INTRODUCTION
To better understand my reviews and the context in which I make my comments I want to explain my high-end audio philosophy, my listening biases and my music preferences. By so doing I hope that my reviews and my descriptions of what I hear will be more valuable to you. By enabling you to understand my preferences, and by helping you to calibrate what I like versus what you like, I hope to enable you to triangulate meaningfully on, and better comprehend, what I describe in my reviews.
PHILOSOPHY
I believe there are four primary, but not mutually exclusive, alternative objectives of high-end audio:
I subscribe to the first and fourth objectives. I want my audio system to recreate as realistically and as believably as possible the sound of an original musical event. Several conclusions immediately follow from this particular philosophy.
1) I do not care how a piece of equipment measures.
2) I do not care about the theory behind the design of a component (Actually, I do care, but only because I find theory and component design very interesting. But, ultimately, I care only about the resulting sound. I avoid most theory and design threads because I am not dogmatic about particular theories or about particular designs, and because I believe that the implementation is far more important than the theory. This is why turntables of many different designs can all sound good).
3) I am open-minded about tweaks. I have a teenage background in amateur radio (the Federal Communications Commission issued license for which required me to pass a test in elementary electronics, grounding, antenna theory and Morse code) and I used to build Heathkits, so I am comfortable with basic electronics jargon and a soldering iron and a voltmeter. This slightly technical (and now, admittedly, stale) background makes me skeptical of a lot of tweaks, but I remain firmly in the subjectivist camp and I am open-minded about tweaks. If my ears tell me that my stereo system is better able to recreate the sound of an original musical event because I have plugged into an outlet in my listening room a thin twig of special woo-woo wood found only in a remote jungle in the Amazon and which has been carefully soaked in sound-good oil and then blessed by a decorated tribal chief with golden ears then I am all for it!
MUSICAL INTERESTS?
My main musical interest is female vocals with minimal acoustic instrument accompaniment. Examples include Sarah McLachlan singing while playing the piano on Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Jennifer Warnes on Famous Blue Raincoat and Amanda McBroom on Growing Up in Hollywood Town. I also like male vocal recordings such as Bill Henderson’s rendition of “Send in the Clowns” and Jeff Buckley’s Grace.
I like a little bit of jazz such as Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, “For Duke” and Bill Evan’s “Waltz for Debby.” I like a little bit of classical including Mozart Jupiter Symphony 41 and Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. I am a big fan of direct-to-disc recordings by Sheffield Lab and M&K RealTime.
I enjoy a lot of perfectly ordinary rock and pop songs (e.g., Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, New Order, Phil Collins, Elton John, Jim Croce, Billy Joel, the Cranberries) and a lot of 1980s songs from “one-hit wonders.” My father worked in the record business for his entire career, and he took me to a lot of concerts when I was growing up. (He worked at Arista after Clive Davis left Columbia Records. Shortly after Arista released Whitney Houston’s first album he took my mother and me to hear Whitney Houston perform the debut album at The Bottom Line, a small club in the West Village of Manhattan. I wish I had a better aural recollection of Whitney Houston singing her entire album to only forty or fifty people!)
Since I love vocals it is no surprise that I like the midrange of MartinLogan electrostatic panels. If my primary interest were classical I definitely would not have gravitated to ESLs.
SOUND PREFERENCES
I listen for the believability of a solo vocalist with acoustic instrument accompaniment being present in my listening room and singing to me. I value most highly transparency, no artificial brightness, true-to-life corporeal and instrumental "body," true-to-life dynamics and true-to-life harmonic richness. I listen for a "natural" sound.
By transparency I mean that with respect to having the sense that a live person is singing to me in my listening room there is nothing "between" me and the singer. I conceive of the recreation of a vocal performance which makes as easy as possible the suspension of disbelief. I want to feel that I hear no electronic adulteration, no artificial or unbelievable "carrier" riding on the signal. Transparency to me means listening to a vocal performance with no electronic neutral density filter of any kind between me and the singer.
COMPONENT PREFERENCES
I listen only to analog. I literally will not have a digital disc player connected to my new stereo. I do not like computers so I am not getting involved in streaming or in storage on a hard drive.
Once I know I am listening to digital I just cannot seem to relax and enjoy it and make an emotional connection to the music. (Yes, if you tell me I am listening to an LP and it is actually a well-recorded DSD I definitely will be fooled. There is no doubt about that. But if you play for me that same recording on vinyl I am sure I will prefer the vinyl (unless the record is scratched and noisy).)
For many years I had a VPI TNT Mk. IV with a Graham 2.2 tonearm and a Benz Micro Ruby II cartridge. I recently ordered a new Basis Audio turntable and a Superarm 9.
The new cartridge remains an open question. My main contenders are the Air Tight PC-1 Supreme, the new Air Tight Magnum Opus, the My Sonic Lab Ultra Eminent EX, the Koetsu Coralstone and the Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum. I like the Ortofon Anna but its .25 mv output is just too much to ask from the all-gain, all-tube Aesthetix Io.
I have recently made the decision to take the leap into reel-to-reel tape. I have purchased thus far just one tape from The Tape Project.
I tend to be fascinated by the various non-traditional (i.e., other than cones in boxes) technologies: electrostatic, ribbon, magnetic planar, MBL, horn, etc. Planar speakers in general (my first speaker was the Magnepan MG-IIIA) and electrostatic speakers in particular (such as the MartinLogans) have always interested me because I like what I consider to be their see-through transparency which makes it sound as though a solo vocalist is singing to me in my living room. I also like the oomph and impact (i.e, cone excursion impact) of dynamic driver speakers and subwoofers.
To my ears, horns, at their best, can reproduce jazz and classical music with greater instrumental body and weight, greater “jump factor,” and greater overall realism than any other speaker technology I have heard. There seems to be something about the way horns move air which allows a greater suspension of disbelief on instruments like saxophone, tuba, trumpet, etc. Those instruments sound more real and more “in-the-room being played by a live musician” than I have heard from any other type of speaker.
But I also have come to the conclusion that for some reason -- which I understand has to do with horn coloration or horn “cuppiness” -- I do not hear horns reproducing vocals with the singer-in-the-room transparency to which I am accustomed from electrostatic panels, from ribbon-based speakers and from the best dynamic driver systems.
No loudspeaker is perfect. Different speakers excel at reproducing realistically different things. Some speaker designs excel at reproducing realistically certain instruments but not voices, and other speaker designs excel at reproducing voices and other instruments.
While my desire for electrostatic midrange transparency and the openness of dipoles has caused me not to be terribly interested in full-range dynamic driver loudspeakers, I nonetheless like the cone excursion impact of dynamic drivers for low frequencies. This is why I have been drawn for the last 28 years to MartinLogan hybrids. I purchased MartinLogan Monolith II speakers in 1989. I upgraded to the Monolith IIIs in 1991. In 2001 I purchased Prodigys, which I still use today.
I have some seemingly unusual sensitivity to auditory brightness. Screeching brakes on buses and trucks give me literally an instant headache. I find unappealing any audio system, and any component thereof, which sounds edgy or artificially bright. I had a brief affair the weekend of T.H.E. Show 2015 with the amazingly realistic and dynamic MBL 101E Mk. II. But after listening to the MBL speaker for five hours that weekend, and for several hours at a friend’s house with tube electronics and vinyl, and after much research and discussion, I could not avoid the conclusion that the MBL tweeter simply is too hot for me.
I have always preferred tube electronics because I find that there is a wonderful synergy with tubes on electrostatic panels. I have never heard solid-state amplifiers drive electrostatic panels and sound rich and natural and liquid the way tubes sound to me. I hear the greater dynamics and leading-edge transients and detail of solid-state amplification, but it always sounds a bit dry to me, especially on electrostatic panels. In addition I believe that MartinLogans like a lot of power (and I believe that Magnepans need a lot of power). So high power tube amplifiers have always been the correct answer for me. I have used the VTL MB-750s for about 18 years.
I heard the Aesthetix Io all-tube, dedicated phono preamplifier at one of Jim White’s first dealers, and I was hooked immediately. I hear from the Io richness and bloom and detail and decay and liquidness that I appreciated from day one and from which I have never tired. Jim White is upgrading my Io to Eclipse status with two outboard power supplies.
I resent expensive cables. I know that different cables sound different. But I think the whole expensive cable thing is a morass. I believe that a network which contains a resistor, an inductor and a capacitor (a basic R-L-C circuit, which is also known as a tuned circuit) is a simple tone control. However, pursuant to my view that I go only by the sound, I have used for many years Transparent XL-V speaker cables and Opus MM5 interconnects.
AUDIOPHILE DISCUSSIONS
As stated above there are four primary alternative objectives of high-end audio.
I believe that many debates and conflicting opinions about format preferences and equipment preferences and sound preferences arise from audiophiles holding different views on the objective of high-end audio, and from starting the debate with those different objectives not firmly and explicitly in mind.
I also believe that much other consternation arises simply from the well-known incomparability of interpersonal utility (e.g., there is no objective, principled way to prove that you like chocolate ice cream more than I like vanilla ice cream).
Finally, each of us is going to apply a different monetary value to a given improvement in sound. (And this assumes we can even agree there was an improvement in sound. One audiophile's "welcome increase in detail" is another audiophile's "edgy and fatiguing.”)
DISCLAIMER
In every professional industry of which I am aware a failure to disclose a payment from a party to an ostensibly impartial reviewer who is reviewing for publication a product in which the payor has a financial interest is a clear and direct conflict of interest, and constitutes a breach of commonly accepted business ethics and professional responsibility. If I ever have some financial interest of any kind in any component I review I will scrupulously disclose and describe in detail such interest. I presently have no financial interest in any product or in any company involved in any aspect of high-end audio.
Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions about any of the foregoing.
To better understand my reviews and the context in which I make my comments I want to explain my high-end audio philosophy, my listening biases and my music preferences. By so doing I hope that my reviews and my descriptions of what I hear will be more valuable to you. By enabling you to understand my preferences, and by helping you to calibrate what I like versus what you like, I hope to enable you to triangulate meaningfully on, and better comprehend, what I describe in my reviews.
PHILOSOPHY
I believe there are four primary, but not mutually exclusive, alternative objectives of high-end audio:
1) recreate the sound of an original musical event,
2) reproduce exactly what is on the master tape,
3) create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile, and
4) create a sound that seems live.
2) reproduce exactly what is on the master tape,
3) create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile, and
4) create a sound that seems live.
I subscribe to the first and fourth objectives. I want my audio system to recreate as realistically and as believably as possible the sound of an original musical event. Several conclusions immediately follow from this particular philosophy.
1) I do not care how a piece of equipment measures.
2) I do not care about the theory behind the design of a component (Actually, I do care, but only because I find theory and component design very interesting. But, ultimately, I care only about the resulting sound. I avoid most theory and design threads because I am not dogmatic about particular theories or about particular designs, and because I believe that the implementation is far more important than the theory. This is why turntables of many different designs can all sound good).
3) I am open-minded about tweaks. I have a teenage background in amateur radio (the Federal Communications Commission issued license for which required me to pass a test in elementary electronics, grounding, antenna theory and Morse code) and I used to build Heathkits, so I am comfortable with basic electronics jargon and a soldering iron and a voltmeter. This slightly technical (and now, admittedly, stale) background makes me skeptical of a lot of tweaks, but I remain firmly in the subjectivist camp and I am open-minded about tweaks. If my ears tell me that my stereo system is better able to recreate the sound of an original musical event because I have plugged into an outlet in my listening room a thin twig of special woo-woo wood found only in a remote jungle in the Amazon and which has been carefully soaked in sound-good oil and then blessed by a decorated tribal chief with golden ears then I am all for it!
MUSICAL INTERESTS?
My main musical interest is female vocals with minimal acoustic instrument accompaniment. Examples include Sarah McLachlan singing while playing the piano on Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Jennifer Warnes on Famous Blue Raincoat and Amanda McBroom on Growing Up in Hollywood Town. I also like male vocal recordings such as Bill Henderson’s rendition of “Send in the Clowns” and Jeff Buckley’s Grace.
I like a little bit of jazz such as Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, “For Duke” and Bill Evan’s “Waltz for Debby.” I like a little bit of classical including Mozart Jupiter Symphony 41 and Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. I am a big fan of direct-to-disc recordings by Sheffield Lab and M&K RealTime.
I enjoy a lot of perfectly ordinary rock and pop songs (e.g., Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, New Order, Phil Collins, Elton John, Jim Croce, Billy Joel, the Cranberries) and a lot of 1980s songs from “one-hit wonders.” My father worked in the record business for his entire career, and he took me to a lot of concerts when I was growing up. (He worked at Arista after Clive Davis left Columbia Records. Shortly after Arista released Whitney Houston’s first album he took my mother and me to hear Whitney Houston perform the debut album at The Bottom Line, a small club in the West Village of Manhattan. I wish I had a better aural recollection of Whitney Houston singing her entire album to only forty or fifty people!)
Since I love vocals it is no surprise that I like the midrange of MartinLogan electrostatic panels. If my primary interest were classical I definitely would not have gravitated to ESLs.
SOUND PREFERENCES
I listen for the believability of a solo vocalist with acoustic instrument accompaniment being present in my listening room and singing to me. I value most highly transparency, no artificial brightness, true-to-life corporeal and instrumental "body," true-to-life dynamics and true-to-life harmonic richness. I listen for a "natural" sound.
By transparency I mean that with respect to having the sense that a live person is singing to me in my listening room there is nothing "between" me and the singer. I conceive of the recreation of a vocal performance which makes as easy as possible the suspension of disbelief. I want to feel that I hear no electronic adulteration, no artificial or unbelievable "carrier" riding on the signal. Transparency to me means listening to a vocal performance with no electronic neutral density filter of any kind between me and the singer.
COMPONENT PREFERENCES
I listen only to analog. I literally will not have a digital disc player connected to my new stereo. I do not like computers so I am not getting involved in streaming or in storage on a hard drive.
Once I know I am listening to digital I just cannot seem to relax and enjoy it and make an emotional connection to the music. (Yes, if you tell me I am listening to an LP and it is actually a well-recorded DSD I definitely will be fooled. There is no doubt about that. But if you play for me that same recording on vinyl I am sure I will prefer the vinyl (unless the record is scratched and noisy).)
For many years I had a VPI TNT Mk. IV with a Graham 2.2 tonearm and a Benz Micro Ruby II cartridge. I recently ordered a new Basis Audio turntable and a Superarm 9.
The new cartridge remains an open question. My main contenders are the Air Tight PC-1 Supreme, the new Air Tight Magnum Opus, the My Sonic Lab Ultra Eminent EX, the Koetsu Coralstone and the Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum. I like the Ortofon Anna but its .25 mv output is just too much to ask from the all-gain, all-tube Aesthetix Io.
I have recently made the decision to take the leap into reel-to-reel tape. I have purchased thus far just one tape from The Tape Project.
I tend to be fascinated by the various non-traditional (i.e., other than cones in boxes) technologies: electrostatic, ribbon, magnetic planar, MBL, horn, etc. Planar speakers in general (my first speaker was the Magnepan MG-IIIA) and electrostatic speakers in particular (such as the MartinLogans) have always interested me because I like what I consider to be their see-through transparency which makes it sound as though a solo vocalist is singing to me in my living room. I also like the oomph and impact (i.e, cone excursion impact) of dynamic driver speakers and subwoofers.
To my ears, horns, at their best, can reproduce jazz and classical music with greater instrumental body and weight, greater “jump factor,” and greater overall realism than any other speaker technology I have heard. There seems to be something about the way horns move air which allows a greater suspension of disbelief on instruments like saxophone, tuba, trumpet, etc. Those instruments sound more real and more “in-the-room being played by a live musician” than I have heard from any other type of speaker.
But I also have come to the conclusion that for some reason -- which I understand has to do with horn coloration or horn “cuppiness” -- I do not hear horns reproducing vocals with the singer-in-the-room transparency to which I am accustomed from electrostatic panels, from ribbon-based speakers and from the best dynamic driver systems.
No loudspeaker is perfect. Different speakers excel at reproducing realistically different things. Some speaker designs excel at reproducing realistically certain instruments but not voices, and other speaker designs excel at reproducing voices and other instruments.
While my desire for electrostatic midrange transparency and the openness of dipoles has caused me not to be terribly interested in full-range dynamic driver loudspeakers, I nonetheless like the cone excursion impact of dynamic drivers for low frequencies. This is why I have been drawn for the last 28 years to MartinLogan hybrids. I purchased MartinLogan Monolith II speakers in 1989. I upgraded to the Monolith IIIs in 1991. In 2001 I purchased Prodigys, which I still use today.
I have some seemingly unusual sensitivity to auditory brightness. Screeching brakes on buses and trucks give me literally an instant headache. I find unappealing any audio system, and any component thereof, which sounds edgy or artificially bright. I had a brief affair the weekend of T.H.E. Show 2015 with the amazingly realistic and dynamic MBL 101E Mk. II. But after listening to the MBL speaker for five hours that weekend, and for several hours at a friend’s house with tube electronics and vinyl, and after much research and discussion, I could not avoid the conclusion that the MBL tweeter simply is too hot for me.
I have always preferred tube electronics because I find that there is a wonderful synergy with tubes on electrostatic panels. I have never heard solid-state amplifiers drive electrostatic panels and sound rich and natural and liquid the way tubes sound to me. I hear the greater dynamics and leading-edge transients and detail of solid-state amplification, but it always sounds a bit dry to me, especially on electrostatic panels. In addition I believe that MartinLogans like a lot of power (and I believe that Magnepans need a lot of power). So high power tube amplifiers have always been the correct answer for me. I have used the VTL MB-750s for about 18 years.
I heard the Aesthetix Io all-tube, dedicated phono preamplifier at one of Jim White’s first dealers, and I was hooked immediately. I hear from the Io richness and bloom and detail and decay and liquidness that I appreciated from day one and from which I have never tired. Jim White is upgrading my Io to Eclipse status with two outboard power supplies.
I resent expensive cables. I know that different cables sound different. But I think the whole expensive cable thing is a morass. I believe that a network which contains a resistor, an inductor and a capacitor (a basic R-L-C circuit, which is also known as a tuned circuit) is a simple tone control. However, pursuant to my view that I go only by the sound, I have used for many years Transparent XL-V speaker cables and Opus MM5 interconnects.
AUDIOPHILE DISCUSSIONS
As stated above there are four primary alternative objectives of high-end audio.
I believe that many debates and conflicting opinions about format preferences and equipment preferences and sound preferences arise from audiophiles holding different views on the objective of high-end audio, and from starting the debate with those different objectives not firmly and explicitly in mind.
I also believe that much other consternation arises simply from the well-known incomparability of interpersonal utility (e.g., there is no objective, principled way to prove that you like chocolate ice cream more than I like vanilla ice cream).
Finally, each of us is going to apply a different monetary value to a given improvement in sound. (And this assumes we can even agree there was an improvement in sound. One audiophile's "welcome increase in detail" is another audiophile's "edgy and fatiguing.”)
DISCLAIMER
In every professional industry of which I am aware a failure to disclose a payment from a party to an ostensibly impartial reviewer who is reviewing for publication a product in which the payor has a financial interest is a clear and direct conflict of interest, and constitutes a breach of commonly accepted business ethics and professional responsibility. If I ever have some financial interest of any kind in any component I review I will scrupulously disclose and describe in detail such interest. I presently have no financial interest in any product or in any company involved in any aspect of high-end audio.
Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions about any of the foregoing.
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Love to get a copy on digital but it is one of the few I have run into that simply is not available that way.
