.signalpathint.com 

Siltech ....................................................129 

www.siltechcables.com 

Smart Devices ..........................................67 

www.smartdev.com 

Sound By Singer ......................................150 

www.soundbysinger.com 

Sumiko......................................................29 

www.sumikoaudio.com 

Synergistic Research..................................37 

www.synergisticresearch.com 

Talon Audio................................................84 

www.talonaudio.com 

Thorens ..................................................119 

www.triancorp.com 

Totem Acoustics ........................................86 


Tri-Cell Enterprises ..................................118 

www.tricell-ent.com 

Upscale Audio..................................104, 132 

www.upscaleaudio.com 

Usher Audio ..............................................43 

www.theehighend.com 

Venture ....................................................12 

www.ventureaudio.com 

Walker Audio............................................126 

www.walkeraudio.com 

WBT..........................................................59 

www.wbtusa.com 

Wright Sound ..........................................134 

www.wright-sound.com 

XLO Electric ..............................................31 

www.xloelectric.com 

Marketplace 

Audio Consultants....................................122 

www.audioconsultants.com 

Audio Limits ............................................111 

www.audiolimits.com 

Audiophile Intl..........................................125 

www.audiophileusa.com 

AvantGarde Music ....................................109 

www.avantgardemusic.biz 

Billy Bags Pro-Stands ..............................110 

www.billybags.com 

Cable Company........................................124 

www.fatwyre.com 

Classified Audio Video..............................125 

www.auralaudio.com 

Coincident Speaker Technology ................111 

www.coincidentspeaker.com 

Davidson Whitehall ..................................124 

www.storadisc.com, 

Diamond Groove ......................................110 

www.diamondgroove.com 

Equa Corp ..............................................124 

www.equarack.com 

EquaRack ................................................111 

www.equitech.com 

Fab Audio ................................................110 

www.fabaudio.com 

Grand Prix Audio ......................................109 

www.grandprixaudio.com 

Gutwire Audio Cables ..............................111 

www.gutwire.com 

Highwater Sound......................................123 

www.highwatersound.com 

Manley Labs ............................................108 

www.manleylabs.com 

Per Madsen Design..................................124 

www.rackittm.com 

Silversmith Audio ....................................108 

www.silversmithaudio.com 

Sounds Real Audio ..................................110 

www.soundsrealaudio.com 

Stereo Trading Outlet................................109 

www.tsto.com 

Tenor Audio ............................................109 

www.tenoraudio.com 

TMH Audio ..............................................125 

www.tmhaudio.com 

Tonian Labs ............................................123 

www.tonianlabs.com 

Ultimate Monitor ......................................122 

www.theultimatemonitor.com 

Venus Hi Fi..............................................108 

www.venushifi.com 

Vibrapod..................................................122 

www.vibrapod.com 

Wireworld ................................................123 

www.wireworldaudio.com 


When NAD released its 3020 integrated 

amplifier in the late 1970s, I had already 

been an audiophile for the better part of a 

decade (this is what happens when you get 

hooked on this hobby when you’re barely out of junior high). I 

burned through a shocking amount of equipment in those first 

ten years, spending pretty much all my discretionary income on 

more than twelve sets of loudspeakers, fourteen turntable/tonearm 

combinations, innumerable phono cartridges, two stereo 

receivers, and four preamps and power amplifiers (some store 

bought, others kit-built and hand-modified for higher performance). 

In short, by the ripe old age of 25, I’d become an 

experienced, but jaded, audio enthusiast. Why jaded? The 

answer, I think, is that I hadn’t fully grasped the critical distinction 

between components with tons of audiophile virtues 

and those with that elusive and infinitely more desirable quality 

of all-around “musicality.” This is where the NAD 3020 

enters my story. 

I had an audio buddy named Mike, who managed a high-end 

audio store in Buffalo, New York, and who—though thoroughly 

familiar with costly equipment—loved nothing better than to 

discover sensibly priced audio mind-blowers. I remember him 

telling me, “Hey, I’ve got a new amp you have to check out. It’s 

an inexpensive little 28-watt/channel integrated from NAD 

that—no joke, sounds more musical than a lot of stuff at ten times 

its price. The next time you visit Buffalo, I’ll play it for you.” 

At first, it sounded too good to be true. I had heard NAD 

products before, of course, but I’d never heard one I felt could 

go toe-to-toe with “serious” high-end electronics—until I 

heard the NAD 3020 amplifier, that is. Mike, who had a great 

gift for component-matching, showed me the 3020 driving a 

pair of the original Farad Azima-designed Mission 770 standmounted 

monitor loudspeakers, and right off the bat the sound 

of those well-matched components blew my socks off, and for 

all the right reasons. The system was smooth but never dull, 

t as retrospective 

NAD 3020: The Little Amp That Put High-End Sound 

Within Everyone's Reach 

Chris Martens 

revealing but not edgy or etched. It 

possessed warm and vibrant upperbass 

and midbass (the 770s 

couldn’t do really low bass, and 

neither could the NAD), and it 

offered enchanting threedimensionality. 

Suddenly, there 

it was: musicality. 

I probably could have cited 

scores of components that outperformed 

the NAD in an area 

or two, but what I couldn’t do was 

name even one whose virtues were so complementary 

to each other and to the sound of live music, and whose 

flaws were almost entirely sins of omission (and hence easy to 

overlook). The longer I listened to that system, the more a kind 

of musical “trust” built up; I realized I could rely on that little 

amp to do many musical things right, and—just as importantly—I 

could trust it to deal gracefully with the things it couldn’t 

do (meaning the 3020 for the most part took a “do no harm” 

approach to music). Before long, I dumped my comparatively 

exotic preamp, power amp, and speakers and got an NAD 3020 

and pair of Mission 770s of my own, then settled back to enjoy 

a system that was unfailingly engaging and relaxing to listen 

to, day in and day out. 

Was the NAD 3020 as good as we remember it being, or 

have we “sweetened it” through the filter of pleasant memories? 

I think it really was as good as legend says—not perfect, 

certainly, but better than any $200 integrated amp had a right 

to be. Part of its goodness derived from its Bjorn Erik 

Edvardsen-designed linestage and power amp sections, which 

were nimble, stable, and able to drive considerable current 

into low impedance or otherwise difficult speaker loads. 

Another part came from its Tomlinson Holman-designed 

phono section—which sounded clearer and better balanced 

than many dedicated phonostages of the day. Finally, the 

whole product was brilliantly versatile; you could start out 

using it as a full-featured integrated amplifier, and then—as 

your system grew or your needs changed, use it as a preamp or 

just as a stand-alone phonostage. 

With hindsight, NAD’s 3020 stands out as the ideal 

embodiment of the notion that good sound—really good 

sound—should be accessible to almost anyone (not just to a 

well-heeled few). I still believe in that idea today. Over the 

years, the 3020 and its descendants (the 3020A, and so forth) 

helped introduce literally hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts 

to high-end sound—at eminently affordable prices. Here’s hoping 

we see more breakthrough products like the NAD 3020 in 

the years to come. & 

160 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ APRIL/MAY 2004

Absolute Sound

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