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

[godofwealth]

Lyrita is a specialist classical music label that made some of the finest recordings of orchestral music in the 1970s, and quite a few were included in Harry Pearson’s Super Disc list in The Absolute Sound. Here we have a wonderful album of Gustav Holst’s music, the schoolteacher who composed in his spare time and composed The Planets.

Lyrita recordings are extremely dynamic and hard to reproduce on most hifi. On my Quads they sounded a bit too bright. On the big SL’s, they sound gorgeous. Thus recording starts with the Walt Whitman overture that has a lot of loud brass sections, but sounds rich and well-balanced. Strings are rich and have that famous Lyrita shimmer. Kenneth Wilkinson made many of Lyrita’s famous recordings as well as Decca’s legendary recordings.

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s one of my favorite orchestral recordings from Telarc featuring the music of Samuel Barber. He lived in the same town that I lived in for a few years in the early 1990s, Mount Kisco, NY. Legend has it that Barber sent some of his early pieces to the great conductor Arturo Toscanini who returned it some time later without comment. When on a trip to Italy a friend suggested they visit Toscanini, Barber demurred. When the friend visited Toscanini and made apologies for Barber’s absence, Toscanini said he understood that Barber was miffed about the music he had received and not commented on. He told the friend to assure Barber that he was indeed going to perform Barber’s magnificent Essay for Orchestra. Toscanini was capable of. memorizing a score from one reading and never conducted an orchestra with a score in hand.

This is a stunning recording with a huge dynamic range, which features Telarc’s famous bass drum that makes your heart stop. It sounds great on the SL. I’m still not playing the SL’s really loud to give the panels time to stretch out. Plus I don’t yet have my big ARC 750SE’s hooked up. On the diminutive Mola Mola Kaluga class D amplifiers, the crescendos are heard but not as powerful as a big tube amplifier would generate.

 

[godofwealth]

On this same disc, a quieter and profound piece is Barber’s Adagio for Strings, possibly the finest piece for strings written by an American composer. It was popularized by the movie The Platoon. What a gorgeous piece of music it is. Rich and warm sounding, the climaxes build up slowly. On the big SL’s this movement is spellbinding.

 

[godofwealth]

Composers can be strange creatures sometimes. They fall in love with a particular genre and can’t stop writing for it. Vivaldi wrote hundreds of violin concertos. Haydn wrote scores of Baryton trios, possibly because his employer in whose court he worked loved to play the baryton, a relative of the cello. Anton Reicha similarly loved writing woodwind quintets. He wrote scores of them. Thanks to the prodigious effort of the Albert Schweitzer quintet, we can hear all of them. They play phenomenally and are recorded in an exemplary way.

Woodwind quintets, here featuring a flute, a bassoon, a horn, an oboe and a clarinet are extremely revealing of a loudspeaker’s midrange colorations. The big SL’s reproduce a woodwind quintet better than anything else I’ve heard. The horn here is placed well behind the other instruments and you hear its authoritative sound bathed in ambience. The flute is on extreme left, the clarinet on the right and the basoon and oboe share the center stage. What emerges is a musical conversation between the instruments. One can see why Reicha was so fascinated by the woodwind quintet. He enjoyed creating this pentatonic conversation between these instruments. Lovely music that’s never coarse or loud and never outstays its welcome.

 

[godofwealth]

One of my recent favorites is this lovely chamber music recording for cello and piano. It begins with a really powerful piece by Mendelssohn. The recording of Sol Gabetta’s cello here is deep and resonant and brings out the vocal qualities of this string instrument. The big SL sounds majestic on this recording exuding a powerful sense of dynamics.

 

[godofwealth]

Telarc made many famous recordings early in their period when Jack Renner used simple microphone techniques to create beautiful music. This magnificent collection of Mozart Symphonies was recorded largely in a castle in Prague using 2-3 tube microphones. The early symphonies sound splendid and the strings sound luxuriant on the SL’s. The story behind the composition of Mozart’s first symphony is astonishing. While on a tour of Europe to showcase the young prodigy, the father fell ill in London. Forbidden to play the fortrpiano, the young 7-8 year old Mozart instead tried his hand at composing symphonies. Astonishing precocity. No, they don’t match the power of his later work, but they are so delightful that it’s hard to believe one so young had so much talent already in him.

 

[godofwealth]

Another lovely album from Stile Antico of Byrd’s choral music recorded by Decca in 24-bit 192khz. Unaccompanied chiral music is incredibly hard to reproduce. The structure of a human voice is so well known to us that any slight departures from normalcy are instantly identified. Yet we are used to hearing terrible reproductions of human voices all the time. When a truly natural loudspeaker like these big SL’s is tasked to reproduce a choral ensemble, the results can be spellbinding as they are here.

 

[godofwealth]

Listening to a classic rock and roll band from the 70s when I was an undergraduate, Bread, remastered to 24-bit. Don’t think it does much for the sound. A lot of rock and roll is atrociously recorded with cheap mikes, and bargain basement multitrack tape recorders in cheap studios. That’s what this album sounds like. SL’s are not rock and roll loudspeakers but they salvage what can be from this abysmal recording. The music is pleasant and tuneful in a 70s way, but Bread didn’t have the originality of the Beatles. Let’s face it, music like this is meant to be listened on car stereos and boomboxes!

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s a far better recorded audiophile jazz favorite. Simple Blumlein mikes recorded live in a jazz club straight to a tape recorder. It’s easy to see why this recording garnered so much praise. As jazz goes, not a great album, but the recording gives a vivid sense of being in a Swedish jazz club. The big SL’s again reveal the limitations of the analog tape recorder, but it sounds enjoyable.

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s an absolutely stunning recording that’s hard to find. I shamelessly ripped mine from a CD borrowed from a public library. A Kenyan choir signs gospel music in a completely different and ethnic way that’s highly appealing. The men’s and women’s chorus sounds divine. Recorded in a church with plenty of ambience. The percussion on the left channel sounds lovely as well.

These are the recordings that the big SL’s shine on. A desert island disc if you can find it!

 

[godofwealth]

Just found it on Tidal. Put this album on your playlist! It’s that good. On the big SL’s it can send chills down your spine.

 

[godofwealth]

On this track a woman screams for joy and you jump out of your skin, it sounds so spookily real.

The astonishing clarity of the big SL’s cones to life here. Not a hint of brightness or harshness here. Hundreds of singers in a huge chorus and despite the sheer dynamics, the panels are remarkably composed and sound as close to actually being in the hall as you can get.

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s a rarity. An Indian classical music album recorded by Mark Levinson no less for the Connoisseur Society with two microphones straight into a 15 ips open reel tape machine. The recording is stunning for how it renders the Indian tabla, the most musical drum ever made by man (the Western snare drum has an ugly non musical sound in comparison!). Ali Akhbar Khan who plays the sarod lived in California for most of his adult life where he ran a teaching school. This is part of a collection of three CDs that I have long treasured. Timeless music. The low frequency sounds of the tabla are amazing. You hear the air move each time the tabla is smacked with an open hand.

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s a lovely Chet Baker album of Lerner-Loewe favorites including Sound of Music (“I coukd have danced all night”). The 24-bit 192 kHz remastering sounds quite nice. It’s a bit schmaltzy and never gets into any kind of real high energy, but it’s great for an evening relaxation. The big SL’s project Baker’s trumpet in a nice ambience. There’s an appealing warmth to the sound.

 

[godofwealth]

Dvorak wrote lovely music combining Czech folk idioms with western classical formalism. His Eighth Symphony is full of his soaring melodies. This Pentatone recording sounds gorgeous on the big SL’s with lush strings, powerful brass accompaniment and pounding drums. Yaakov Kreizberg died sadly young. There are of course much more well known performances including Istvan Kertesz’ famous Decca LP’s and a list of who’s who of conductors who have recorded this symphony.

 

[godofwealth]

It’s interesting how we categorize composers based on a partial understanding of their oeuvre. Mendelssohn is known for his Midsummer’s Night Dream with its famous Wedding March and his Octet written at a precocious age of 13. But he wrote splendid choral music as magnificently recorded here on a 24-bit 192khz high res recording. Recording a large chorus is a tricky proposition but the recording engineer did wonders here. The chorus sounds beautiful on the big SL’s and the music is sublime.

 

[godofwealth]

Moving now to a different Eighth Symphony, the most famous “incomplete” symphony in all of classical music. I speak of course of Franz Schubert’s masterpiece. Why didn’t he finish it? There are many theories. Many have attempted to finish Schubert’s masterpiece. But it’s best to hear the incomplete work with just the two movements he wrote. Here we have a famous recording by the legendary conductor Carlos Kleiber conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Of course the orchestral playing is nonpareil. Kleiber was fond of extreme dynamic swings and he conducts with a ferocity that few can match. When the orchestra plays pianissimo, you can barely hear it, as in the opening. And then when the orchestra gets loud in a fortissimo, all hell breaks loose. The DG recording is remastered at 34/bit 96 kHz and sounds splendid on the big SL’s. The music is beyond this world. Sometimes an incomplete masterpiece is best left that way.

 

[Mrmb]

The aforementioned Behchmark amps, especially in bridged in mono are decidedly mediocre, and are NOWHERE near the league of the Sound Lab speakers. Yes , they have received some good reviews, by folks who have a very poor frame of reference, but for the Sound Labs top of the line speakers?!! Pulezzee...

Without my direct knowledge, the word is that Dr. West and company at SoundLab, uses a pair of Benchmarks. Of course, they may use other amplification and just because they use Benchmarks, that doesn't mean they are the best of the best. But I would take it to mean that the Benchmarks marry pretty darn well with their speakers.

Also, an audio buddy is driving his fairly new SoundLabs with great results and his rig is fronted by a Taiko Extreme. He also has Atma-Sphere MA-1 OTL's and the Benchmark comparison is similar but of course different. At any rate, when moving from winter to summer, he doesn't seem to really miss the MA-1's.

 

[AudioLibertarian]

Without my direct knowledge, the word is that Dr. West and company at SoundLab, uses a pair of Benchmarks. Of course, they may use other amplification and just because they use Benchmarks, that doesn't mean they are the best of the best. But I would take it to mean that the Benchmarks marry pretty darn well with their speakers.

Also, an audio buddy is driving his fairly new SoundLabs with great results and his rig is fronted by a Taiko Extreme. He also has Atma-Sphere MA-1 OTL's and the Benchmark comparison is similar but of course different. At any rate, when moving from winter to summer, he doesn't seem to really miss the MA-1's.

Some speaker design companies use Crown amps as well, as every designer has his/her sonic priorities. My point was that these top of the line speakers deserve the "best" amps, which to my ears the Benchmark gear does not qualify as such, and not because of its "moderate" cost. However, if folks enjoy their system's sound with the Benchmark amps, who am I to argue....

 

[Mrmb]

I’m pleased to announce that I have now taken possession of one of Soundlab’s largest models, the Audiophile G9-7c. Words are inadequate to describe the quality of this state of the art assault on loudspeakers, except that it reeks of a certain fastidiousness and obsessiveness with perfection that is increasingly rare in our commercial world.

Congrats from a 25-year long SoundLab owner (3-different pairs). I now have Majestic PX845's that were delivered a couple years ago.

I'm sure your VTL's will be the cat's PJ's. Speaking of CAT's, Ken Steven's (of Convergent Audio Technology) amps are the feline meow when used with SoundLabs. I had JL1's and JL3's. Both featuring CAT's proprietary 55lb. transformers and (16) 6550's in the former and (32) KT120's in the latter. I'm now running Atma-sphere MA-1's, but am considering switching to solid state.

How about the electrostatic bass your hearing with the SoundLabs? There's something about a drum head radiating from the tensioned material found on the SoundLab's that must be heard.

Enjoy your new electrostats!!! What they do right is hard to beat with other speaker types. That's why my advice to those seeking speakers is to first listen to as many types as you can and then prioritize by your type preference before listenting to speakers within that type and choosing accordingly. If you don't do this, you may miss out not only on some pretty darn good transducers, but speakers that you may really favor, but didn't bother to audition.

At any rate, as it should, personal preference always rules the roost. If it didn't, there would be fewer components, audio shows and forums. There is no best; hence, the name of this forum and so many differering paths that folks have taken to get to their personal "whats_the_best.