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Speakers That Sound Like Music
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 |
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