Today I had the honor of spending an entire afternoon in Steve's listening room. Steve and his beautiful wife were gracious and accommodating hosts. Steve even did a great job of introducing me to wonderfully recorded music with which I was unfamiliar.
Steve’s system, for the type of sound reproduction I prefer (on the sweet/musical side; analog and tubes; no solid state; no digital) provides the greatest illusion of live music I have ever heard. (Many years ago Michael Kay played for me the Goldmund reference turntable with Infinity IRS Vs, but that listening experience -- my first “religious” experience of the high-end audio variety -- was so long ago that I am not sure of the accuracy of my aural recollection, so I am not reluctant to declare Steve’s system the winner.) As amazing was what I heard today I know I will like Steve's future record-playing front-end even more.
As my journey in this hobby enters its fourth decade I become only more convinced that the room must be viewed as an essential component, requiring the same fanatical attention we bestow upon our electronic components. The quietness of Steve’s listening room is a testament to the skills of Bonnie, his acoustic consultant at SoundSense. I went home and tried to figure out if I could copy Steve’s room treatment by covering the walls of my listening room with drapes lined with Bonnie's flexible acoustic material. I think having the side walls and rear wall treated uniformly with identical acoustic material makes a lot of sense.
Historically I have respected, but never cared for sonically, Wilson speakers, as I always found them too bright. (The soft dome tweeter in the Alexia and the XLF, changes, to me, the tonal balance of each of those speakers and corrects completely what I perceived as brightness in prior models. In fact, I like very much the sound of the XLF and the Alexia, and they are the only speakers which cause my eyes (ah, ears) to wander from my electrostatics.) Yet, with Steve’s all-Lamm tube electronics, I do not hear in Steve’s X-2 Alexandria Series lls the brightness I associated with Wilson speakers prior to the introduction of the soft dome tweeter. The Lamms work some kind of magic on the big Wilsons. Sadly the Lamm amplifiers cannot drive my Martin-Logan speakers. (I jokingly asked Steve if Vlad makes anything in the 400 watt range.) Lamm amplifiers are the best sounding amplifiers I have ever heard for driving sensitive speakers.
Steve treated me to my first experience with reel-to-reel tape. While the playback of CDs and SACDs I heard today was amazing, it was not until Steve played one of his favorite recordings on magnetic tape that I felt that Steve truly gave me the illusion of re-creating an original musical event. Listening to that musical performance on tape was pleasurable, enthralling and emotionally involving in ways the CDs could not, for me, induce.
I had a wonderful high-end audio afternoon in every respect!
