I start by saying that I am not a manufacturer of audio components or a “laboratory animal“. Hence, my writings sometimes could appear not very diplomatic or journalistic. I do not like frills or cajoles. I have always been honest towards a world - whether you like it or not – which I have dedicated my life to.
Music, in whatever form, is not only a diversion, rather the vehicle by which men live, express and feel their own emotions.
As this is my debut on ReMusic, I would like to start out with a bang. I want to explore a “matter of study” which, maybe, could open a new path in the high fidelity. A new way of conceiving, designing and manufacturing that has its equivalent in a different listening approach. A new way where what matters is the research of those parts of the sound that are less material and that we usually overlook in a reductive way. A kind of growth for the audiophile who - even considering himself in a continuous evolution - is always more frustrated in reaching his goal: the reproduction of the music with all its emotional, and if you like, spiritual content.
I will tell you of a lunatic. Yes, because you have to be mad to commit yourself, especially during an economic crisis like the current one, in creating objects completely out of the academic schemes and out of any existing market, included those of super niche and dedicated, unfortunately, only to the wealthy people.
I would like to find a way to carry around the readers, with their eyes and mind’s ears, into a parallel world, where the rational logic turns over to give birth to new philosophies, new concepts and new results: explosive, bewildering. The mind becomes still and stops seeking the usual technical parameters, the transparency, the tone, the dynamics, the naturalness, and finally finds… Music. Yes, simply the music. Because what we had known while attending a musical event, its strength, its emotion, its joy, now have become the main listening parameters: they do not substitute, but they complete the customary ones.
I do not want to be long-winded so I stop here and get straight to the point.
Who knows me also knows my total commitment in researching the absolute quality without any compromise. It has cost me economical and most of all personal sacrifices. A great thirst of knowledge has accompanied me in every moment of my journey.
A couple of years ago I met by chance a particular figure with particular ideas as well.
With his approval, I start telling this story, my journey in his extravagant but fascinating world.
Fabio Calò - the “father” of this new listening philosophy- once invited me at his home, for the first time, asserting that I could listen to something peculiar.
While he was telling me lot of things with great enthusiasm, I remembered the chatters of many manufacturers, the magic and miracles of their products that, at the end, were grounds of embarrassment for a judgement. Anyway I thought: “well, it’s just another one… let’s see what he wants to say...”.
Fabio Calò, stage name, is a professional musician. It seems absurd, I know, because I have always declared that, generally, the musicians do not understand much of hi-fi. Well, they know for sure the musical instruments and better than any audiophile or Hi-End manufacturer, included me. However, I tried not to be too biased. When I reached LuxSapienti, the production site, I remembered his words while he tried to describe various emotions, rich of esoteric nuances (ouch...), of a very unusual vision about the Sound, not the music – that is very different – and how the body could interact with it (the Sound…) not in a conventional but in a spiritual way.
I remember I could not give the due attention to his words, because distracted by some music coming from the basement: maybe someone was playing there. I candidly asked him: “Is there anybody playing downstairs?” Fabio smiled, half between comprehension and satisfaction… He guided me, like an adult with a child, into the basement where no one was playing, except a stereo system…
He switched it off and restarted explaining. I did not listen to him because, notwithstanding the perception I had upstairs, the “T” shape of the listening room, the ceiling at a 210 cm of height, the corners and the walls, I thought: “Here we are again. Another faker. This room will not sound ever! How can a person put a system in here?”.
When he stopped speaking of oriental philosophy (ouch again...), he invited me to have a seat and replayed the CD. As soon as the first (FIRST) note hit my ears, I have already understood. I could have stand up and leave. I would have kept in mind that note as the goal to achieve. But I stayed. And from that moment it was like being in a limbo full of caresses. That sound, so rapid, precise, warm, struck me dead. I stood up and got close to the system trying to realize if it was the maker of the sound.
I left and starting from there, every effort I made has followed his suggestions: “Forget everything and your mind will be fertile for a new seed”. I have never forgotten that sound.
For years, I had chased the conventional parameters convinced of having them widely gained but, in that occasion, I realized that a stereo system was wakening up my deepest way of listening. I say “listening” not “understanding”, because still today I try to interpret what I have listened to and why. It had been more a mystic experience than a hi-fi session.
Therefore, stimulated by recent events and by the possibility of writing for ReMusic, besides the never-ending impulse to advance, I thought to get again at LuxSapienti’s, intrigued and excited by the results obtained after my first visit, and willing of let you know about them.
This guy, musician and pilot of airliners, with an academic parenthesis as electronic engineer – never ended up – has always had a passion for playing, listening and making objects that could reproduce music. But usually who plays, to catch the defects of production or performance and re-performing or amended them later, employs a monitor system to play back his creations, with the very “forward” and aggressive typical sound. Fabio, however, emphasizes that, being accustomed only to unrecorded instruments, no system could give him back concretely the content of the musical event. I quote: “the Spirit of the Sound”. Fabio’s journey as an audiophile is similar to many others. Buy, test, test again, sell, and buy again, without reaching satisfaction. It remembers someone to me. What does it suggest to you?
So, he decided to create a system capable of giving back what he was looking for. His aim was not to create an object just for selling, but to create it for himself and to allow him of “working on himself”, as he said. Without budget or time limits to realize this undertaking. Lucky him…
He did it, starting from a completely opposed idea to any other in the hi-fi world: “Does exist in nature a musical sound, or even a noise, without any resonance? Thus, how can be possible to reproduce a sound, a harmonic resonance, through a system that does not resonate itself? The point is disarmingly simple like the entire design philosophy. Trivial like all the brilliant discovers. Therefore, it is not simple to get to it and to do it. What can be better than a real instrument to reproduce sounds and music? But virtually it should be able to resonate at each frequency.
It is not easy to conceive a new way and not only “electromechanical” to see things. Until today, the vibrations have been only damped or attenuated in order to obtain the best sound, convinced that was possible to eliminate all the vibrations. Doing so, we have killed the soul of the sound, haven’t we? Maybe we have emptied it, made it dead in the illusion that the “coherence” we have obtained is the corpse of the sound coming out from the loudspeaker.
Open up our minds, whish consciously of unlearning, reconsider every own belief, is, actually, the best way to grow up. The instrument, not the system I have listened to, is the proof that the nature, indifferently from the rapes it suffers, always finds a way to express itself.
In that room I have listened again the Sound, more lively and magic than ever, with the same effect that a real instrument has on me. If there were any imperfections, I have perceived them like imperfections coming out from the instrument not from the system. And this is what a stereo system has to do: it has to seem “real” to me.
A clarification about the listening room. As I said, for my side I could have just put in there only an iPod… According to the designer the wrong room is nevertheless useful for the design (maybe I do not agree on this point, but it does not matter) because suitable to detach from the mind conditioning the perfect frequency response, the nodes, the peaks and whatever.
This attitude reminds me the theories of Weber Rehde, director and manufacturer of Rehdeko loudspeakers, who has inspired initially Fabio Calò. They both thought that the loudspeakers could not be resonant and that the electronic measurements were unable of measuring a sound. N.B. I remember that Rehde was an electronic engineer too. From there started the way of the LuxSapienti’s philosophy and making. A way maybe more extreme, but in my experience, more fulfilling.
Who knows me also knows that I am not very diplomatic in being critical and I am mean in praising the machines that perform well. Saying what I said gets me annoyed but I will lie to myself telling something different from the reality. The realisation of this project demonstrates this is the right way. I have finally found my way too and I do want to follow and apply it to my designs.
After this long preface, I want to describe peculiarities and faults of this “way” and system. I have to find out only the faults that once eliminated will make easier the accomplishing of my aim. Thereby, the critics will be only constructive without mortifying a proud choice and a so unheard result. I would like to have this system and connect it to my Genesis One, Magneplanar 20.1, and B&W 800 Matrix. In my room I have an absolute worldwide reference acquired to radiograph an object callously. An object to be both made and reviewed, in order to understand its merits and faults. I would like this system for me, to switch off my mind and enjoy music at last.
For this reason, I am writing this review on the train going back from the new LuxSapienti’s listening session…
1 out of 3 – to be continued
