[Audio Empire]

Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a
medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's
several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating,
what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard.

The speakers, are of course, what did the trick. I think that most people who
post here will stipulate that for the most part, modern, well designed
amplifiers (with the possible exception of single-ended triode tube amps)
sound more alike than different, and what differences there are are quite
subtle.

The equipment was as follows:
Digital Front end - dCS "Puccini" CD/SACD player and "Puccini" U-Clock.
Preamp - VTL TL-7.5*Series II
Amp(s) - VTL Siegfried II Tubed power amps (800 Watts/each)
Speakers - Wilson Alexandria XLFs, Wilson 'Hammer of Thor' subwoofer.
There were other music sources as well, a new German Turntable, a computer
music server, but I'm going to stick with CD/SACD playback for this
discussion. Also I paid no attention to the oil-pipeline sized speaker cables
and interconnects that were used, because, assuming that they were of
sufficiently low impedance to carry the current required to drive the
speakers, they are a "don't care" as far as I'm concerned. They're just
"bling" and serve no useful purpose. My companion said they were MIT, and
I'll take his word for it.

I took with me several recordings that I have made over the years, and one of
them was an SACD of a big jazz band that I recorded in concert several years
ago.

This jazz concert is one of the best recordings I've ever made, and clearly
the best I've ever heard. So I figured that it would really reveal just how
good this half-million dollars worth of equipment would really sound. So I
asked Bea Manley, Luke Manly of VTL's diminutive, but charming wife, to play
a couple of cuts.

I was flabbergasted. I had sat in the audience of the hall in which this
concert would be recorded for several dress rehearsals, and while I
recognized from the outset how good the recording turned out, I'd never heard
it come anywhere close to how it sounded in the hall. This , of course, was
to be expected. the science and art of audio reproduction has a long way to
go before recorded will ever sound like live.

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum, the
Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to
trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best
reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of
cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Audio_Empire