From Clark Johnsen's Diaries
By Clark Johnsen
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Now, polarity. Sorry to be flogging this again, but
it does constitute the sine qua non of correct audio practice.
Until you get musical instruments to aspirate over
loudspeakers, the way they do in real life, you don’t get
real music. When a player puffs breath out, and your audio
system has him sucking it in, that creates an unwanted and
disturbingly unmusical effect. Electronics enable this
reversal and it’s gotten out of control. Over the radio,
half the music you hear is out of phase (cops!). Even worse,
most loudspeakers, owing to phase—catastrophic crossovers,
blur the differences. Therefore one rarely learns to hear
the distinction, untutored.
But once one does, it becomes like bicycle riding: Never
forgotten. And, required as a technique to negotiate the
confusing paths of sound reproduction.
"Into Our First Room, Shall
We Follow The
Deception Of The Thrush?"
And wouldn’t you know, after all that high-minded bull
I just slung, it would be a video demo! For defense, I have
been dragged in by a buddy. This large Sound by Singer suite
features a Runco projector and a bunch of other expensive
stuff. We are shown a couple things and among them is my
first exposure to D-VHS, the only way today to deliver recorded
HDTV in stores. The image is swell but the sound is boomy,
although what do we expect from Terminator II yet again?
Noticeable sonic activity occurs in the right rear channel,
but that proves to be Singer staff buzzing among themselves.
Next we are ushered into an attached room where, glory
be, two—channel sound awaits us. We are facing huge JM Lab
Utopias, large Lamm amplifiers, yards of Synergistic Research
hawsers and a complete dCS front end, which we are told will
“upconvert Redbook CD to DSD”. OK. The first selection is
cops!, hardly complimentary to this no—expense-spared system.
The second, and the third, are in correct polarity and sound
pretty good, I must admit. But, worth the money? Bet I could
do lots better! The fourth, and last, again is cops!, rounding
off to the expected 50/50 split. When will they ever learn?
At least the system didn’t sound too horribly digital, although
the anomalous rear channel activity continued, this time on
the left and abetted by a noisy charge-card printer.
On to the Impact room. This $34K four-cabinet set was
a hit last year, for me and many others, and today remains
still very much in the running. Some noncommittal jazz is
playing. Cool stuff. Then an attendee asks to have a
small—chorus CD put on and, even shorn of the bass element
that is their forte, the Impacts shine! What a pleasure:
Every voice is real and in place. Mark Conti grabs my lapels
to show me a picture of the soon-to-be-available Airfoil 3’s,
only $12K. Single-cabinet speakers, they look, if I may use
some reviewer lingo, gorgeous. Stuff like this will sell
however it sounds, no insult intended. In parting, Mark
acquaints me with an observation by Mark Twain, which I commend
to posterity: “With an imagination out of focus, you won’t
see anything.”
In the hallway I run across -- or is it the other way
‘round? —— the excitable David Chesky: Jazzman, serious
composer, recordist, producer, label owner and now.., speaker
designer! Or, as I soon learn, speaker enclosure designer.
The interior work was done by Team Terry, Dustin and Mike,
and I must say, the gentlemen have acquitted themselves well.
Very well indeed, for $3995. The selection playing when David
ushers me in, is Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat performed
by I solisti di New York, and it is quite riveting although
not without some digital edge. No oops! however.
It seems an appropriate moment to introduce my Tweak
of the Week (I always carry one), Lloyd Walker’s Vivid, a
polish for CDS. This liquid -- goop might be more accurate
-- puts such a high shine on the playing surface, you can
read the eyes of the person behind you when you gaze on it.
I even got a date that way once! Anyway, it makes a CD sound
better, far better, than any other similar treatment. And
the very skeptical David Chesky is slated to be today’s crash
test dummy.
It develops that this CD is not an original, but rather
a CD-R, on which I’ve never tried Vivid. Very well -- and,
done! We listen and I hear the benefit from the first measure,
but David reserves his judgment. Finally: “Yeah, it’s good.”
David is famously not into tweaks, so I am pleased.
Into Our Next Room
Another musical fellow who always comes through in the
demo department is Ole Christiansen with his Danish GamuT
line of electronics, here played over smaller Pipedreams.
Ole knows how to seduce one with music, so that one might
think his stuff sounds good. Dangerous man! So one mustn’t
believe a word I say now. That said... He puts on the Death
of Tybalt -- we all know our Shakespeare, if not our Prokofiev,
right? -— and oops! But the music is there, so it’s a couple
minutes before I ask Ole to switch to something else, whereupon
he introduces, very daringly (although he knows my tastes,
other people are present), grand opera. Namely, Carmen.
And is she hot! It’s like I’ve never heard this woman sing
before.
After several minutes of intense non-oops! listening
I have to ask, “OK, who is she?” Maria Callasl Damn! Never
heard her in the role before, the greatest dramatic soprano
of the last half—century. American-born, too. Ole observes,
“She never sang the role on stage, you know.” No I didn’t.
Why not? “She felt her ankles were too thick to be a
believable Carmen.
Yikes!
A voice like that, the greatest actress the opera stage
has ever held... and a spooky perfectionist, too. Speaking
of perfectionism... I haul out the Vivid. But Ole demurs.
“I wouldn’t want to harm these CD5. They’re no longer
available.” I concede his point but mark him down a notch
for inability to trust. (Just kidding!)
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