I have been meaning to get to this for a week now, but something always seems to come up. I spend a wonderful afternoon last weekend visiting Andy. Al M. joined me as well. Andy had visited me a short while ago to hear my new corner horns, so I thought it would be fun to hear his system. At my house, Andy did mention that he was a horn guy, having switched to large panels when he was involved with audio buddies in the Philadelphia area. I had never heard large panels before. His Soundlabs are certainly large, located in a dedicated and treated room in the basement. One can read about the rest of the system earlier in this thread, so I thought it would be fun to share here my impressions of the sound.
Andy has an excellent record collection. I think he prefers jazz, but he also has some good classical, mostly more recent and 20th C. compositions. He first played for me and Al some jazz on Pablo. My immediate comment to him was about how coherent the sound was. The sound was also big, open, and dynamic, the kind of sound that serves jazz particularly well. There was good layering and spatial information. The imaging was at the plane of the speaker and further back towards the front of the room, but the music did expand nicely to fill the room.
The first impression upon entering the room one has is “Boy, those speakers are huge.” Andy said that the single driver surface area is measured in feet. He thinks it is something like twenty five square feet in total. This produces a real visceral impact. The listening seat is in the near field, and the speakers are quite toed in. This is to lesson the impact of the room. The result was a very immediate, up front presentation of the direct sound, at least for most of the music we heard.
Prior to my visiting David Karmeli in Utah, I had not heard such a wide, open, and dynamic sound. I am getting used to something similar from my new system, however the overall presentation is quite different. My sound has a slightly more distant listening perspective. Andy’s is from the first few rows, and at times, perhaps even up on stage. This does change though depending on the recording, but the difference in the presentation of our respective systems, in that sense, was quite stark. They both share the wide open, fast, dynamic sound.
The system was quite resolving, demonstrated well on complex, large scale music. Ron Resnick seems to favor large panel speakers, especially for his preferred girl with guitar type of music. We played a bit of that, but the images were sometimes a bit larger than life, as one might expect from such speakers, though I can not be sure. Sonny Boy Williamson was such an example, large and immediate with beautiful tone and resolution.
The system scaled very well, with excellent contrast on the complex music, such as the many choral voices singing in mass then switching to the soloists. Mozart’s Coronation Mass was particularly well served here. This recording does not reach the frequency extremes, but it presented an incredible gestalt. Al and I know this recording well on both vinyl and CD. We both simply sat there glued in our chairs and lost in the music. Two other recordings that I was particularly moved by were “Creamy” featuring Johnny Hodges, and Sonny Boy Williamson, “Portraits in Blues. I enjoyed these so much that I photographed the covers and ordered the LPs. The former arrived this morning.
After the initial exposure and beginning to understanding the sound of the system, it became easy to simply relax and listen to a bunch of LPs. And so it went for a few hours. Andy later treated us to a nice cup of afternoon tea and a delicious pear tart - real English hospitality. We met Andy’s wife and son. She is a concert pianist and represents Steinway. They have a wonderful Steinway in their living room and Andy did forward some YouTube videos of her incredible playing. It is safe to say that this is a house full of music. Andy gets regular exposure to the real thing. Perhaps that is why he has pursued this direction of music reproduction.
Andy’s large panel, monster tube amps, tube preamps and DD turntable with his Decca London Reference cartridge, is all about presenting music in a simply beautiful and convincing way. It is about the gestalt, the whole, not so much the particulars. Prior to my recent exposure to large horns, I had not really heard a stereo system as open, immediate, coherent, and big. What a treat. Saying Hi from Andy’s music house.
Andy has an excellent record collection. I think he prefers jazz, but he also has some good classical, mostly more recent and 20th C. compositions. He first played for me and Al some jazz on Pablo. My immediate comment to him was about how coherent the sound was. The sound was also big, open, and dynamic, the kind of sound that serves jazz particularly well. There was good layering and spatial information. The imaging was at the plane of the speaker and further back towards the front of the room, but the music did expand nicely to fill the room.
The first impression upon entering the room one has is “Boy, those speakers are huge.” Andy said that the single driver surface area is measured in feet. He thinks it is something like twenty five square feet in total. This produces a real visceral impact. The listening seat is in the near field, and the speakers are quite toed in. This is to lesson the impact of the room. The result was a very immediate, up front presentation of the direct sound, at least for most of the music we heard.
Prior to my visiting David Karmeli in Utah, I had not heard such a wide, open, and dynamic sound. I am getting used to something similar from my new system, however the overall presentation is quite different. My sound has a slightly more distant listening perspective. Andy’s is from the first few rows, and at times, perhaps even up on stage. This does change though depending on the recording, but the difference in the presentation of our respective systems, in that sense, was quite stark. They both share the wide open, fast, dynamic sound.
The system was quite resolving, demonstrated well on complex, large scale music. Ron Resnick seems to favor large panel speakers, especially for his preferred girl with guitar type of music. We played a bit of that, but the images were sometimes a bit larger than life, as one might expect from such speakers, though I can not be sure. Sonny Boy Williamson was such an example, large and immediate with beautiful tone and resolution.
The system scaled very well, with excellent contrast on the complex music, such as the many choral voices singing in mass then switching to the soloists. Mozart’s Coronation Mass was particularly well served here. This recording does not reach the frequency extremes, but it presented an incredible gestalt. Al and I know this recording well on both vinyl and CD. We both simply sat there glued in our chairs and lost in the music. Two other recordings that I was particularly moved by were “Creamy” featuring Johnny Hodges, and Sonny Boy Williamson, “Portraits in Blues. I enjoyed these so much that I photographed the covers and ordered the LPs. The former arrived this morning.
After the initial exposure and beginning to understanding the sound of the system, it became easy to simply relax and listen to a bunch of LPs. And so it went for a few hours. Andy later treated us to a nice cup of afternoon tea and a delicious pear tart - real English hospitality. We met Andy’s wife and son. She is a concert pianist and represents Steinway. They have a wonderful Steinway in their living room and Andy did forward some YouTube videos of her incredible playing. It is safe to say that this is a house full of music. Andy gets regular exposure to the real thing. Perhaps that is why he has pursued this direction of music reproduction.
Andy’s large panel, monster tube amps, tube preamps and DD turntable with his Decca London Reference cartridge, is all about presenting music in a simply beautiful and convincing way. It is about the gestalt, the whole, not so much the particulars. Prior to my recent exposure to large horns, I had not really heard a stereo system as open, immediate, coherent, and big. What a treat. Saying Hi from Andy’s music house.
