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

[godofwealth]

Sometimes mono recordings sound way better than stereo recordings to my ears. On vinyl there’s just no contest. Vinyl mono blows away the equivalent stereo recording. Not surprising because a true mono cartridge only tracks lateral modulations. But even on high resolution streaming mono can surprise you. Here’s a case in point. A lovely Ben Webster album on Verve recorded in mono in 1957 with the Oscar Peterson Trio. Remastered in 24-bit 192khz on Qobuz. And it sounds fabulous. You have to learn how to listen in mono. There’s no left right separation. That’s all bogus anyway. Some engineer decided to put the piano on the left and the sax on the right. Big deal. It’s not a law of physics. It’s random. In listening to mono, you get over these childish audiophile notions. Listen instead to the richness of Ben Webster’s sax. His rhythm and tempo. Most important his soul. The album is called Soulville. Most appropriate. As the Duke (Ellington) once famously said “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”. This recording has plenty of swing and soul. I’d trade that for fake stereo any day of the week. On the big SL driven by the fire breathing dragons, the mighty ARC 750SEs, this recording blooms and blossoms. Listen and you’ll understand why mono remains supreme.

 

[microstrip]

(...) You have to learn how to listen in mono.

Well, I often write that we have to learn how to listen in stereo. Stereo, in the physical and instrumental sense we have in our systems, does not exist in nature. No one can say that mono, compared to something that is not natural at all, is not more natural than stereo!

But sound reproduction is mostly about enjoyment - and it seems most people enjoy stereo better than mono - the same way they prefer stereo to multichannel.

“Sound reproduction required a certain level of faith in the apparatus and a certain familiarity with what was to be reproduced” (quote from The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction Paperback by Jonathan Sterne . No, this is not an audiophile or technophile book ...)
There is much speculation on why, but, in general, audiophile faith is with stereo.

(...) Listen and you’ll understand why mono remains supreme.

View attachment 143663

Yes, mono can sound particularly good in the big Soundlabs - their large full range surface drives the room in unison.

 

[godofwealth]

The fundamental problem with stereo reproduction is that it requires you to sit with your butt frozen in one place. It's a weird artifact of the way stereo reproduction works. Peter Walker, the ``Quadfather" once said that if the technology allowed knowing where your ears were at any point, that would open up a new way to do stereo sound. Of course, in live music, this problem does not occur. You can sit anywhere because what you are hearing is natural sound of music, not artificially synthesized as stereo to fool your brain.

Mono has no such issues. You hear what you hear regardless of where you sit, of course the directivity of loudspeakers will affect the sound. With the. large Soundlabs, that's less of an issue. Having been to thousands of live concerts over 40 years, I find that these silly audiophile notions disappear in listening to live music. You enjoy the concert and forget if it is mono or stereo or what the sound staging is, blah blah. You hear the music. Ultimately, that's what it is all about.

 

[Mrmb]

Wes Montgomery is my favorite jazz guitarist. His Tsubo recorded live in a jazz cafe at Berkeley, about an hour from my house, is one of my favorite albums. Here he’s featured with a trio. It’s not as dynamic and bouncy, but it’s got plenty of Wes’s brilliance at teasing out meaning and depth from his guitar. It’s been remastered at 24bit 192khz, so it’s a high resolution analog recording. A particularly interesting novelty is the organ, which is atypical in jazz. This was recorded originally in 1959 when he was 36 and revolutionizing the guitar in jazz. One would have thought the guitar is not ideal for jazz. It’s not got the fluidity of notes that a saxophone has. But Wes shows in the hands of the right artist, a guitar is every bit as expressive. Cool to hear an organ in a jazz trio.

Attributable to your comments re this recording, I just listened to my DSD version on my EMM Labs DV2 DAC>Atma-Sphere MA1 amps>SoundLab Majestic 845PX's. I hadn't listened to it for a while. It is as you described and for a '59 recording, it's quite revealing and well done. Thanks for the referral!

 

[godofwealth]

Who says age is a barrier to making great music? Omara Portundo is a brilliant Cuban singer who shot to fame at the young age of 78 with the success of Buena Vista Social Club, Ry Cooder’s breakthrough Grammy winning album featuring long forgotten Cuban legends like Omara. Here she’s singing a set of beautiful ballads with talented colleagues. Her singing is sublime bringing a rare combination of melody, depth and style that brings to mind Ray Charles or Bob Dylan in their later years. The bouncy Cuban accompaniment is sure to have you dancing around your listening room. On the massive SL panels driven by the dragons ARC 750SE’s, the recording sounds very nice if lacking a bit on the sheer slam of her earlier albums. Wish I could be as gifted as her at 78! Something to aspire to for every WBF member getting on in their vintage like yours truly. Like great wine, we should all get better with age. Omara shows how.

 

[godofwealth]

This is her album recorded when she was a young 70. It’s brilliant. Perfection in terms of the recording and her singing. It might be the best Cuban ballad album ever made. How she could sing like this at 70 beats me. Wow! A demonstration album for any high end system. If this recording sounds bad, you’ve got problems with your setup. It sounds magnificent on the big SL with the giant ARC 750SE’s. The dynamics are staggering. Be careful of that volume control. The bass is low and deep. The melodies are so catchy that you can’t sit and listen to this magnificent recording. A desert island disc.

 

[godofwealth]

There’s many ways to test how good a loudspeaker sounds. One way that might appear to audiophiles a bit strange is what I call the walk around test. Play some music on your favorite loudspeaker and don’t sit glued in your chair. Instead walk around the room and to an adjacent connecting room. Listen to the music playing. Does it sound like musicians are actually playing on the other room? The Soundlab G9-7c cones the closest to sounding like live music in your room than any speaker I’ve heard in 40 years. It’s largely due to their huge radiating surface, the lack of box enclosures, the lack of crossovers and multiple drivers etc. It’s an interesting thought that came to me as I’m listening to this lovely remastered jazz album by Dexter Gordon. It being with a bouncy track called Soy Califa. You can hear it from one room away. It sounds like Dexter Gordon is playing this track on your listening room. It sounds live. Quite remarkable, the sonic illusion created by 6000+ square inches of radiating surface. It projects a believable sonic illusion better than most other speakers I’ve heard.

 

[godofwealth]

Another Dexter Gordon album recorded by Rudy Van Gelder that sounds “live” on the SL’s in an uncanny way. You’re in the Living Presence of the musicians, to borrow the famous phrase used by a New York Times critic to describe an early Mercury recording that led the label to call itself Mercury Living Presence. Well, you can Mercury Living Presence-ify any album on your playlist by listening to it on the G9-7c. You’re with the musicians as they make music in Rudy van Gelder’s parents’ house in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1962 when this album was recorded. RVG, as he was known, prefer to record the musicians in a tight group in between the loudspeakers, not the usual left-right nothing-in-between mode so many jazz recordings tended to do. The sound of Dexter’s sax is uncanny in its realism. Do your walk around text on this recording.

 

[godofwealth]

We continue our tour through Dexter Gordon’s music with another lovely RVG recording of the album Our Man in Paris. Beautiful tonality of Dexter’s sax. Listen to his rendition of the famous Frank Sinatra song Williw Weep for Me from Sinatra’s legendary album Only the Lonely. The wistfulness of this song is captured beautifully. You can almost hear the lyrics if you know this song well Sinatra poured his heart into this album after his breakup with Eva Gardner. Dexter catches the melancholy in this bluesy ballad.

 

[godofwealth]

Saint-Saens was a French composer and a musical prodigy. He gave his first concert as a pianist at 10! He was an organist at a lovely church in Paris from 1853-57, the Saint Merri church in Paris, the city where he was born. It was a substantial parish with 26,000 parishioners with more than 200 weddings a year. It gave the composer a healthy income. Saint-Saens talents were recognized by composers like Rossini, Berlioz and Liszt. He got promoted to become the organist at La Madeleine, the premier church of the French empire, dedicated by Louis XV in 1764. Liszt heard him playing the organ there and declared him the greatest organist in the world. Saint-Saens most famous work is his organ symphony, but here we hear him in his delightful chamber pieces. His music is the utter embodiment of French culture: civilized, intellectual and not showy. WBF readers may be stunned to know that the most popular TV program in France is devoted to book reviews. Can you imagine that in the US, where wrestling and sordid reality TV is usually what makes TV ratings. The French are nothing if not intellectuals. And it shows in the absolutely beautiful and cerebral music of Saint-Saens. This 44.1khz Redbook recording sounds splendid on the Soundlab G9-7c driven by the mighty ARC 750SE fire-breathing dragons. The strings are liquid and the piano is balanced correctly. The Lampizator Pacific breathes life into this recording, as does the ARC 6SE tube preamp.

 

[godofwealth]

The wind ensemble has attracted the attention of countless composers. Mozart wrote a ridiculous amount of gorgeous music for wind ensembles. So did our composer of interest in this piece, Krommer. So, what’s so attractive about wind ensembles? They usually combine an oboe, a clarinet, a bassoon, a flute etc. but no strings. It’s the lack of strings that gives them an airy light sound and a certain frivolity. It’s light hearted music with a verve and vigor. It’s music for gaiety and dance. That’s why Mozart wrote so many. He was commissioned to write entertainment music and he obliged. It helped to pay the bills. I mean who wants to hear a Requiem Mass at a party in the 18th century? So, wind music was the thing. It’s got groove. As Duke would say, if it ain’t got that swing, it don’t mean a thing. Krommer’s music has plenty of swing. I vividly remember a trip I made decades ago to Bled, Slovenia, to an AI conference where the banquet was held in this gorgeous castle in the middle of a lake. And for entertainment they had a wind ensemble. In real life, they sound breathtakingly beautiful. This recording is Redbook but it sounds gorgeous on the Soundlab G9-7c, with the delightful tonality of the oboe, the clarinet, the bassoon etc. keeping the tune going. It’s a musical conversation between wind instruments. Each one is saying, how’s it going? Very well, thank you, says the flute: To which the bassoon replies and it goes on.

 

[godofwealth]

Now here’s a rarity: a German-born composer who emigrated to England when he was 19, became a brilliant astronomer and wrote music. That’s a hard act to follow. Here’s a snippet of his amazing accomplishments from Wikipedia below. I mean, wow! How many composers wrote music and were elected Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s most prestigious scientific society. Newton and Darwin were Fellows of the Royal Society. So was a PhD student from my former academic lab. But not me, sniff. I won’t make that grade of the ultra-brilliant.

So, let’s talk about Herschel’s music. His symphonies are lovely, light-hearted and jovial. It’s kind of early Mozart, but not in the league of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, let alone a giant like Beethoven. This lively series from Chandos Records features composer who were contemporaries of Mozart, but like the sun obliterates the light from planets near it, a lot of composers of that time were simply eclipsed by Mozart. The recording is beautiful indeed, as Chandos Records has high standards. The strings are a bit brightly lit, but that’s by design. The music is really lovely. When did Sir Willliam Herschel find the time to compose? I’m guessing while he was compiling his star charts in his giant telescope that he constructed in the 18th century, he had spare time waiting for a particular time before doing his observation. I lived near a pair of astronomers for 15 years. They were always jet-setting off to exotic destinations like Chile to observe galaxies billions of light years away. Astronomy is a great field to work in if you want to write music also. I mean, you are confronted with the strangest objects in the universe, like super massive black holes. You have to be in awe of nature that it can construct such monumental monsters that span millions of light years in distance. Beyond human comprehension. So music seems like a good diversion. Einstein like to play Mozart violin sonatas while he was writing his scientific papers that revolutionized our understanding of space and time.

The recording sounds really nice on the SL G9-7c, a touch of Italian Vivaldi mixed in with early Mozart and Johann Christian Bach. I wish I could write music in my spare time!

Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that many objects called nebulae in the Messier cataloguewere actually clusters of stars. On 13 March 1781 while making observations he made note of a new object in the constellation of Gemini. This would, after several weeks of verification and consultation with other astronomers, be confirmed to be a new planet, eventually given the name of Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity, and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George IIIappointed him Court Astronomer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes.

Herschel pioneered the use of astronomical spectrophotometry, using prisms and temperature measuring equipment to measure the wavelength distribution of stellar spectra. In the course of these investigations, Herschel discovered infrared radiation.Other work included an improved determination of the rotation period of Mars, the discovery that the Martian polar caps vary seasonally, the discovery of Titania and Oberon(moons of Uranus) and Enceladus and Mimas (moons of Saturn). Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1816. He was the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820. He died in August 1822, and his work was continued by his only son, John Herschel.

William Herschel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[godofwealth]

Heinz Holliger was a legendary oboist who made many great recordings. Here he is with I Musici, a well known chamber ensemble featuring the oboe concertos of Albinoni. There’s a sense of vividness to this recording that reminds me of vinyl. It has an immediacy, a sprightliness that’s often missing in digital recordings. This is an old analog recording that’s remastered. A true test of a great system is that it lets you listen to whatever you want and enjoy it. The Soundlab G9-7c meets that ultimate test driven of course by the mighty ARC 750SE’s with the ARC 6SE preamp and the Lampizator Pacific. Lots of tube richness galore. Lush sounding but accurate nonetheless. The SL will let you know if a recording is poorly balanced. But they don’t fling a bright treble in your face like so many audiophile speakers do. They have a gentle character to them. It’s immensely enjoyable to hear them night after night on any recording I want — from 1930s jazz in mono to the latest DSD recordings and not get caught up in audiophile uogradeitus — should I change my power chords, my speaker cables, my interconnects, my media server etc. It lets you enjoy the music. Whatever music you care to listen to.

 

[Argonaut]

Now here’s a rarity: a German-born composer who emigrated to England when he was 19, became a brilliant astronomer and wrote music. That’s a hard act to follow.

Lest we forget that Herschel ‘s sibling sister Caroline also became a celebrated astronomer in her own right , following many trials and tribulations in her life.
For some time assisting William with his work and helping in the construction of a number of his telescopes , she eventually began cataloguing her own observation's and On 26 February 1783, Caroline made her first discovery: she had found a nebulathat was not included in the Messier catalogue. That same night, she independently discovered Messier 110 (NGC 205), the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. Etcetera.

Caroline Herschel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[godofwealth]

Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola was indeed a really long name for a Spanish composer who lived a short life of just 20 years, from 1806-1826. Like Mozart he was a child prodigy. He moved to Paris in 1820 and wrote some of his most beautiful music there. We are listening to his divine string quartets. Listening to the opening of his First String Quartet and you’d think you’re listening to Schubert. It’s a moving piece, full of pathos. He studied in the Paris Conservatory with the like of Cherubini who was dumbfounded at Arriaga’s genius. When he heard his Stabat Mater, he exclaimed “You are music itself”. It’s an enormous tragedy he didn’t live longer. He’d have been more true to his reputation as the “Spanish Mozart”. I think that does him a disservice. Arriaga’s music reminds me of Schubert’s melody and pathos. There’s this incredible sense of sadness in his quartets. And a deep sublimity that makes you wonder how a teenager could write such profound music. He had the genes for it. It’s truly a miracle. Mozart didn’t write such beautiful music at 16. I can’t think of a single composer who wrote such beautiful quartets at this age.

The recording by the German label Dabringhaus und Grimm is lovely and the Voces Quartet really bring out the depth in this music. A desert island disc. On the big SL’s, the strings are rich and warm. The illusion of sitting in front of a real string quartet is amazing. You can reach out and touch the musicians.

 

[thedudeabides]

If you don't already, you should teach a class about music history, listening (not to your speakers but in general) and music appreciation. One can learn an abundance of information by reading your summary "snapshots" of various time periods, composers and artists. Unlike most who post on this forum, my principal interest in this hobby is the message and not the messenger. One of the best WBF threads I've ever read. Thank you.

 

[godofwealth]

Glad you're enjoying it, @thedudeabides. I'm having fun listening to this music on my gorgeous. SL's.

 

[godofwealth]

Beethoven was a giant in classical music. 20 years ago, in 2005, I traveled to Bonn for a scientific meeting on AI where I presented an idea that gave me my 15 seconds of Andy Warhol fame. It turned out to be important to the future development of AI and it was extended and refined by researchers at Google Deep Mind and other labs. My reason to go to Bonn was to also pay homage to Beethoven by visiting his birthplace and the house where he was born.

We are listening to his magnificent Piano Concerto No. 3 with legendary pianist Murray Perahia and the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink on an early CBS recording. No one but Beethoven could have written this piece. The opening long movement is majestic, grand and sublime. Every note is chiseled to perfection. The slow movement takes your breath away in its sheer melody. It’s a beautiful recording undoubtedly helped by the acoustics of the Concertgebouw, one of Europe’s finest concert halls.

Beethoven wrote this piece around 1800. He was already going deaf. He had just moved to Vienna, like Mozart, where he lived till his death in 1827. This music is that of a young composer at 30 with his greatest musical compositions yet to come. The ink was barely dry on his First symphony. He had published his first collection of string quartets, Op. 18. And yet, listening to this piece, you are riveted by his command of the music. Beethoven would write two more piano concertos, the last one called Emperor. Beethoven hated monarchs and emperors. His great Eroica Symphony 3 was first dedicated to Napoleon. When Napoleon declared himself an emperor, Beethoven angrily scratched out the dedication. Later Napoleon would fire his cannons on Vienna, a deafening and horrendous fusillade that Beethoven lived through.

Recent DNA scholarship has finally revealed by analyzing a tiny lock of Beethoven’s hair that he had extremely high levels of lead in his body. Those days, lead vessels were commonly used to store wine. Beethoven drank a lot of cheap wine. One wonders if that was related to his deafness and later death. No matter. His musical legacy has lived on for over 200 years and remains a towering accomplishment. Listening to the pounding final movement, we hear both grace and power, of melody and grandeur, of simplicity and complexity, woven together in a way that was his unique talent. No wonder composers like Johannes Brahms who came after him, and like Beethoven, moved from playing in seedy taverns in Hamburg to Vienna, shuddered at the thought of following the great master.

A great recording of a great piece of music. When you’re feeling out of sorts, listen to Beethoven. It always cheers me up. If he could excel with his disability, I tell myself, what am I complaining about?

 

[godofwealth]

We are listening to Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio No 1, an early work as it is Opus 8 in his catalog. It’s a long piece at almost forty minutes. Brahms took his time developing his musical ideas. He didn’t write a lot of music. But what he wrote was sublime. Haydn wrote a ridiculous number of piano trios, around 50. He was employed by the Court of Esterhazy, and what the Emperor wanted, Haydn did. His contract stipulated that he’d come to the Esterhazy palace every morning for work. He was given explicit instructions on dress code, for not only himself but his orchestra. How they should conduct themselves was part of the contract. The Emperor liked playing the baryton, an ancient type of cello. Haydn wrote about 25 CDs with of baryton trios, pleasant background music but hardly great music.

Brahms opens his trio with a sweeping melody on the cello. Haydn never gave the cello any role in his many trios, except as a bass accompaniment. In the Brahms trio, it is the star. We hear the magnificent Borodin trio beautifully recorded by Chandon records. They would make many fine records for Chandos. They were originally from Russia but emigrated to Canada. They bring a certain Slavic temperament to their playing that’s hard to find in European or American piano trios. I’ve heard this piece played live by the famous Beaux Arts Trio in a concert many years ago at Princeton University.

The rich sound of the cello makes a vivid impression on the large SL’s with a healthy dose of tube magic supplied by ARC and Lampi electronics. Brahms and tubes go well together. It’s a big rich decadent sound. Like chocolate cake with some liqueur that I often had during my last trip to Vienna in 2019. The Viennese are aristocratic in their temperament. They tend to look down on their European counterparts, especially the Germans. Visit Vienna and you’ll see why. It’s still an aristocratic city. Berlin or Bonn feel like industrial machine making regions in comparison. The Viennese love their rich desserts. Even with coffee or espresso, it’s hard to not have a dab of cognac. When in Vienna, one does what the Viennese do. You hear this richness in Brahms’ chamber music. A lovely piece of music full of Viennese richness. You can start to feel your weight increasing just by listening to this piece and dreaming of Viennese desserts.

 

[godofwealth]

We now turn to music from the Saxony region in Germany in the late 17th and early 18th century, almost a 100 years before Beethoven and Brahms. This region gave rise to the musical giants like Bach, Telemann and Schultz. Why did this region produce so many great musicians? Why are the great breakthroughs in AI coming from the Bay Area? Well, you have several trillion dollar corporations who pay AI researchers a great salary. Well, 300 years ago, much was the same in Saxony. The Lutheran region in Germany was fond of music and because the estates were divided into many dukedoms, there’s plenty of rich Dukes wanting to hire musicians. Telemann was employed by one such Duke who wanted lots of Tafelmusik (table music). There was no Roon in the 17th or 18th century. You hired composers like Telemann to write music for your weekly soirées.

This is a lovely album of flute and oboe quartets by Telemann and a later composer of the same region, Molter. We are moving from the rich Viennese music of Brahms to a much lighter and purer type of music of Telemann played on original instruments with a bite to their sound. The flute and oboe sound lovely on the big SL’s. The harpsichord plays the continuo. Telemann was great buddies with Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach had an enormous number of kids, like more than a dozen (not with the same woman, he was widowed at least twice). Where did he find the time, one wonders, as he wrote almost a hundred volumes of music. Anyway, Telemann was godfather to Johann Christian Bach, who became a well-known composer like his father and would later influence Haydn and Mozart. In the 17th and 18th century, there was no Facebook or Instagram. Your music was not recorded and heard in a streaming service. Your scores got circulated if you got them published. That took money. But that’s how you got your “likes” in the 17th or 18th century. Telemann wrote a piece of music that had the four notes B. A. C. H. Not sure if Bach returned the compliment.