My Horizon 360 is now well on its way to full break-in so it was time to share the listening experience. A good friend is a musician who has played with Philadelphia Orchestra spent the evening last night and his comments were fascinating. It's always interesting when you play the system for musician rather than an audiophile. His main observation succinctly put, is is that he has never heard a music reproduction system capture the timbre of real instruments as what he heard last evening. For him, it's all about instrument timbre and it was the authentic timbre of the instrument that was transformative and made the players seem to appear before him with a realism he had not previously heard (he has heard my system several times previously). My friend is a trumpet player and he commented repeatedly on the heightened clarity of the orchestral instruments he heard.
What blew my mind is that on recording after recording, he identified trumpet player after trumpet player (not just the principals but the 2nd and 3rd seats as well) of the great orchestras of the world because he recognized the sound of their individual playing. He said the level of transparency he heard was something he had not previously experienced and that allowed him to identify exactly who was playing. What impressed him was that Horizon's newfound improved transparency is coupled to a very organic sound and on this point, I could not agree more.
I can now appreciate the comments of others who thought the Horizon, as good as it is, did not have the same organic sound signature as some of the DHT DACs in the Lampi line-up such as the GG3 or Pacific. But the organic sound of the Horizon 360 removes this concern, at least for me, and it very much adds to the sonic merits of the unit. The combination of transparency and lower distortion with enhanced organicity allowed him to make other observations that surprised me. For example, we played a Prokofiev piece (Decca) and without knowing who was playing he commented that he could hear the vibrato of the oboe so clearly that he knew if must be a European orchestra -it was indeed the London Symphony!. (Apparently, American orchestra oboe players are not trained to play with vibrato as much or at all- who knew?) This was one of several observations he made that were the result of the system improvements he heard with the Horizon 360.
Just like audiophiles who often pride themselves in hearing sonic details that others care little about, musicians also have their nits to pick. My friend made repeated comments about the mouthpieces certain players used that he said he could distinguish for the first time due to the increased timbral resolution of the system, but these comments were well above my pay grade as I could neither appreciate their distinctions, nor care enough to learn more! My favorite comment however, came after we played the 4th movement of Reiner's Scheherezade to which he said "I always knew the CSO was great, but I didn't appreciate how great they were until I heard this piece tonight on your system". If an orchestral musician can say that as the result of a specific piece of gear added to one's system, that sort of puts what the Horizon 360 offers musically into the proper perspective.
