Of late, I've gotten a lot of emails asking which recordings I use and why. I usually keep this type of informationn to myself, for my own odd reasons. But in this case, I will relent:

In the early 70s, before the term audiophile had come into common use, a recording was made that unknowingly adhered to every audiophile convention that are now the subject of so much of the hype that infects today’s audiophile labels. The record is Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon (Reprise RS 6376). First of all, this LP is among the last of the big label LPs that were lovingly pressed on only the finest vinyl. My pressing is pushing 30 years old, is free of pops and ticks, and tracks just as it did lo those many years ago. Here we have the most challenging registers of the female voice, trading focus with cello, clarinet, piano and more. Can you hear the shadings that make the clarinet stand clear from the voice? Do you hear the floor boards resonate beneath the cello? The truth is in the details, and this LP has a wealth of them. The recording is beyond reproach, and the compositions are sublime and timeless. The bad news? This baby will be very hard to find in decent condition.

Sorry for follow up one needle in a haystack LP with another, but this one is another LP that will become an essential part of your collection, if you can get a hold of a copy. It is the 1984 release by guitarist George Cromarty, Wind in the Heather (Dancing Cat Records {a division of Windham Hill} DC3001). This is an amazing collection of short solo guitar pieces. Each of the 13 original compositions are melodic masterpieces in their own right, and the recording is simply lucious...easily the finest recording of acoustic guitar that I have ever heard. The mastering was done by Bernie Grundman and you will never hear a cleaner pressing. Like the Mitchell LP, this LP is invaluable for listening to a system’s critical ability, or sometime unfortunate inability, to render both a natural sound space and retrieve the essence of the acoustical truth of the music. Does the guitar emanate from clear space, or does it seem bound to the speakers? Do the overtones of each note connect to the fundamental pitch of the note, or does one come from here and the other from a over there? Acoustic instruments demand coherence, and this is always a challenge for a multi-driver
loudspeaker.

But what, you may ask, about the non-acoustical truth? Find yourself (this will be much easier) a copy of the 1975 classic from Steely Dan, Katy Lied (ABC Records ABCD-846). Again, here we have audiophile sensibilities before audiophile pretensions. The back cover of the album notes not only the use of a Neumann VMS 70 lathe, but also advises strict adherence to the RIAA curve. Who says the ‘70s were an empty decade? This is great stuff, rock with wit and intelligence played by some of the hardcore studio guys of the era (including Rick Derringer, the late Jeffery Porcaro, and a pre sellout Larry Carlton). My friends, these guys could play. If your system is unable to play “Chain Lightning” with Derringer’s sharp & wicked guitar riffs and Porcaro’s thundering drum fills both loudly and with ease please resign as an audiophile and take up bowling.

Here’s something you can buy new that represents the state of the art in vinyl today. The artist is Sonny Landreth, bayou slide guitarist extraordinaire. The LP is called Outward Bound and you can buy a new pressing of this from none other than Classic Records (RTH1032-1), and while you can also get it on CD, why would you? For a modern rock recording, Outward Bound is dynamically challenging for a system. The players showcased here don’t spend much time tacking it easy. Mastering, once again is by Grundman, and while the pressing is good, it doesn’t measure up to the oldies that have discussed previously in this section. Again, this material needs to be recreated at full volume, yet always in complete control and with all of its original tonality and timbre intact.

The language of audio (and now video) is critical if we are to make ourselves understood. The bad news is that most of our vocabulary is borrowed from photography and other visual arts. Terms like imaging and focus really have no place in a audio, but they have become terms of art that we all use without thinking about them. Even the oft used term bright refers to brilliance of light rather than anything even remotely related to sound. Still, it’s just too late to buck the semantical system, so here are some notable CDs that I use. Please note that some of these will be easy to find, while some a bit rare. A good starting place is Amazon.com as their search system allows you to find CDs by a number of different criteria from performer, piece of music, ensemble, label and catalog number. Tone, timbre and ambiance: Three tests, one CD One Minute and thirty-four seconds! The Cowboy Junkies / The Trinity Sessions (RCA 8568-2-R) Track 1: “Mining for Gold.” This classic traditional tune, sung a cappella by Margo Timmons will tell you more about what your system can and can’t do than any other minute and a half of recorded music can. It was recorded using the famed (notorious?) Calrec Ambisonic microphone in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. What you should hear, what you must hear, is the sense of the church’s physical size and space even before Timmons starts to sing. In the center of the space you should hear Timmons’ earthy, smoldering yet sweet voice at once anchored and yet floating in the center of the soundstage. Can you hear it? If you can you’re already most of the way there. If you can’t, well, “Houston. we have a problem.” Until you can get this most basic test right, your system will be stuck in neutral.

Midrange pitch precision and speed of attack and decay: Laurel Zucker & Susan Jolles / Images for Flute & Harp / Sonatine for flute & harp Victor Frost (1952-) (Cantilena Records 66016-2) Track 14 Moderato e deciso. Lots of luck finding this gem...it took me weeks to find it. The flute and harp cast their notes squarely on pitch and the interplay between the distinct voices create quite a challenge. Listen for any tendency for the flute to sound wispy or tonally dispersed. It is not a function of the recording. The harp’s strings start and stop quickly so any sense of slowness or muddying tells you that something bad is happening. As an aside, this is a truly fine piece of modern classical music in a sea of amusical junk. This CD is worth the trouble of finding it, and trouble you will have.

Small scale ambiance & image placement: Gabriel Fauré The Two Piano Quartets / The Ames Piano Quartet (Dorian DOR-90144). The entire CD is the very pinnacle of the genre in both performance and recording. A good system has to place each of the three string instruments in their own sound field with the piano well focused, yet expansive. A weak system will have the notes of the piano jumping (seeming to come from different positions as the pitch changes) and the strings may become crowded together or unnaturally spread out. Again, not the easiest CD to find, but it’s out there and in print.

Large scale ambiance & image placement: Brahms-Schoenberg Piano Quartet in G minor / Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Vox Cum Laude MCD 10018). Again, not an easy one to find but a treasure. To my knowledge, the only current release featuring Schoenberg’s orchestral transcription of this seminal piano work by Brahms at the height of his creative powers. The job of recreating the sense of a full orchestra in one’s listening room is at once irresistible and impossible. The scope and sweep of the dynamics are just too much, not to mention the sheer space and complexity that the music presents. Still, we must try: What we want here is a sense of size and majesty without strain. A great system will be able to approach this ideal and lower volume levels and the poor system won’t be able to get it right at any level. Listen also for a natural portrayal of shifts between the loud and the soft and everything in between. Any tendency to draw the presentation of the music toward the speakers, like light from a flashlight, is bad and is illustrative of a system that has reached its limits.

Dynamic shifts, tonal consistency & complexity: Beethoven-Liszt Piano Transcriptions Symphony No.6 / Glenn Gould (Sony SMK 52639). Want to hear Beethoven’s Pastorale symphony as if for the very first time? That’s what it’s like to hear this wonderful Lizst transcription of this sadly overplayed, yet marvelous piece. By giving a solo piano virtually all of the symphony’s themes, Liszt strips the melodies and harmonies of this piece bare. One can hear much further into the piece without all of the timbre and voices of the full orchestra. A system will also reveal if it has any problems recreating a sense of tonal complexity without a feeling or tendency toward confusion. Gould’s playing and the recording are beyond reproach. A superb system will keep the tonal nature of the piano consistent whether the notes are played fast or slow, loud or soft. How does your system capture these essentials?

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a sampling of recordings I trust to ask and answer basic questions of system musicality.

The most daunting leap in product design is that from competent to extraordinary. There are scores of good speakers and scant few great ones. The great ones max out credit cards and feed the soul while the good ones just make pretty noise.

Audio Concepts has been making Sapphires, in various forms, for decades. I’ve heard many of the iterations and have always come away impressed but never overwhelmed. While better than good, they just didn’t cross the precipice to greatness. Then came the Sapphire XL.

The XL isn’t your father’s ACI Sapphire! The XL doesn’t look like any monitor that I’ve ever seen. I won’t make any attempt to address the cabinet’s (exterior or acoustic) design in detail, but I will tell you that it’s quite a different looking speaker. In pictures, it looks like two speakers, one behind the other but slightly offset. In 3D, the XL is a handsome if somewhat unconventional looking speaker that is compact yet substantial.

Atop their dedicated Sound Anchors stands, the piano gloss black XLs just ooze high end. Though I’m not usually a fan of black (cars, speakers, you name it) the size and shape of the Sapphires work well with the glossy finish and the quality is beyond reproach. Each surface, front, back, sides, bottom is perfectly consistent and without flaw.

The compact size of the Sapphire XLs ends with their looks. They play with an ease and fullness that belies their sensible dimensions. The bottom end is rock solid with the kind of extension that just doesn’t happen with monitors, until now. More musically relevant than its LF reach is the sense of speed and pitch precision that the XLs achieve. ACI’s Mike Dzurko tells me that this is directly attributable to the “insanely expensive woofer” that he spec’d for the XL. Who am I to argue with an insanely expensive woofer in a very sanely price monitor when it sounds like this?

ACI has chosen two marvelous drivers, created a solid enclosure and applied all of their technology and experience to allow its crossover to bring it all together. Together, that’s the key. Even a 2-way speaker has to be unified to create believable music. Here, the drivers work as seamlessly as I have ever heard, at any price point. While I know it’s not, the ACI Sapphire XL sounds as close to a point source speaker as any I have heard.

All of this lets the music float free, regardless of the style of music you enjoy. The sound stage is expansive without being diffuse while images are sharply focused without being etched. Please don’t take what I’m going to write now as an indication that the XLs are analog speakers, but it was while playing LPs that their true magic first came to me. The Sapphires flow in the way that only analog can flow. They boogie, bop, stomp and rock with pace, to be sure, but also with a liquidity that simply sets them apart from the myriad of good speakers you could buy instead.

I’ve heard the contenders, believe me. I’ve suffered the pretenders, pity me. Now, I’ve heard the first great speaker from a fine and solid company that has proven its dedication to its craft and art through the Sapphire XL. Though the folks at ACI are too modest to use the appelation, the Sapphire XL is a true reference speaker, and that is not a term I use lightly. Highly recommended for immediate audition.

This telling of the high end story was motivated by the befuddlement of my girlfriend of two years over what this business is all about. This is a fable, consisting largely of facts, but sprinkled with my own subjective take on the history of audio universe as we know it today. Don’t waste your time arguing with me, I know the story better than any one of you so just read on and learn.

In the beginning there was music, and it was good. Following WWII, some clever folks adapted Western Electric theater equipment into home use and the first high end (albeit mono) systems were born.

As the 50s faded away, two things happened: First, transistors made their way into home electronics and stereo recordings became the standard. Though born of tubes and mono, it was the transistor and stereo that served as the critical elements needed for coming of the high end.

In the 60s and 70s, the high end gear of the world was made by companies who built their empires on the transistor and stereo. Companies like Sansui, Kenwood and Marantz ruled like the dinosaurs of their era. They were big and powerful companies that made gear that sometimes sounded OK and was very heavy.

As disco waned and punk waxed, the high end came into its adolescence. During this time, the industry genuinely grew for the only time in its brief existence. In the early 80s, John Bau (founder of Spica) went to CES with a prototype of the classic TC50 and came home with more than 20 dealers. To the uninitiated, this may not sound like a big deal but believe me it never happened before and it will never happen again.

Bau was the prototype of the high end entrepreneur / engineer. He had a good idea, worked hard to make it into a product and the world (at least by high end standards) beat a trail to his door. His small company was emblematic of the very best that the high end has ever offered to its faithful. Think of it, this was a time when the very best was being attained by some of the smallest companies ever created.

The likes of Bau was followed by men named Thiel, Pass, D’Agostino, Thigpen, Klyne & Modjeski and the high end entered its Golden Age. Technology now mated with the clever. The musical truth slept with engineering maxims and all was well. The God of Audio was in his heaven.

During the 80s and early 90s the high end flourished. There was a minimum of bullshit, and genuine excitement filled the hearts and ears of devotees around the world. High end designers could explain their designs in engineering terms yet their love of music told of something more, of something magical. The industry was a brotherhood, if an odd one, and the small American high end companies ran the fraternity.

Sometime in the middle of the 1990s digital began to slowly poison the high end and no one noticed until it was much too late. Enthusiasm was replaced by talk of bit rates and error correction. Worst of all, people spoke of CD’s limited life span as a technology in a way that had never happened with analog. The perversion of home theater rose from the ashes of what was the high end’s destiny in another, sadly lost, dimension.

Still, as long as there are garages there will be high end designers. The problem with the high end of today is that bullshit largely rules and there is ever more focus on what gear looks like, on how thick the faceplate is, and ever less on whether it makes music. It has become all too easy to make a piece of gear that looks and feels the part yet sounds abundantly mid fi. It is the perfect analog to the values of the bibliophile who judges a book only by its cover and never by its content.

The genuine believers, the true music lovers of the high end are getting old now. At 45, I am among the youngest of the tribe. As our days and nights are cut into ever smaller pieces by the technologies that rule our lives, the subtle charms of music herself, alone, glides sadly into a darkened corner. I doubt that she’ll be coaxed back out into the light, but if she does it will be by the sheer guile of a clever guy working in his garage. Here’s to a happy ending to this tale...

Dedicated to Will and Ariel Durant, authors of The Story of Philosophy.

Back in the days of TAO, one of my most memorable reviews was of the classic Eminent Technology LFT-8. The new LFT-16 is rather like a miniature LFT-8, being a hybrid cone / LFT design. My sense is that this product will require some significant set-up and partnering efforts. No worries, though, I am certain it will be worth the effort.

The SE-2 has landed and is warming up and breaking in while I type. You'll recall that I came across this SE 300B at the 2006 CES and was entralled by its elemental musicality. Now, it's sitting in my listening room making ready for its audition. Those of you who are old timers will remember that my old high end newsletter, The Audio Observatory was the first US publication to feature a review of a single ended amp.

At the time, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the Cary 300B. But today's another day and the Connoisseur SE-2 is another amplifier, believe me. Watch for the full review soon.