Soundlab Audiophile G9-7c: a 30-year odyssey fulfilled

[godofwealth]

We are listening to Mike Jackson tonight on my Quad 2905s played back on the magnificent Chord Blu Mk2/Dave digital stack that blows away any digital streamer I’ve heard. There’s an inherent rightness of sound, a sense of solidity, that’s really hard to reproduce with streaming.

The album I’m listening to now is a CD I picked up several decades ago on a trip to Barcelona, Spain. It’s an extended length version of the famous collaboration between Mike and John Coltrane, their only joint gig. It’s a classic never to be equaled musical tour-de-force. And it sound to my ears far far better than the streaming versions on Qobuz.

The opening track when Coltrane comes in on the left channel guns blazing with his sax is the stuff of jazz legend. This whole album is a conversation between two jazz greats who don’t speak English, but “jazzese”. That’s so much nicer a musical language than guttural English. The recording is excellent for a classic jazz album and these two giants keep the rhythm pounding. It’s like watching a thriller movie except no one gets killed and there are no villains.

So, why does the Chord Blu2/Dave sound so good? First, it’s got one of the best CD transports, the Phillips CD Pro that Audio Research used in all their CD players. Then it’s got Rob Watts brilliant multi-million tap filter that upscales CDs to 705khz. Then it’s got the Dave DAC that’s still among the best DACs money can buy. This digital front end still runs circles around every streamer I’ve heard.

Musically, this jazz album is among the very greatest ever made. When Coltrane comes in late on every track after Milt has said his piece, he steals the show. I feel sorry for Milt How can you compete with Coltrane and his dynamo of a sax? The only jazz album I want in my grave.

 

[godofwealth]

We are listening to the magnificent choral music of Robert Schumann, one of the great composers in the Romantic tradition of classical music in the 19th century. Schumann’s wife, Clara, was a brilliant pianist and in later years a close confidant of Johannes Brahms. Robert Schumann lived a relatively short life. He composed many brilliant works including his symphonies, a piano concerto, great chamber music pieces and choral music. He was plagued by mental illness and died in a sanatorium.

This Brilliant Classics release is a 3-CD compilation of his secular choral works performed beautifully by the Studio Vocale Karlsruhe. I’m once again reminded how good CDs sound on a top-quality transport — in this case the Chord Blu Mk2 with Rob Watts’ M-Scaler feeding into the Dave DAC. This combo has been around for a decade or more and still in production. I’m not surprised. It still runs rings around most of the competition. The design is classic British devoid of the American and some European penchant for excess. No hundred pound slab of metal here. Each component weighs around 12-15 pounds in impressively solid aluminum chassis. The power supply is a very fast switching power supply. Chord does not believe in old fashioned linear power supplies. The music shines through with impressive clarity.

 

[godofwealth]

The Helsinki University Chorus is an all-male choir that has been in existence for 142 years, being founded in 1883. We are listening to their magnificent performance of Sibelius’ choral music that was composed for this very choir. I have two versions of this recording. An earlier one is even more exciting and rawer in intensity than this later more polished version. The choral music is sublime. It’s hugely addictive. I’ve heard it thousands of times over the past decades and never tire of hearing it. It’s quite different from his symphonic music. The melodies are more uplifting and have a deep sense of relaxation like Gregorian chant. The recording is superb. The dynamics are quite remarkable. You can get a sense of the recording venue. The voices are striking in their power. A desert island disc.

 

[godofwealth]

Johan Severin Svendsen was possibly the greatest symphonist in Scandinavia before the arrival of Sibelius. When Greg first heard Svendsen’s assuredly confident Symphony No 1, composed when Svendsen was in his early thirties, he realized his own symphony was just not in the sane league and never wrote another symphony. Writing a symphony requires extraordinary skill. Besides mastering the hundreds of instruments that make up an orchestra, a composer has to find a sense of originality. Sheer melody is not enough. Nor is the ability to conjure up a lot of clanging and banging noises with the brass and percussion like teenage kids doing side shows racing cars and burning rubber tires on pavements. It requires consummate skill in balancing the instruments and maintaining a sense of rhythm and drama. Svendsen had this talent in spades. Greg didn’t. He wisely learned his place in music and didn’t attempt to do what he couldn’t.

The two symphonies of Svendsen are played brilliantly by the Oslo Philharmonic under the baton of maestro Mariss Jansons. The EMI CD was recorded in 1988 by recording engineer Mike Clements who’s made many fine recordings for EMI. The strings are rich and full in their resonance. The brass is powerful and not shrill. The natural ambience of the Konzerthus in Oslo, a city I have visited, is clearly audible and gives this recording a sense of grandeur. Played back on the Chord electronics, this CD has a musical rightness that seems to elude streaming still.

 

[godofwealth]

Traveling this week to Philadelphia for an AI meeting, I had the opportunity to take in two wonderful concerts at the Marian Anderson Hall. Helene’ Grimaud played the magnificent Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with other pieces including a symphony by Farrenc and a new piece commissioned jointly by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra hall is quite majestic with the 24-piece organ taking center stage.

Hélène Grimaud Plays Brahms

Pianist Hélène Grimaud brings “astonishing proficiency and poetic sensibilities” (The Washington Post) to Brahms’s First Piano Concerto; 19th-century composer Louise Farrenc’s surging, Romantic First Symphony beguiles with mystery and melody; and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Julia Wolfe’s...

www.ensembleartsphilly.org

Hearing live music in a great concert hall is always a revelation. It’s so different sounding from recorded music. Of course, even though I was sitting about 20 rows from the main stage, peak dynamics at my location exceeded 100 dB on a few occasions. But because the sound is so pure, it doesn’t sound loud and boomy like it would in the confines of a small listening room. Most importantly, bass in a concert hall sounds completely unlike the boom-boom resonance of box loudspeakers.

Take the huge grand Steinway piano that Ms. Grimaud played so well. It was capable of massive dynamics, yet its sound was not resonant. It was crystalline. It was unlike the sound of recordings of pianos, which are just so far removed from what pianos actually sound like. . The orchestra featured several dozen string instruments, from violins to violas to cellos and double basses. These sound so pristine to make recordings sound like a joke. The first violins had a sheen to their sound one never hears on any recording. One could almost tell apart each of the dozen or so first violins. They were not just a blob of violins as it so often sounds on digital streaming.

Next week I have a bigger treat in store. The Philadelphia orchestra conductor Yannick Neze’t-Se’guin is coming to my neck-of-the-woods to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in three concerts at U. C. Berkeley, featuring great masterpieces from Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, Mahler Symphony No 1 and Dvora’k’s New World Symphony. I plan to attend all three concerts. Will give my further impressions next weekend. Till then I’ll have to console myself listening to the pale substitute of reproduced music.

 

[godofwealth]

We are listening to the music of Louise Ferrenc, a brilliant woman composer who lived from 1804-1875 in Paris. She taught for many decades at the Paris Conservatory at a time when women rarely had any hope of becoming professors. She had great teachers thanks to her enlightened parents who recognizing her genius sent her off at the age of fifteen to be educated by the cream of French composers like Anton Reicha and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. I discovered her music through a live concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra that played her Symphony No 1 last week. What a discovery!



We are listening to her chamber music on this generously filled 70-minute album. It’s really beautiful music shamefully neglected. Hopefully her 50-odd compositions are now almost all recorded. Her early piano music was much admired by legends such as Robert Schumann.

 

[godofwealth]

We are now listening to Louise Ferrenc’s sublime piano quintets, which are of a musical caliber to be compared with those of Dvorak and Schumann. The Quintetto Bottesini play the quintets with much beauty and grace. The warmth of the 44.1khz Redbook recording makes it as good or better than many high res recordings. The strings are captured very well giving a rich tonality to these mid-19th century chamber pieces. Ms. Ferrenc was an amazingly talented composer who was educated by the best that French music had to offer and taught at the prestigious Paris Conservatory. Her pedigree is undeniable. Like Gabriel Faure’, her music is cerebral but melodic, witty but no showy or ostentatious.

 

[godofwealth]

Louise Farrenc was a rara avis {‘rare bird” in Latin). Immensely gifted, she escaped the fate of many women in the 19th century by being born in the right place (Paris) to the right family of sculptors and artists in the Sorbonne region dating back to the 17th century, and had brilliant teachers. She achieved the impossible: she was a professor at the Paris Conservatory for 30 years from 1840s to her death in 1870s. She was in the prime of her career and as a mother wisely decided to focus on composition and teaching rather than a career as a soloist. We are listening to her beautiful Symphony No 2 and 3, recorded in high res 24-bit 96khz on Naxos. Her symphonies remind me of Schubert’s early symphonies. Romantic symphonies, without the transcendental greatness of Beethoven, but superior to many more well-known male composers of the same period. Her music has been woefully neglected. I discovered her music through chance: the Philadelphia Orchestra played her Symphony No.1 as an appetizer for the main course of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 last week.

The Symphony No. 2 that I’m listening to is a confident melodic piece that shows skill and a musical talent that’s remarkable. The Solistes Europe’ens Luxembourg deserves to be commended for bringing her music to our attention. What are the more well-known orchestras doing, one might ask? No, we don’t need yet another recording of Beethoven or Brahms! Give us more Farrenc. Or similar neglected composers. Highly recommended.

 

[ChrisSoundLab]

While godofwealth is taking what I hope is a comfortable rest after expounding about AI, allow me to announce some news for Sound Lab (as the 30 year odyssey continues)... there are new menus with information in the new website for Sound Lab (soundlabelectrostats.com) and more coming soon. Especially happy to show photos of listening rooms of all dealers where you can listen by appointment now in several areas across USA, in Paris, and coming soon in Australia.

Dealers – Sound Lab Electrostats

soundlabelectrostats.com

As you probably can imagine all dealers are long-time SL lovers supporting in most cases more than 30 years bridging the 'early years' to the now much improved current construction and performance. All welcome those who want to come listen and experience (and don't worry about 'the sell' - none of us are pushing and none of us survive by selling Sound Lab ... we just want to share to people who care to come listen and find out for themselves)
We are also showing at SWAF and introducing a new backplate which does not require AC power and prototype showing here on youtube:

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All the best. Photo of Roger with G7-7Cs (majestic in maple with Fir gille) in progress for SWAF.