To the second part of this review
To the introduction article of Esoteric Masterpieces
The listening test
I am on the train and I am dying to write on the spot what I felt today while I was listening to a “different” audio system. So I have switched on my PC and…I start! It is not just telling you about this second great experience, but it is about keeping and then elaborating what I have verified today for my listening and manufacturing path.
I start from the very moment I seated on that low and soft couch and dedicated my ears to what I knew would have been amazing.
In the first track, Sonata for guitar and cello from the record Virtuoso Guitar by Laurindo Almeida, the classic guitar is on the right channel. Astounding! It does not seem playback music. All the parameters are so tangible that I have difficult in separating and analyzing them one by one. They are so perfect that have disappeared from my mind. Seykora’s cello starts on the left channel. It is not possible: the resonance is so imposing and vibrating that I feel it inside my soul…I cannot better describe what I feel. The transparency and rapidity of the sound are impressive. The timing is immediate, like a real sound. The triangle comes: it is so metallic and dynamic that it wakes me up from that ecstatic sensation and reminds me that this system is not euphonic, warm and romantic. No, it is just incredibly realistic. It pulls out the wood from the wood, the metal from the metal, the nylon from the nylon. The micro details are impressive and if in a common system they are just little noises or crackles, here they become evident because resonating, like Flores’ percussions, that are not only defined but lively.
We listen to Duke Ellington's Big 4. The group’s consistency, the tonal weave, the warmth and colour without emphasis, without honey, are surrounding me. The soundstage is simply…No, it is not about a scene, rather I am here inside the event. There are no more walls and the ceiling of this terrible room disappears. It is not possible. Lous Bellson’ drum set puzzles me, as an amp with one watt and a half reproduces it. Duke’s piano is unreachable, an awesome real piano playing in this basement! Joe Pass’ jazz guitar is soft and sparkling. There is a transient rapidity so real to be ceaselessly but with a sweet emission never heard before! This incredible tonal richness is not comparable to what I would have defined so far as “tonally rich”. At the same time, there is a transparency and sound definition that I cannot explain because full of harmonics. The width, the depth are strange indeed. I mean, I cannot realize how I can hear sounds coming from everywhere except from the loudspeakers, that totally disappear. The music comes from behind them and, nevertheless the great dynamics and fluidity, there is no aggressiveness at all.
How is it possible?
Now we listen to Miles Davis Quintet, from Relaxing with. Same thing. Miles’ trumpet is so full and rich of nuances, little noises, saliva, breath, real dirt: everything is so real that I can see him playing in front of me. It is not the usual “fake trumpet”; the instrument here is a vital blow breathing on my head. Coltrane enters with his sax. Another startling emotion. The dynamics, the rapidity and the tonal realism raise my blood pressure. It is an emotion inside my hearth and I feel “at home”.
If only I could have this system-instrument at home….
I have heard enough. I am off. No, I stay. I want to enjoy this experience a little longer.
We play Tuck & Patti. The Gibson ES 335 is warm and harmonic, very quick and harmonic. The voice is… a voice. There is a noticeable dynamic peak in Tears of Joy, but the system reproduces it without any effort or sound hardening.
Let us change over to classical music. By Deutsche Gramophone, Diabolus in Musica by Paganini. The scene is delicious, deep, big but precise in all the orchestral dislocation. The tonal sweetness is touching and inspires me real commotion. The dynamics has no limit or compression with an unexplainable absolute sense of relax. Accardo’s violin has the sweetness of a real instrument, the full orchestra is given back with an infinite “breath”. I feel the orchestra pulsing, I feel energy waves working inside me.
I think it is enough. So I asked Fabio to play some non audiophile records I have with me. That is something intriguing me. I want to find out how “revelatory” this system is.
In this order: Santana Caravanserai, Eric Clapton Another Ticket, Led Zeppelin III, Stanley Clarke Time Exposure, Weather Report 8:30, David Sanborn Backstreet, Genesis Trespass, Mark Johnson Bass Desires, Pino Daniele Bella Mbriana.
Wonderful and funny….
All, but all flaws of the recording have emerged as happens with a CAT scan. However, here the less realistic reproduction has its value, involves you and sometimes moves you for its imperfection. The music is always pleasant, just different, with a less coherent, although beautiful, tonal character. Well, this is my goal. I will not to say anything else.
Finally, Fabio smiles and invites me to move to another corner of the room. He shows me a Gibson ES335, the same model of Tuck’s and he connects it to a Fender Tweed of the 50’s. He plays Tears of Joy. What can I say... “We’re down to earth.. we are very far from the real sound” he says. Still, that guitar is very, very, very alike the play backed one. Just more free in dynamics and more lively, but not too much.
I have appreciated the fact that Fabio has put himself to the test. That means he does not search for others gratification but only for the gratification that comes from the music.
Conclusions
I think I have said a lot, maybe too much, in describing this outcome. I have also avoided using too many superlatives. However, I invite you to verify and listen personally, if the manufacturer will be available of course.
This is, at least for me, the right path and, so far, the target in the field of the applied electronics to the sound reproduction and from the practical point of view, technical aspects aside. That’s it. If we will be intellectually honest, we must revise many concepts that have stuck the technique so far. I mean the incapacity of reproducing the emotional content, if you like spiritual, of the Music. It has been reduced to something inferior to what it is meant to be.
3 out of 3 – The end
Editor’s note: the manufacturer has kindly authorized us to publish his contact details. For further info, please write to Fabio Calò, mayday06@libero.it
