Issue 208 December 2010
Truth, Beauty, And The BAlabo Electronics

 

  It has become axiomatic in high-end audio that truth and beauty in an audio component are mutually exclusive. That is, if a component is beautiful sounding, it must depart from the truth. Concomitantly, if a component is truthful it must sound something less than beautiful. This dichotomy is so pervasive that it goes under a wide range of names: "accuracy vs. musicality," "ease vs. resolution," and "romantic vs. incisive," to name a few.

But this dichotomy is, on its face, fundamentally false. If you subscribe (as I do) to the view that the better the component, the closer it sounds to live instruments in an acoustic space, then truth and beauty are one and the same. Truth and beauty should not be thought of as the opposite ends of a straight-line continuum along which movement toward one end results in a corresponding movement away from the other.

Nonetheless, this dichotomous view persists because it is useful on a practical level. When evaluating and describing components, the truth/beauty continuum comes in handy in conveying whether a component is easy-going and forgiving, or whether it makes the listener aware of the last iota of detail. Readers want to know in which direction a component errs so that they can compile lists of candidates to audition that are simpatico with their systems and tastes.

The truth vs. beauty conundrum is symptomatic of the reality that no audio component is perfect. The "truthful" components are characterized by an emphasis on the leading edge of transients than imparts an etched character, a metallic taste overlaying the treble, a somewhat forward spatial perspective, a bleaching and thinning of tone color, a "skeletal" sound to transients, brightness, an overblown sense of top-octave air, and an exaggeration of detail. The "beautiful" components are the antithesis of this presentation, with a muting of transient detail, a softening of the treble, a liquidity of timbre that de-emphasizes upper harmonics, a richness and saturation of tone color, and a syrupy smoothness that gives the sound a burnished golden glow.

The "truthful" components are initially exciting because of their apparently greater resolution and transparency, but are ultimately fatiguing and musically uninvolving. A sure sign of such a component is if you feel a sense of relief when the music is turned down or off. The "beautiful" components are also initially enticing because their seductive warmth fosters an immediate involvement. But that involvement quickly wears off because the listener's brain must work to fill in the missing detail. The sense of music-making is diminished; the component may sound pretty sonically, but it lacks musical expression, life, passion, and vividness. If the "truthful" component produces a sense of relief when the music stops, the "beautiful" component does also, but for a different reason — it signifies that you're about to engage in an activity other than music listening.

Both camps have their adherents. A reader of Stereophile (when I wrote for that magazine) told me, to my horror, that he wanted the treble to sound "like little needles shooting at me." Conversely, I hear systems at shows that are grossly colored (lack of definition at the frequency extremes, and a warm, soft, fuzzy sound), but of which the exhibitors are immensely, and bafflingly, proud.

In my reviewing career I've looked for components that strike the best compromise between so-called "truth" and "beauty." The "truth vs. beauty" paradigm was particularly useful because for years I reviewed a steady diet of CD players, DACs, and transports in the early days of digital. Those rather crude (by today's standards) products were obviously tilted in one direction or the other. With limited skills and first-generation parts with which to work, the designer's compromises were thrown into sharp relief. The "truth vs. beauty" paradigm was an expedient that helped to convey a product's fundamental character.

Which brings us to the BAlabo BP-1 Mk.II preamplifier and BA-1 Mk.II power amplifier, first reviewed by Jonathan Valin in Issue 201. After living with the BAlabo electronics for three months I can say that they lay bare the fallacy of the "truth vs. beauty" dichotomy. The BAlabos' defining glory is that they don't force the listener to choose between truth and beauty; truth and beauty are one and the same in these electronics, just as truth and beauty are one and the same in real life.

The BAlabo electronics have no unnatural etch on leading-edge transients; no tincture of metallic hardness in the upper mids and treble, and no false emphasis of detail. Nonetheless, they are fully and utterly resolving of real musical information. A cursory listen to the BAlabo electronics suggests that they are relaxed and engaging, but not the last word in resolution or top-octave extension. But sit down with them and you find yourself drawn into the music in a new way. Their lack of artifacts, which is singular in my experience, fosters a sense of relaxation that allows the music to more fully express itself. The presentation's lack of aggression causes you to "let go" of a certain reservation about fully opening up your ears; you can listen more deeply into the music because you know that the sound is never going to affront your ears. The sense of relaxation and natural ease is mistaken by some as being a movement toward beauty at the expense of truth, but that's an incorrect interpretation because, in my experience, the BAlabo creates the same sense of relaxation and ease that one hears from live music.

Take string sound, for example. The BAlabo pair reproduces massed strings with an unparalleled lushness and liquidity, but not in the same sense in which those words are used when applied to the sound of strings rendered by single-ended triode amplifiers, for example. Strings as portrayed by the BAlabo are lush, romantic, and gorgeous in their liquidity, not because they soften the sound or add a syrupy glaze, but because massed strings are lush, romantic, and gorgeous in real life. The steely edge we've become accustomed to is gone, but not at the expense of vividness of timbre. Strings as reproduced by the BAlabo electronics don't have the metallic sheen of "truthful" electronics, nor the golden burnished glow of "beautiful" electronics, but a sheen all their own that makes instruments sound astonishingly like themselves.

The BAlabo electronics sound the way they do not because they depart from truth, but because they come closer to the truth than any electronics I've heard. And that's what makes them so beautiful.

 

 

 

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