AudioKeyREVEIWS! Magazine - Canada/English - Issue 2

AudioKeyREVIEWS !

AUDIO & STEREO

Music is art, art is music.

Wayne Thiebaud - Valley River

104 110 112 MUSIC REVIEWS

RECOMMENDED COMPONENTS IN THE NEXT ISSUE

REVIEWS ON OUR WEBSITE

Front Inside Cover: Vincent Van Gogh - Sunflowers

Back Inside Cover: BRASSAÏ

The Other Art. It is my belief that the artist and the musician are not only creatives, but they access heart and soul and experience, perhaps, in the selfsame ways. My own love for art and music are inseparable. And so art, music, and those things which facilitate the music, shall share theses pages.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - SEND HERE

Copyright AudioKeyReviews 2023

audiokeyreviewsCA.com

Paul Cezanne - Pears

EDITOR’s CHAIR

Technological progress moves forward at light speed, profiting audio houses and their componentry with skills and abilities not available less than a decade ago. And the resultant pricing puts ‘Summit HiFi’ in the hands of those who would not have been able to afford it half a decade ago.

And music, as I have often written about across these pages, is ubiquitous—available every moment of everyday are, and literally, millions of albums for the listening. This for the lovers of music is, indeed, paradise and a time like no other.

The culmination of just these two events alone, poise the audio world with great promise and potential. Yet in order to fully realize this, the collective ‘audio houses’—manufacturers, distributors, retailers, agents, etc.—must seek to broaden that audio universe by bringing in a host of new audiophiles and music lovers, as the current ‘choir’ grays and shrinks away.

We, AKRMedia, see this as our preeminent goal, which is why we do the things we do. Art, aesthetics, accessible articles bereft, to a large degree, of ‘tech speech,’ replaced with analogy, metaphor, humor, when possible, as well as direct outreach to much broader and curious populations. We want them to step in, sample the wares of our audio partners, purchase their wares, build audio systems which will allow them to not just listen but to travel to worlds of audio that they scarce knew existed (the electrostatic world for one!).

And yet, it is a collective effort. Shall we then, my audio brethren and audio houses large and small, engage to grow and bring new life to this industry—audio—that we know and love so very well.

Sincerely,

K.E. Heartsong Editor-in-Chief

THE CREW

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

K. E. Heartsong

Managing Editor

Kathe Lieber

Senior Editor(s)

Andre Marc

Gérard Rejskind

Reviewer

Charles Brown

Andre Marc

Columnists

Kathe Lieber

Gérard Rejskind

HermanMiller

By Charles Brown

With the creation of the Moon Voice 22 speaker, Simaudio begins the inevitable next step of fulfilling their destiny as one of the most impressive one-stop high-end audio manufacturing centres anywhere. However, it took 40 years to complete the circle and create their first speakers. In a public interview, Costa

The brains behind this trinity is the Moon Neo ACE Integrated Streaming Amplifier, a hi-fi totality in one box: a 50W per channel integrated A/B amplifier with a moving magnet phono stage, a headphone amp, an ESS Sabre DAC that can handle streams of up to 32 bit/ 384 kHZ, all of this coupled with two rearmounted RCA inputs, a front-mounted stereo

question arose: what speakers would pair well with the new Integrated Amp? At this point, you can see Simaudio’s dilemma: recommend a competitor’s product or begin to entertain the heretofore unimaginable? Everyone in the long-term high-end audio business is leery of venturing into unknown territory. However, the germ of the idea to create a Gestalt model of hi-fi integration where your Moon Neo ACE Integrated Streaming Amp, an acronym for “A Complete Experience,” is harmonized with its own specially designed speakers--well, that type of integration was simply too good to say no to. Simaudio took the plunge.

digital. Beautifying the front of the Neo ACE is the visually accommodating OLED screen, which deserves its own award for its readability from any angle and in any light. The build quality of the ACE is highly laudable, with an appealingly chic minimalist design, available in both black and silver. The controller is easy to use and solid enough to suggest a welcoming authority.

If the Moon Neo ACE is the brains behind the trinity, the MiND--Moon intelligent Network Device--is the digital “consciousness” of the entire system. This is the operating system, controlled through the downloadable

Vincent Van Gogh - The Garden of Saint Paul's Hospital

MiND app, that supports and plays any audio file it can find on your network. Let me say that if I found setting up the ACE through WiFi and Bluetooth easy, then anyone can do it. Not only does the Moon Neo ACE do everything--minus the CD player, which is easily accommodated through an external CD player hooked up to ACE’s generous digital and analog inputs--it had to do everything. Let me explain.

There is a maxim in the audio industry that folks start collecting music in their

Seabreeze turntable. I have quite a collection of CDs and some ripped CDs, lots of vinyl, and now my Apple Music streaming service, because I’ve experienced the big so-called innovations in the music industry and seen everything--so far. If you were born in the 1980s, there is a statistical probability you were a child of Napster, the “community shared file.”All this is a fascinating background story to the now ubiquitous streaming services of Tidal, Spotify, Apple Music and more. My point is that Simaudio read the tea leaves and

certain technical audio platform that naturally produces a behaviour bias in favour of that audio platform. Do folks continue to collect music on different platforms? Yes. But there is a behaviour conditioning that is set in motion in whichever decade in the Hi-Fi industry you began your listening. I began listening to music in the 1960s—everything from Frank Sinatra to the Byrds, the Beatles, Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Dvořák’s New World Symphony, you get the gist, all played on a

digital-conscious app.

From James Levine’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony no. 5 with the Philadelphia Orchestra on CD, to Christian Gerhaher’s magnificent recording of Mahler’s Lieder, with Gerold Huber supplying some of the most intelligent piano accompaniment I’ve ever heard, I hear a neutral soundscape, served up without fatigue, in a beautifully matter-offact manner, never sterile, but a revelation of the integrity of the recording and its artists. To

use a well-worn cliché, the ACE gets out of the way; it presents the sound and leaves it to your speakers to further translate three-dimensional sound through two points of light.

The beginning of Fleetwood Mac’s Dream has an electrifying punch and vivacity. The classic vinyl edition of Dream played through the ACE’s phono amp revealed the same illumination, but only after having turned up

On each interior left and right wall of the Voice 22s is Simaudio’s patent pending Curved Groove Dumping, or CGD. This is a routed half-inch-wide channel moving down the wall of the speaker at varying distances from the edge, filled with rubbery compound to accomplish one job--to reduce any and all superfluous and unwelcome resonances. This patent pending is expected to reduce unwanted resonances more than just the traditional use of bracing.

scintillating metallic cymbal sound that yells forward texture in spades. No masking, no recessed buried sound, just texture.

I am starting to love this ACE and the ease with which it can bring all my music to light. But let’s take a closer look at the speakers.

Beautifully finished in high-gloss black or white with a supremely fitted quality magnetic front grill, these babies enter a horrendously competitive and saturated market. We’re talking either genius or madness here.

The second claim to uniqueness is the waveguide—you can see this at first glance. The waveguide surrounding the tweeter is cut low, indeed very low, so the tweeter’s dome is as close to the mid-range woofer as possible. Couple this with the tweeter sitting further back from the front baffle, aligned with the lower driver, and you create a significant level of coherence between the two drivers. This translates to a wider dispersion and a broader sitting position where you can enjoy the sweet spot. And the very low crossover frequency point of 1500 Hz brings the added bonus of an obvious heightened clarity to the midrange. This will become apparent when we discuss some of my listening examples.

Classically trained pianist Hania Rani’s second most recent album is On Giacometti,

an intriguing winter-like soundscape written to accompany a documentary on the life and works of Swiss/Italian sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Giacometti lived in Paris after the Second World War and took long silent walks with Samuel Beckett, drank in cafés with JeanPaul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and was a seminal painter and sculptor of that incredible period just before and after the Second World War.

I am streaming the opening piece, Allegra, once again through my iPhone 10, using Apple Music through the ACE Neo and finally through the Moon Voice 22 speakers. Over four minutes, we hear her prepared piano sounds—echoladen and muted acoustic pianosynthesized keyboard sounds, real strings and what we would call musique concrète sounds, in a layered textured organized soundscape that does not offer motivic and rhythmic development but a dream-like stream of ear-catching pitch and non-pitched sounds, through a purposely blurred and pleasant texture of arpeggiated sounds with doleful string melodies. Difficult to describe, easier to get hooked on. Background, middleground and foreground on this recording are displayed wonderfully by the Voice speakers. The tone clusters in the strings are presented with a neutral and silky sound, never any sense of glare or harshness; midrange cello melodies play effortlessly, absent any exhaustive listener

response; and on Struggle, the cello C2 note— 65.4 Hz played and repeated with a modest crescendo—is displayed clearly and audibly, without the often heard “bass bloom.” There is an unpretentious opening through which Rani’s improvised and yet organized anarchy-yes, I am aware of the apparent contradiction-flows honestly from the ACE and through the bookshelf speakers that offer us both clarity and smoothness of sound, and with a surprisingly wide soundstage.

“Um Mitternacht,” the fourth of six poems by the 19th-century poet Friedrich Rückert, set to music by Gustav Mahler, is my favourite, employing a Protestant chorale-like ending, with the inevitable probing darkness that is so characteristic of Mahler’s music and the words of Rückert’s opening stanzas. I am going to use Christa Ludwig’s superb

Vincent Van Gogh - Butterflies and Poppies

rendering of the Rückert lieder from 1967 ,with Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonic Orchestra.

Listening to Ludwig through the Voice 22s, there are so many details to note. The pianissimo descending motif sounded by horns and assisted by the tuba descending to a low A just before rehearsal Number 9, and then ultimately to a low E, three bars before the end of the piece--the A in the tuba is remarkably clear; less audible is the super low E, with an approximate low frequency of 32 Hz. Coming from a bookshelf speaker, the tonal clarity of these low notes is quite good. But for me, one of the most impressive details is the unequivocal fluidity and continuity throughout the expansive range Mahler wrote for mezzo. From a low B in the mezzosoprano’s range to a high G, first space above the treble clef, there is not a hint of separation from below, at, or above the crossover point of 1500Hz. No obvious handover point can be heard in the singing; the drivers are fully integrated. Ludwig’s voice is seamlessly reproduced by the Voice 22s. And thus we can say about the Voice 22s without equivocation: their projection of the human voice is simply outstanding.

In conclusion, I would like to give Simaudio’s--and I don’t wish to be sacrilegious--holy trinity, the Neo and the Voice 22s, a highly recommended status for all audiophiles. The system’s clear and tonally pleasing neutrality offers the discerning audiophile a completely welcoming soundscape, whether with vinyl or streaming,

or with an added CD player. The ease with which the MiND can be accessed in order to play any audio file is simply remarkable. The Voice 22s, in spite of obvious generic appearances, are anything but generic. The engineering details noted earlier in the review yield a sonic ability that transcends your average bookshelf speaker, offering a treble range that is silk to the ear, with the midrange bringing forth the sun of clarity. Separation of instrumental colours and the warmth of these colours is quite remarkable; from Rani to Mahler, to Berlioz’s Requiem to Fleetwood Mac, the Neo does its job, steps out of the way and allows the Voice 22s to express the original sound with added complements of beautiful clarity, balance, and a warm tonality. I can honestly state that the harmonic soundscape of all the pieces I listened to had the balance my mind expected to be there. That’s saying something. This may be one of the most unique adventures in the Hi-Fi industry where a company successfully builds cross-platforms in order to achieve a Gestalt ideal that can service just about all the evolution of the music industry in one integrated amplifier, and can proudly claim to finally fulfill this brilliant amp with its own specifically designed speakers. Whether you buy the Trinity, the Neo or the Voice 22s alone, you will gain outstanding quality from Simaudio’s components. What was heretofore unimaginable for Simaudio is now imaginable. Bravo!

AKRM-C

VERITY OTELLO

By K. E. Heartsong

VERITY OTELLO

It is said that our aural memory or “aural perspective” is quite short, and when we attempt to recall it, quite inexact and perhaps even fanciful. And while this may well be true in general, the emotion tied to a given aural event, I believe, can certainly conjure the sound and the feeling, regardless of how long ago and far away the memory. My memories of Verity’s earlier speakers— Fidelio and the original Parsifal —conjure an experience wherein both speakers brought the music so close, so real-to-life, so textural and palpable as to be unforgettable. I owned the Fidelio speakers and for the time I spent listening to the Parsifals, perhaps I should have owned them as well. Cars, however, very nice cars, got in the way for a moment.

This brief introduction brings me to the review of the Verity Audio Otello, a sibling to its brothers—the Parsifal and the Otello. The question of the moment, however, is how

does the Otello measure up to its brethren and the speakers currently in-house?

REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the equipment actually sounds, and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various accoutrement, specifications, etc. Think of this review, then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Queen’s Gambit, In the Shadow of the Moon, etc.—that likewise starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

THE SETUP

My listening room’s dimensions are 15 feet (4.57 m) by 30 feet (9.14 m). My system is placed along the short wall. The left side of the room is open, while on the right side there are two very large, double-paned windows, with very effective (sound- defusing/absorbing) blinds. The floors are hardwood, the external walls are concrete, covered by large rugs with underpadding, and the internal walls are the robust ‘1960s-era build found in high-rise

Wassily Kandinsky - Geometric

VERITY OTELLO

buildings. All one has to do is walk in to understand the solidity and the quiet.

The Verity Otellos are easy to set up and will take but a little time to position and then to set them atop their “speaker plinths.” I reviewed the instruction manual for the Otello and then went on my own experience for their setup. In the end, the Otellos were nine feet apart, three feet from the back wall, and facing forward with no toe-in.

THE SOUND

“Perspective. Use it or lose it.” There were two other speakers inhouse for review while the Verity Otello was here. And each speaker—Tri-Art OPEN 5, Vivid Audio Kaya 45s—sported a vastly different voice. In comparison, a speaker’s prior strength would either be diminished or improved relative to one of the other speakers and there was little subtlety in those subjective aural “measurements.” The overall review process as a result of analyzing these three quite different speakers, would result in raising the bar for any subsequent product to qualify for any award.

The Verity Otellos are very energetic/ dynamic and the soundstage is wide, fairly deep, though in relation to the Tri-Art OPEN 5s and the Vivid Audio Kaya 45s, more shallow than both. And when it comes to choral or live music, it exhibits a constriction with regard to the depth of the performance, which tends to place performers along a relatively narrow band. This results in choral and live presentations via the Otello as not optimally reproduced or realized or convincing. The Otello possesses a weight and gravitas that provide for a well-structured foundation across the entire frequency range, and that pays dividends with regard to the midrange. The Otello facilitates a near in-room experience with vocalists and instrumentalists via a midrange centre-fill that can suspend disbelief in the reproduction of a performance in favour of its in-room manifestation.

Further, there is a transparency and resolution that together unearth details which bring to life one 40-year-old soundtrack— Bladerunner—which, in this case, transports me to the movie theatre where the epic sci-fi film noir—Bladerunner—was first seen. The Otellos, in this sense, have conjured a memory that plays out for me across the soundtrack. I

reach out and touch tactile palpability that attaches itself to the various representations of Joan Shelly’s eponymous album plays “We’d Be Home Now” (Joan Shelly, No Quarter Records) and finds Joan’s voice centered, textured, wonderfully palpable, almost in-room and real, and Nathan Salsburg on guitar stage left. There is a familiar reach out and touch palpability conjured beautifully, no doubt, by the interplay of the “soft neo ring dome tweeter, the doped polypropylene midrange, and the edge coated reed/paper pulp cone

Choral or the stage for its reproduction, as mentioned earlier, is noticeably constricted via the Verity Otello and lies across a very narrow front to back plane. Though in truth this is the effective or default capability for the vast majority of speakers, both closed and open, which are generally unable to accurately or convincingly reproduce choral or live music. If these are not genres/ styles of music on your list, then you will be well served by the Verity Otello.

Treble heights are scaled easily and beautifully by the Otellos and there is no diminishment, audiokeyreviewsCA.com

VERITY OTELLO

no harshness, no shrill or truncated notes, just “The facts Ma’am,” of the performance. Tone and timbre at these elevated treble heights adhere naturally to their instrumental progenitors with a texture that again places them in-room. The overall treble

presentation is delicate, refined, sweetly beautiful, and highly resolved.

As “Rachel’s Song” (Bladerunner, East West UK) plays, it is both grounded and ethereal and the Otellos capture the dichotomy beautifully. There is no doubt that the Otellos have recreated the intheatre experience of Bladerunner across the frequency spectrum in their relay of not only sound information but sight and feeling as well. Interesting.

As Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (Columbia) plays, there is an immediacy and clarity that is quite good. As “Freddie Freeloader, Blue in Green, All Blues,” follows musical pieces across the album, the horns, the piano, the various cymbals are all alive and dimensional, in their given spatial segment across the stage, at depth and well resolved for this studio recording.

THE DESIGN

The Verity Otello maintains the classic lines and volumes of a box speaker that gives the nod to traditional speaker design. In their Makore wood finish, they are eye-catching and quite beautiful. They are also of medium height and weight. The Otellos sit on two robust “speaker plinths” with adjustable feet for levelling the speakers. All in all, they are a beautifully designed speaker.

CONCLUSION

The Verity Otello is without doubt a very accomplished speaker, able to facilitate one’s “suspension of disbelief” when listening to a variety of music via its transparency and resolution, its ability to unearth detail, and its way with dynamics, space, and texture.

Its failings are slight and, dare I say, universal, as they are shared by the vast majority of closed-box speakers and many open-baffle speakers as well, which do not excel at the reproduction of choral and live music and creating the most open, detailed, and ambient-rich space for their rendering.

That said, the Verity Otellos are nonetheless deserving of our HIGH NINES award for their remarkable way with vocals, which time and again brings performers into one’s listening space, a treble that extends nicely and sweetly, with no ill effects and a bass response that consistently provides a firm foundation for the music.

Pros: Exceptional midrange, very good highs, and good bass response.

Cons: None.

THE SYSTEM(S)

• Grimm Audio MU1 Streamer

• Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC

• Bricasti Design M1SE

• Tri-Art Preamp & Monoblock Amps (100W)

• Tri-Art OPEN 5 Speakers

• Vivid Audio Kaya 45

• Audience FrontRow Interconnects, USB, Ethernet Cables/Wires

• RSX MAX Power Cords

• AntiCable Power Cords

• Audience AdeptResponse aRS-T4 Power Conditioner

THE SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwidth: 30 Hz to 50 kHz +/- 3dB

• Woofer: 2 x 7-inch edge coated reed/paper pulp cone

• Midrange: 5-inch mineral-filled polypropylene cone with 2-inch symmetrical-drive voice-coil

• Tweeter1 : 1-inch ring-dome Power handling: 100 watts music power

• Efficiency: 93 dB @ 1w @ 1 m

• Impedance: 8 Ω nominal, 3.8 Ω minimum

• Break-in time: 75 hours (63%), 400 hours (99%)

• H x W x D: 43.6 x 10.9 x 18.6 “ (110.7 x 27.6 x 47.2 cm )

• Weight: 150 lbs (75 kg) /pair 190 lbs (86 kg) packed / pair

THE COMPANY

Verity Audio, Inc.

Otello: $19,345-$21,285

1005, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Ave Suite 150 Quebec (Quebec)

G2E 5L1 CANADA

email: info@verityaudio.com

THE DISTRIBUTOR

High Fidelity Services

2 Keith Way, Suite 4, Hingham MA 02043

781.987.3434

www.hifiservices.com

info@hifiservices.com

AKRM-C

GRACE NOTES

By Kathe Lieber

MUSIC AND THE MIND: BOOKS TO DEEPEN YOUR APPRECIATION OF MUSIC

…music over the years has proved to be an adventure, never experienced exactly the same way twice. It has been a source of continual surprise and satisfaction for me.

—Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession

In my compact apartment, the music room and library happily cohabitate—a space where I indulge in my twin passions (with side trips to the kitchen and wine cellar, of course). Lately, I’ve been doubling my pleasure by reading about music, revisiting a couple of books that have greatly enhanced my appreciation of music over the years. You’ll want to dip into them repeatedly and digest the information slowly, with frequent stops to consult your personal playlist.

I recall being blown away by This Is Your Brain on Music when it first came out. Levitin has a formidable CV: neuroscientist, professional musician, best-selling author, and Professor Emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University. Along the way, he’s been a session musician, producer of pop and rock records, stand-up comic, and

would-be llama farmer. But it’s his curious and capacious mind, capable of untangling and explaining complex concepts in readerfriendly terms, that makes this book such a delight. Levitin delves into the major elements of music: pitch, timbre, key, harmony, loudness, rhythm, meter, and tempo, explaining how the brain and the ear interpret them, with many musical illustrations. For example, the ending of “A Day in the Life” on the CD of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band includes a few seconds of sound at 15 KHz that most adults over 40 can’t hear. (I’ll pause now so you can go and listen for yourself.)

—Paul Simon

The way that I listen to my own records is for the sound of them; not the chords or the lyrics—my first impression is of the overall sound.”

Tamara-De-Lempicka -Lys et RosesJaunes,1949

Perhaps my favourite section of the book is where Levitin discusses music and the mind. “Musical activity,” he writes, “involves nearly every region of the brain that we know about, and nearly every neural subsystem.” The brain has a capacity of reorganization that vastly exceeds what was previously believed, an ability called neuroplasticity. Through experience, we learn to associate different sounds with different feelings: car horns with danger, for instance, or certain friends’ voices with stress or serenity. Infants, adolescents, and adults all learn to appreciate music in very different ways.

the same author. Here, Levitin probes why we listen to what we like to listen to. “…one man’s Mozart is another’s Madonna, one person’s Prince is another’s Purcell, Parton, or Parker.” Scant attention has been paid to the origins of music, although “Americans spend more money on music than they do on prescription drugs or sex, and the average American hears more than five hours of music per day.” He notes that “Virtually every song ever recorded in the history of the world is available on the Internet somewhere—for free.”

There’s more, much more, including emotion, anticipation, and instinct, but I’ll refer you to the source—one of the most rewarding reads you’ll ever come across. At the very end of the book, Levitin tells us that his favourite pieces of music are Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, “Joanne” by Michael Nesmith, “Sweet Georgia Brown” by Chet Atkins and Lenny Breau, and “The End” by the Beatles. Yes, of course, I dropped everything and went to listen, with fresh ears.

Next up: The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, by

Levitin zeroes in on six kinds of songs: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love. What are the common factors? Well, says Levitin, the real question is not what all musics have in common, but how they differ. This takes him deep into the role the musical brain has played in shaping human nature and disparate cultures over the past 50,000 years or so. His primary focus is music with lyrics—the songs that surround us. Trying to avoid ethnocentric biases, he addresses the broad and continuously evolving spectrum of diverse forms of music. What sets humans apart from other animals is that we make art, all kinds of art, and music is a powerful part of our art. No less a source than the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica stated that poetry has had as much of an effect on human destiny as the discovery of fire. Lyrics are poetry, and the lyrics to popular songs just happen to be a particular kind of poetry. Think about that for a moment.

Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know…”

—Sting

Before there was language, of course, there were sounds. As the human brain evolved, rudimentary verbalizations stimulated the types of neural structures to support language in its broadest sense. From there, it was a hop, skip and a jump to three key cognitive abilities: perspective-taking, representation, and rearrangement. Humans learned to encode relations between different things—a cornerstone of all human musical systems.

Language, music, poetry, and art developed, made possible by the evolution of a common brain structure. Creative brains, Levitin says, became more attractive during centuries of sexual selection. But how? Well, by the basic principle of Darwinian natural selection. “…humans who just happened to find creativity attractive may have hitched their reproductive wagons to musicians and artists, and—unbeknownst to them at the time—conferred a survival advantage on their offspring.”

on the gene that gave rise to these feelings.”

In nearly all popular music, melody serves as the scaffolding on which the lyrics hang. Poetry, in tandem with melody and harmony, is meant to convey an emotional message and a sense of momentum. Most of us, Levitin points out, listen to songs we like over and over and over again. “…because of the mutually reinforcing constraints of rhythm, melody and accent structure—combined with a shot of dopamine or other neurochemicals that are known to accompany music listening—our relationship with song becomes vivid and long-lasting, activating more regions of the brain than anything else we know of.”

Not until the Beatles burst onto the musical scene did fans begin to expect that musicians would write their own material. Lennon and McCartney intentionally (according to Sir Paul) injected personal pronouns into as many lyrics and song titles as they could: “She Loves You,” “Please Please Me, “From Me to You.” I’ll have to return to my Beatles archive yet again to listen for this— hardly a hardship.

“Making and listening to music, then, feels good not because of anything intrinsic in the music. Rather, those of our ancestors who just happened to feel good during musical activities are the ones who survived to pass

And that’s the wonderful thing these two books accomplish: they send you back to your music library (and of course to Google, YouTube, etc.) to listen as you contemplate how the music came to be. It takes a neuroscientist with a restless intellect and a far-ranging passion for music to make these connections and write about them so thoughtfully. That brain belongs to Daniel Levitin.

Just say what it is, simple English, make it rhyme, and put a backbeat on it.”

—John Lennon on the essence of rock and roll song-writing

AKRM-C

Imogene Cunningham

SILENT ANGEL BONN NX & GENESIS GX

By K.E. Heartsong

Imagine for a moment that the people around you, all the people around you, are visibly and unnaturally shaking. And it is perceptible, if you concentrate and look very closely. However, as you look more closely, you notice that there is a strange noise that accompanies the unnatural shaking. A look of

audio houses developed CD players, DACs, and other digital wares. It would be some of these same audio houses that would first understand and then deal with jitter, toward its ‘ever-increasing’ diminishment—‘Jitter Diminishment.’

I have long witnessed, the reduction of jitter via the ever-improving quality of the signal, the resultant bits and bytes, and the

people for whom all of this is true. Jitter. The ‘skinny’ on jitter is that it’s always, well, shaking because its timing is off. And, ahhh, it’s always making noise too because of the shaking. It’s a wreck. And that shaking and noise—(electronic timing artifact) —is affecting the music (all of our music!) in some very weird and uncomely ways. Just saying. And a lot of people really don’t know or believe that it even exists! Can you imagine that?!

It was the CD player that brought ‘jitter’ to the attention of a great many, and certainly many of those in the audio industry, whose

DACs, streamers, etc. Recently, I have become aware of another level of ‘Jitter Diminishment’ that makes its way to consumers who value ‘high fidelity’—distortion free musical playback. My first experience with a ‘jitter diminishment’ component of this ‘raised’ level was the Silent Angel Bonn N8 pro. The Bonn N8 Pro with its 10MHz Word Clock was an eyeopening experience and has never left my system (I bought it). This, however, brings me to a higher level still with regard jitter diminishment, which brings me to this next review.

SILENT ANGEL BONN NX & GENESIS GX

Vincent Van Gogh - Chair with Pipe

SILENT ANGEL BONN NX & GENESIS GX

There are two new Silent Angel products— Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch and the Genesis GX Word Clock—tasked singularly and collectively with higher levels of jitter diminishment. Are they largely on a par with the Silent Angel Bonn N8 Pro with its inbuilt 10MHz Word Clock? Or do they raise the bar significantly?

REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start, below, with how the equipment actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various parts, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Arrival, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Terminator, In the Shadow of the Moon, The Queen’s Gambit, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

THE SOUND

Silent Angel In. Silent Angel Out. Now, let’s bring to mind that earlier scene in which everyone was shaking and their bodies were

making all those strange noises as a result. Yep, jitter’s ugly. While we may not be able to do anything for the good people in this scene, the analogy hopefully provides a rough understanding and a wee bit of practical insight into what jitter is and why we want to diminish it—we want those people to stop shaking (and making that weird noise)!—like our music.

The Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch and the Genesis GX Word Clock (NX/GX Combo) were employed in my reference two-channel system and my reference electrostatic headphone setup (see SYSTEMS).

The first part of the review entailed placing the NX/GX Combo in a given system and taking notes on the differences of the system when there had been no switch or word clock, or when the Bonn N8 Pro Networks Switch w/10MHz word clock was replaced—Switch In. The second part of the review entailed taking both components out of the system entirely and analyzing the difference—Switch Out. And to reduce

variables, I used, solely, the Genesis GX’s strength relative to the Bonn N8 Pro—its 25MHz Clock.

In my review of the Silent Angel Bonn N8 Pro Network Switch, I gave the following observations after initially placing it into the

rather notable leaps in improvement— transparency, resolution, ambiance, air, staging, etc—and overall musicality which conveyed greater emotional pull. Tone and timbre were more natural, there was a better realization of texture, while decay, ambiance, air, and even the indrawn breath of performers were now

“That which was quasi-intelligible … is now clear, has entered the mix earlier than previously heard, and is also more transparent and better resolved.”

Experience and hindsight are two potentially powerful tools for a reviewer and especially during a time when technological improvements blaze forward, leading to evercontinuing improvements. And this is what was experienced when switching the NX/GX Combo into the reference two-channel system and then into the reference headphone system.

If there was no network switch or word clock before the NX/GX Combo was switched in, then the improvements were vast and immediate, across the board. This was easily heard in both systems and it encompassed

The music, better refined and more organic, arose from a background that was black quiet.

When the NX/GX Combo replaced the Bonn N8 pro the improvements were also very immediate, though not as stark as having no network switch and/or word clock. The NX/GX Combo, for instance, brought an overall clarity and focus, as if quasi-translucent layers were summarily removed. This resulted in being able to hear (see) a good deal more of the stage, the performers, the crowd, their interaction, and the ‘micro-sounds’—violin bow positioned, subtle finger movements across the strings of a cello (heretofore unheard), the turn of a page, a stifled cough, etc. Further, this combination of greater ‘jitter diminishment’

SILENT ANGEL BONN NX & GENESIS GX

shoulders, settled one in to hear the music, and, unfortunately, often prevented one from taking review notes.

However, once the NX/GX Combo was taken out of the system, things got very interesting. My reference system has evolved to be a highly transparent, resolving, detail rich, musical renderer of signals and streams and waveforms. It has deftly allowed me to parse even ethernet cables switched in/out, at the very top of the chain. And it has recently gotten even better with the addition of the Vivid Audio Kaya 45s!

The above said, it was easier for me to discern the difference without the NX/GX Combo than I would ever have imagined. The resultant increase in jitter made the music

measure of previous detail, and more, well, strident. This I would never have even imagined, despite my long years as an audiophile and music lover.

I am trying to think of a single person I know who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, especially given my very revealing though musical reference system. I cannot think of that person. My friend’s daughter (15) couldn’t miss the change, it was that stark. Needless to say, it was a firm letdown when the NX/GX Combo was removed from the system after having lived with it for weeks.

If your system is fairly discerning— transparent, resolving, detailed and musical— you will immediately get the difference, especially if you’ve not been using a network

switch or clock at all. If you’ve only been using a network switch you will still, very much, hear the difference. However, it is taking the NX/GX Combo out that will provide a most profound understanding of that which you no longer have. At least, that is what it has done for me and my system.

THE CONCLUSION

The Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch and the Genesis GX Word Clock will together dramatically reduce jitter, period. What the switch-in of the Silent Angel NX/GX combo will entail is an eyeopening experience and a real-world introduction to ‘Jitter 101’. What this will mean in practical terms for one’s music is greater focus and resolution and transparency, more detail, and a better overall appreciation of your music. The prior ‘noise’ or ‘shakes’ as the above analogy attempts to define has simply been dealt with to a much greater degree than most will have ever experienced. Other aspects of improvement will be that tones and timbres will be more germane/natural to their points of origin— vocalists, musicians. And there will be refinement via the Silent Angel NX/GX Combo noticeable in the more natural and nuanced presentation, the sense of ease, and greater access to a performance’s spatial cues.

If what you seek is the next level with regard to effectively diminishing jitter and its attendant troublesome gremlins to a state of dramatic unnoticeability (‘shake-free’), you may

wish to look no further than the Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch and the Silent Angel Genesis GX Word Clock combo. The Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch and the Silent Angel Genesis GX Word Clock are easy winners of our DIAMOND AWARD for excellence, which takes into account their build quality, their ‘service skill’—‘jitter diminishment’ in the interest of the music— and their ability to do it exceptionally well.

Pros: An exceptional option for mid-fi to highfi systems that will provide improvement across all aspects of the music and especially so if you do not have an optimized network switch and word clock already employed in your system.

Cons: None.

THE COMPANY

Thunder Data, Co., Ltd.

Silent Angel Bonn NX : $3999

Silent Angel Genesis GX : $3799

Thunder Data Co., Ltd

www.silent-angel-audio.com

For specifications see web.

AKRM-C

Claude Monet - The Port Of Le Havre, 1872

THE OVERVIEW

By Gérard Rejskind

HI-FI’S CANADIAN ROOTS

High fidelity for the home began just after the Second World War. The hostilities were over, and so was the Great Depression. The industrialized world was about to enter a long boom period, with people earning enough disposable income to indulge their taste in music and the technology that underpinned hifi. Hi-fi began as a hobby, but rapidly became an industry.

It was, however, a fledgling industry, one in which it was expected that a purchaser would be comfortable with a soldering iron. Early amplifiers had switches that felt as though they might break off.

Enter the Japanese. Japan was not yet the industrial powerhouse it would become, and product names like

Sony, Panasonic, and Pioneer were not yet household words. Still, their hi-fi products found space on store shelves. They had slick styling and controls that were at once solid and silky. The only problem was that they didn’t sound all that good. The result was a second wave of products, mostly from Britain and some Western European countries, with improved aesthetics and superior sound. Oddly enough, these systems caught on first in… Canada. One result was that a number of Canadian companies became pioneers in the quest for better music reproduction

Bryston

This Ontario company claims 35 years of history, but it is in fact older than that. It began by making technical equipment for hospitals. From there, it produced audio gear for sound professionals, and then joined the hi-fi revolution, making amplifiers and

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec - Pierreuse

preamplifiers. More recently, it has developed digital-to-analog converters and other products for the digital age. It now belongs to a loudspeaker company, and so it has added loudspeakers to its product repertoire.

Bryston was among the first in the industry to offer a 20-year warranty. In actual fact, it would not verify the purchase date, simply repairing any unit that didn’t work. Internet sales and the grey market have forced it to require proof of purchase, as other companies do.

Victor

Sima (Simaudio)

Victor studied electronics in his native Israel before moving to Montreal and building amplifiers for commercial applications. I met him just after my magazine (UHF) had published a warm review of the Robertson 4010, a power amplifier from Singapore. He was convinced that if we played his amplifier alongside the Robertson, the difference would be slight. I invited him to test his hypothesis. I played music through our reference system of the day, including the Robertson. Then I substituted the Sima amp and we listened again. When it was over, there was a long silence. “I’ll be back in two months,” he said. True to his word, he returned with his first true hi-fi amplifier, the 2050, and a month later, the 3050. I welcomed him to the hi-fi club.

The rest is history. Victor eventually developed a totally new configuration that he

called Céleste, which could give a large amplifier the liquid clarity we associate with much smaller amps. Before selling Sima Audio to what became a larger company now called Simaudio, he developed a new circuit that would power some of the best amplifiers of the time.

Vince Bruzzesse (Totem)

It’s difficult to remember that at one time, a small loudspeaker was a cheap loudspeaker. Early speakers were mostly big, perhaps too big for their own good, and you got a “bookshelf” speaker if you couldn’t afford anything better…which is to say, bigger.

So I was surprised when an audio distributor sent me a pair of startlingly small speakers and asked me to advise him on whether he should take them on. I knew that small speakers could have their own advantages, but at $1,500, the projected selling price of the Totem Model One was high for the time. Moreover, the Model One was Totem’s only model, which made it difficult to compete with larger speaker lineups.

But they really did sound good, clean and clear, with a convincing stereo image. My advice: take these little speakers on, but put better connectors on them. How could you convince potential buyers that a lot of money had been spent on the inside if they couldn’t see something good on the outside?

Equipped with WBT gold-plated binding posts and with $100 trimmed from its initial sales price, the Model One was a success. The

designer, Vince Bruzzesse, developed many more speakers, and his brand became famous worldwide. The factory is still in Montreal, but Totems are sold around the world, and small speakers get far more respect.

Winslow Burhoe (Energy)

Starting in the late 1970s, the National Research Council invited several speaker manufacturers to join a research project. The goal: to identify speaker characteristics that would make speakers “sound good in blind tests.” Participants would be able to use the NRC’s large anechoic chamber. The characteristics were no surprise. Broad frequency response was an important criterion, as were low distortion and wide sound dispersion. Winslow Burhoe, a Boston engineer and musician who came to Canada to take up the challenge, developed some of the most astonishingly musical speakers available then or since. His magnum opus was a series of speakers dubbed the Energy 22, built by EPI (Epicure Products Inc.) in Toronto. I still own a pair of his best speakers, the Energy Reference Connoisseurs. The rectangular enclosures looked conventional, but the drivers did not. The dual hyperdome tweeter had extraordinarily wide dispersion, one of the desired characteristics. The custom-built woofer was unusual too, with a long throw that could handle high power without distortion. The synthetic materials chosen could not be bonded together with glue, so Burhoe sewed them together.

EPI continued Energy production for some years. Along the way, it picked up another Canadian speaker maker, Mirage. EPI itself developed the Mirage flagship, the M1. It was a money loser because it cost more to produce than speakers could reasonably sell for at the time. Alas, the EPI founder had no succession plan, and at the end of his life his huge assembly facility closed down. The Energy and Mirage brands were sold to Klipsch.

Reference 3A

The company’s founder and designer, Daniel Dehay, is not Canadian, but his loudspeakers were destined to attract Canadian ears and his company would find a home in Ontario.

I first met Dehay at the Summer CES show in Chicago in 1990. He had a room filled with speakers with carbon fibre woofers, with a lively sound that kept visitors from wandering away. One visitor accused him of cheating and of having concealed a subwoofer behind the speaker. Without saying a word, Daniel dropped one of the speakers, still playing, on the visitor’s lap.

Daniel Dehay was on his second company, both based in France: 3A and then 3A Design Acoustique. His new series was by far the most marketable. The entry model, which didn’t sound like an entry product at all, was priced at just above $1,000.

Most of Daniel’s speakers shared certain design features: slanted fronts for better coherence, carbon-fibre woofer cones that were not conical at all but with flattened-out profiles for better dispersion, and crossover

networks reduced to their simplest expression: a single high-quality capacitor to protect the tweeter from overload.

As the speakers became more popular, Dehay took on partners with deeper pockets and like many designers before him, lost control of his company. The new owners, however, didn’t have the technical knowledge that running a high fidelity company required, and 3A disappeared.

But it would return. Daniel Dehay moved to Switzerland and launched his third company, Référence 3A. He created higherend versions of his best-known designs, culminating in the Suprema II, a Corian-clad two-way speaker seated atop a massive pushpull passive woofer operating from 50 Hz down to bedrock. I still listen to music mostly through the Supremas.

By then Dehay was ready for retirement, and the company was sold to his Canadian distributor, Divergent Technologies. Dehay gave Divergent some 40 notebooks of designs, and the new Canadian company brought a number of them to market.

Oracle

The turntable company was founded in Quebec’s Eastern Townships by two brothers, Marcel and Jacques Riendeau, in 1979. The original Oracle turntable was a luxury product, intended to be as much a work of art as a music source. It was not an overnight success. Early models had difficulty maintaining accurate speed, and their tone arms looked and sounded unfinished. A

small but influential US audio magazine attacked the fledgling company, accusing designer Marcel Riendeau of dilettantism and somehow simultaneously, industrial espionage. The company outlived the magazine and gradually acquired a high profile among aficionados.

Lower-priced turntables appeared alongside the Oracle, with spectacular styling but without the performance the brand seemed to promise. Amplifiers and other electronic products joined the lineup. A few years ago, the Oracle Origine was warmly reviewed for both its relatively affordable price and its musical performance.

Gershman Acoustics

This Canadian speaker maker needs little introduction, since its products are celebrated worldwide. The company is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Eli Gershman learned his craft in Israel. He engineers the company’s easily identifiable speakers, while his wife, Ofra, is responsible for their visual design. She is also Gershman’s public face and plays a major role in its success.

Oracle speakers have sold at widely varying prices, though its current models cannot be described as entry-level. Indeed, its top model, the Posh, is aimed at audiophiles with substantial budgets.

AKRM-C

Edgar Degas - Danseuse Faisant des Pointes Ballerina

Wayne Thiebaud, Flatland River, 1997

HEED THESIS LINE

Lambda Preamplifier & Gamma Amplifier

By Andre Marc

HEED LAMBDA & GAMMA

Most audiophiles who desire to expand their horizons beyond integrated amplifiers at some point

One manufacturer, Heed Audio, may have what many seek: the Lambda remote controlled preamp and the matching Gamma

entering this arena.

audiokeyreviews.com

Thesis line, which also includes a CD transport, a phono stage, a DAC, mono block amps, and a power supply.

HEED LAMBDA & GAMMA

The Lambda and Gamma are very stylish in appearance, with a minimalist, modern flare. The build quality is terrific, and more than one would expect at these prices. In function, both

power amplifier, housed in a chassis identical to the Lambda, offers up 110 wpc, and is outfitted with high quality speaker binding posts and RCA stereo inputs.

volume control. There is a full function remote control as well. There are five single ended inputs around the back, and, happily, a tape output. There is also a connector for an optional outboard power supply. The Gamma

with sources including a Sonore microRendu streamer feeding a Marantz HD-DAC1, and a Rega Planar 3 turntable, with a Rega phono stage. The speakers were a pair of Spendor A2 floorstanders (review forthcoming). Cabling

was all Audio Art Cable. Everything was plugged into an Audience power conditioner. No other special tweaks were used.

We started off streaming a ton of classic rock from our networked library, powered by ROON, and it honestly took very little time to understand the Heed electronics were exceptionally clean, open, and wonderfully transparent sounding. There was no particular coloration or tonal inequalities that we could detect. We streamed mostly CD rips in the beginning and were pretty dazzled by how excellent plain old Redbook digital sounded. We cued up a string of classic European progressive rock, leaning toward the off the beaten path and obscure artists for good measure. We enjoyed everything from Goblin, Banco De Mutuo Soccorso, Atoll, Pancake, Golden Earring, Circus, Walrus, and some more familiar bands like the great Renaissance. Not to overlook some of our favorites, we also mined the superb Fairport Convention seven disc archival box set, The First Ten Years. Not much of this music has been released in high resolution, but all these CDs have been mastered with care, most as a labour of love, and without exception they all sounded very organic, with all of their analog goodness preserved. But most importantly, the Heed gear allowed the music to reveal itself out of the mist of time, and made one long for an era when there were real instruments and mysterious compositions to challenge the ear and provide an escape from the mundane.

We wanted to also listen to modern music, which we rabidly consume, so we cued up recent albums from alt-J, Punch Brothers, Eddie Veddor, Big Thief, Josefine Lindstrand, Cate Le Bon, Wovenhand, Walker & Wylde, Lars Bygden, Erdogan Emir, and far too many more to mention. The majority of these albums are 24 bit downloads, and are well recorded. The Heed amplification allowed these new recordings to shine bright, and helped get to the heart of the artist’s intentions.

The Veddor album, Earthling, was a bit of a challenge, as it was produced like a “big” rock record, with more commercial sounding mixes than Veddor’s band Pearl Jam is known for. Clearly, his voice is in superb form, and right up front in the mix. The Heed combo helped produce a coherent picture, with very controlled bass and a very wide soundstage fitting for some of the epic rockers on this album.

The Dream, alt-J’s latest work, is the sound of a band in full creative overdrive, with quirky time signatures, off beat vocal harmonies, and overall experimental spirit, but delivered in a tighter package, with enough left turns to dazzle. The 48 kHz download, with a bit of squashed dynamics, is still a great listen.

Hell On Church Street, the new release from Punch Brothers, is a career highlight, with great, natural sounding production, and varied material, including songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and even Gordon Lightfoot. The interplay between Chris Thile’s mandolin and

HEED LAMBDA & GAMMA

psychedelia” in their own words. Their hazy, dreamy take on folk rock, Silvering, is their debut full length release after several EPs. It is quite simply a sonic trip with flanged and fuzzed out guitars, organ, mysterious melodies, and chanted choruses. The Heed stack made this 24 bit download come to life with three dimensional spacing between instruments, while the mind bending arrangements and fantastical lyrics and vocals, enhanced with plenty of reverb, were certainly far out.

of each album in 24/96 resolution. To say these were the definitive digital versions of these classic albums would be an understatement.

Tracks from “Still Life,” “Godbluff,” and the others were given new life, making overlooked subtle instrumental and vocal passages easy to enjoy. This music is avant-garde even 40 years later. The Heed amplification made complete sense of vocalist Peter Hamill and company’s strange and wonderful musical vision.

We of course also connected our Rega turntable and phono stage to the Heed preamp and spun vinyl extensively. The recent Blue Note all analog reissue of McCoy Tyner’s opus, The Real McCoy, was a thrill in every way. The Lambda and Gamma managed to get the pacing, texture, and overall gestalt of this recording just right. Tyner’s piano was beautifully presented, with the wooden overtones and percussive attacks perfectly preserved. The same goes for the legendary band. Ron Carter’s bass, Elvin Jones’s drums, and Joe Henderson’s tenor sax all had their own position in the mix, but it all came together as a cohesive sonic tapestry.

Delving into more far flung territory, boutique label We Want Sounds has produced two excellent reissues of legendary Egyptian guitarist Omar Korshid’s With Love and Giant + Guitar. The music is transcendental, with belly dance rhythms anchoring both Western and North African instruments, creating a bubbling stew of exotica. The Lambda and Gamma produced startling realism, with Korshid’s stratocaster lines navigating their way through the intoxicating arrangements. These albums brought home the fact that the Heed duo just made music fun to listen to.

CONCLUSION:

The Budapest designed and made Heed Thesis Lambda and Gamma preamplifer and power amplifier are sonically pure no nonsense components. They are for purists who want

analog inputs and a high quality volume control on their preamps, and crave honest, transparent and meaty sound from their power amps. You get all that and more here. All in a nice tidy package, a manageable footprint, and built to a very high standard. Both Heed components ran cool to the touch, and the Lambda remote control was well laid out. We are hard pressed to think of separates at this price point that perform as well as the Heed Thesis components. The Gamma has more than enough power to drive the Spendor A2 speakers we used, and we loved the volume range available on the preamp. For those upgrading from an integrated amplifier and looking to delve into the world of separates, the Heed gets our highest recommendation and a HIGH NINES Award!

THE DISTRIBUTOR Profundo

2051 Gattis School Rd., Suite 540/123

Round Rock, TX USA 78664 510.375.8651

info@profundo.us

profundoaudio.com

AKRM-C

These are the most immersive, dynamic, detail-rich, nuanced, elegant, engaging, emotional, and yes, musical speakers I have ever heard. By far.

Timothy Roth, Positive Feedback

TORUS AUDIO ELITE AVR

By K. E. Heartsong

What can best be said about a power conditioner, other than it gave every component what it needed to perform at its best and took away nothing from them, period.

This is a bit of a different approach to a review for me in that its narrative is of a whole and not broken down across the frequency band; what it does for one it does for them all.

There was a bass hump in the reference system, as some of the diffusion, absorption components had not yet been received. Most people might not have noticed it, but there it was. A friend and fellow reviewer was aware of it and said, “You might want to deal with that.” Well, bass traps had also been contemplated and I was well on my way to selecting the best for AKRMedia’s two-channel reference room. But as many know, this is not a straightforward process, it takes time.

And then a strange thing happened. A new power conditioner arrived from Canada—the TORUS POWER AVR Elite—for review, and given its review date, I needed to get things moving. I powered down all attached equipment, moved the prior power conditioner

out, placed the AVR Elite in its place, replugged all the attached components, and powered the system up.

I let things cook for a day—I played music on repeat at low volume—while the AVR Elite drank its fill of juice, got “limber,” and went about powering the various components.

The very next day, I sat down for a quick listen to see if there was anything that I’d be able to discern immediately from so short a warmup. “Yikes” was the next sound that came issuing forth. The bass hump that had been so prominent on this track prior to the AVR Elite’s placement was gone! In its place was a tight, well-defined upright bass that did not suffer any bass anomalies or the hump. Gone. The massed tympani in Eiji Oue’s “Infernal Dance of King Kashchey” (Stravinsky, Reference Recordings) were as tight as the drums they were supposed to be and their internal vibrations were now audible and clean and clear, which they had not been before. Of course, I paraded through all manner of bassrich tracks and the same was true in every case —bass hump gone and bass tighter and more

Vincent Van Gogh - Vase with Flowers

TORUS AUDIO ELITE AVR

transparent than it had ever been. Wow, a power conditioner!

The dilemma of procuring a bass trap was postponed for the time being. There would need to be greater analysis and testing of the AVR Elite, which would require many, many bass-rich tracks being played. But then a thought arose: what if the prior power

17

conditioner had been the culprit all along? This would take a third avenue of research— the wall.

However, before going to the wall, I wanted to take note of the other areas of improvement where the TORUS AUDIO AVR Elite might provide noticeable benefits. As I prepared to review the TORUS AUDIO AVR Elite power conditioner, I began going through a very long list of music to gain further insight into the AVR Elite and what appeared to be its system changing abilities that lifted or “righted” the music in every respect.

THE SOUND

As per above, it is immediately becoming clear what the AVR Elite did for the reference

system components relative to the rendering of bass notes from upper to mid to lower bass. All such notes were now immediately tighter, better defined, and more what one imagines they were intended to be. The massed tympani in the “Infernal Dance of King Kashchey” (Stravinsky, Reference Recordings) where the previous power conditioner had apparently done harm, was now “cured.” The rounded bass notes, bass humps and boom, had disappeared. And bass instruments and their notes, often to the farthest corners of a given stage, were now realized and vital, taunt and well resolved. Was it the resulting black quiet background via the AVR Elite that orchestrated this none too subtle improvement across the bass region?

What was most notable across the midrange was again clarity and then a foundational weight that created a greater sense of the in-room presence and the textural palpability of performers—a reach out and touch event. There was a greater sense of space and separation, of depth and air, and threedimensionality that no doubt provided assistance and empowered components to beautifully recreate the music entrusted to them. There was also an ease, a lack of harsh edges, a commanding quiet and stillness, and a

continuity that one might associate with analog.

At the treble end of things, violins soared unencumbered and refined, nuanced, beautifully resolved and transparent, and freed of treble nasties, which also came as quite the shock. Was the previous power conditioner truly so poor in empowering the various reference components or was the TORUS POWER AVR Elite just a far better solution? There was even more to the AVR Elite. The soundstage across the board gained as I was now able to hear the depth and breadth of a given stage, a result of the background quiet, no doubt. And as mentioned above, soundstage cues or spatial information —positioning, layering, relative space, air, ambiance, and even movement —were all vastly improved. This led to a more clearly envisioned venue and a naturalness experienced, in toto, across the entire frequency domain when the AVR Elite was part of the system. Bravo!

DESIGN-FUNCTION

If you’re simply going for the TORUS AUDIO AVR Elite, as a power conditioner, it is very easy to install and get going. However, if you are looking to take advantage of its advanced Torus Power Connect capabilities, you’ll need to consult the instruction manual.

The front face of the AVR Elite is clean and simple. There is an On/Off switch on the far left that shines blue when active and an LCD control screen on the far right. The TORUS AUDIO logo stands prominent front and centre on the components’ face.

The back face of the AVR Elite bears 10 receptacles for power cords, an IEC receptacle for the AVR Elite’s power cord, an ethernet port, a USB connector, and a 10A input fuse. The function, of course, is to provide clean, continuous power to components that are

did provide better bass definition than the Other Power Conditioner (it is our philosophy not to throw products under the bus, thus no name) but The Wall was edgy, harsh, strident when compared directly to the AVR Elite. There was also greater noise introduced into the signal with The Wall, which diminished clarity, background quiet, and the identification of spatial characteristics, now buried, needed to

TORUS AUDIO ELITE AVR

connect with a given performance and its venue.

The Other Power Conditioner (OPC): The well-known, expensive, highly awarded OPC provided for beautiful treble extension and clarity and wonderful tone, timbre, and texture. It was, interestingly, a very musical conditioner. However, it collapsed across the bass region—upper, mid, lower. And in direct comparison to the AVR Elite, there was more noise in the signal, an overall lack of comparative clarity, and there were the bass anomalies, which distracted from the music and listening to the music.

CONCLUSIONS

Hands down, the TORUS POWER AVR Elite is an exceptional power conditioner that provides what every component—streamer, DAC, network switch, word clock, preamplifier, amplifier, etc.—needs:clean, continuously flowing power, while doing no harm. And to date there has certainly been no harm. Your experience will of course depend on where you currently stand. If you stand with no power conditioner (just the wall), then the results will be mind-boggling at the very least. If you have a poor to decent to relatively good power conditioner, the results will be no less than eye-opening and at best, revelatory. The power conditioner before the AVR Elite was again well-known, highly awarded, and decidedly more expensive than the TORUS POWER AVR Elite. Suffice to say, that this power conditioner will no longer be employed.

When a component brilliantly does what it was designed to do and gets out of the way to let all the other performers—components— shine, well, it deserves an award. We happily award the TORUS POWER AVR Elite power conditioner our DIAMOND AWARD, well deserved for its exceptional work.

Pros: Enables components to their full potential and takes away nothing.

Cons:

THE COMPANY

Torus Power

601 Magnetic Drive

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

M3J-3J2

Toll Free: 1 (877) 337-9480

sales@toruspower.com

kmain@toruspower.com

AKRM-C

BRASSAÏ (1899-1984) , Le Pont des Arts dans le brouillard, Paris

PARASOUND JC 3+ PHONOPRE

By Andre Marc

RECOMMENDED COMPONENTS

Welcome to AudioKeyREVIEWS Magazine’s Recommended Components, which will become part and parcel of each of our various issues. The purpose of this section is to acquaint the reader with products—speakers, DACs, amplifiers, preamplifiers, turntables, headphones, IEMs, streamers, portable audio, etc. —that we feel are quite exceptional and rise above their like brethren. There will be three categories—Budget, Mid-Tier, and Top-Of-The-Line. In our Budget Recommendations there will be products that compete far above their respective price point and are, generally, also built to reflect this.Our Mid-Tier Recommendations will encompass those products within arms reach, in terms of relative affordability, that present value and a challenge to the vanguard of their respective product niches. Finally, our TOTL Recommendations will be composed of those products that are at the cutting edge of technological advancement now happening across the world. The three categories of recommendations will rotate across the various issues of our magazine and there will also be a fluidity to the products within the various lists. Things change and especially now given our current technological epoch. The various lists, however, will be fixed on the AudioKeyReviews.com website.

Wassily Kandinsky - Untitled

RECOMMENDED COMPONENTS

AURORASOUND HEADA $2999: If you’re looking for an endgame headphone amplifier and even if your headphone amplifier is more expensive, try this one, you may be quite surprised. That said, the Aurorasound HEADA headphone amplifier is a top echelon component and an easy DIAMOND AWARD winner.

SILENT ANGEL RHEIN Z1 $2299: The Rhein Z1 and Forester F2 combo played far above the league that their combined price would indicate. For many, this $3,900 combo may well represent an endgame streamer/ power supply capable of exceptional fidelity with DACs from entry level to those on the cutting edge.

ABYSS AB1266 PHI TC $5999: I think that I’ve said it all. The Abyss AB1266 Phi TC is a phenomenal headphone. It brings an undying passion for musicality and a ferocity for transparency and clarity and detail retrieval, formerly the domain of the best electrostatic headphones. But this planar headphone speaks that language—electrostatic—fluently and well.

RECOMMENDED COMPONENTS

TORUS RM20 $3999: Can you say pristine, natural, open, and unhindered frequency response? Wide dynamic range? And there were oceans of detail, air, microdynamics, and ambience rendered by the Torus RM 20. It was not subtle. On the contrary, it was stunning.

RSX POWER8 $399: The RSX Power8 clearly holds to the dictum, “Do no Harm,” to the system in which it is being utilized. What it, in fact, offers is pure, clean power, a testament to the meticulous parts selection, research, and conscious minimalism all employed in its design. suffice to say, that it has no competitors at 3 to 4 times is cost.

GESHELLI LABS ERISH2 [E2] $219.99, JNOG2 [J2]

$249.99: Disinterested in ostentation, Geshelli Labs believes in real world pricing with high fidelity performance. Their JNOG2 plus ERISH2 are a petite and potent bargain. With just enough character to put flesh on bone, the classy little twosome sets your music free without excessive color or dispensable features.

Wayne Thiebaud-Green River Lands

JULY 1, 2023

AUDIO

1. BOENICKE W8

2. SOLTANUS EURIDICHE 3D

3. TRI-ART PREAMPLIFIER

4. TRI-ART AMPLIFIER (MONO)

5. SILENT ANGEL Z1 PLUS

6. RSX MAX POWER CABLE (not pictured)

7. AND other reviews, columns, interviews, videos, etc.

MUSIC

VIDEO REVIEWS

GRIMM AUDIO MU1 STREAMER

Music is art, art is music.

SPONSORS,WE SALUTE YOU!

ABYSS HEADPHONES

ANTICABLE AUDIO ART CABLE

AUDIENCE

BOENICKE AUDIO

DAN CLARK

GESHELLI AUDIO

GRIMM AUDIO

GTT AUDIO

HEADAMP

HERMAN MILLER

HIGHEND-ELECTRONICS

LEMAY AUDIO

MADLY AUDACIOUS CONCEPTS

MAPLE HIFI

MOLA MOLA

MYTEK

TORUS POWER

TRI-ART AUDIO

Thank You