I fulfill almost every standard criterion for an audiophile: I’m male, I’m middle-aged, I’m well-educated, I’m a professional with a decent income, I’m adept at technology but overall more left-brained than right. However, I depart the ranks in one critical aspect: I’m a trained musician. Most audiophiles aren’t, at least according to most of the statistics and descriptions I have gleaned from a fair amount of Web trawling.
My one difference turns out to be a whopper, because it simultaneously enhances and lessens my ability to judge audio equipment. The enhancement should be obvious: I can hear overtones and frequency ranges clearly and my experience with the sound of live music is constant and immediate. I don’t have to try to remember what live music sounds like. On the other hand, I’m quick to jump right into the music without worrying overly about audio quality; my ingrained musical reflexes enable me to leap right over sonic deficiencies in a single bound. My mind goes to the music itself, begins filtering and abstracting and comparing and analyzing and savoring. I’ll do that whether the sound is emerging from an audiophile’s wet dream of a system or a pair of ticky-tacky 1990-vintage computer speakers.
Nonetheless, once I turn my attention to the reproduced sound quality itself, I’m a tough cookie indeed, demanding sound that is not only accurate, but musical in that magically indescribable way that characterizes the finest musical instruments or voices. Two Steinways might be almost indistinguishable in terms of their frequency range or overall volume, but the sound of one will speak to me as being more human, more personable, more musical. When it comes to high-end audio, that’s where I listen.
Some audiophiles insist on measurements as the ultimate criteria, while others pooh-pooh the numbers and let their ears be the judge. I’m in the latter camp, although I’m not one to sneer at a comely frequency chart or a svelte set of specs. I have confidence that my ears aren’t going to mislead me into blowing wads of cash on electronic trailer trash.
Photographers and cinematographers know the basic rule for color: get the face right. Once you have natural skin tones, everything else is likely to fall into place. I apply a similar standard to listening: get the voice right. Reproducing the singing voice is tough as hell. A high lyrical soprano can turn screechy and shrill, while a bass can morph into a chesty robot. The voice must sound natural; it must emerge from a human body rather than sounding synthesized or sampled; it must be placed in a specific location with a sense of surrounding space. Nothing about the voice should yank the listener out of the musical experience. One hint of electrons acts like a pothole, jarring the listener out of the smooth ride.
So first I listen for voices. If the product can’t give me a properly human voice, then the audition is over. Once I’m convinced that the gear does not inflate, compress, digitize or electrify people, then I move on to instruments, heard first singly then in combination. A solo violin is quite a nasty challenge; there’s so much to get right, and so much that can go wrong. But if the violin works, it’s almost a cinch that other strings will be at least passable, although the bass—particularly plucked as in a jazz group—will reveal a system’s ability to resolve bass frequencies without boominess or muddiness.
A few instruments in a defined space pose an acid test that all kinds of equipment fails. I have a recording of Handel’s Trio Sonata Op. 2, No. 1 for recorder, violin, and continuo that lays waste to tarted-up gear with poor resolution. I still get a kinky pleasure out of the memory of a pair of Dr. Dre Beats headphones being shredded by that recording; they were utterly and hopelessly out of their league, shown up for the cheap bar floozies that they are. Getting the large, resonant space in which the instruments are placed is particularly difficult, not to mention resolving the harpsichord’s sparkle without blare, the recorder’s breathiness, and the violin’s light rasp. Only the best gear can do all that simultaneously.
Finally I’ll try out a full orchestra. That’s particularly important to me since it’s my favorite genre. The recent SFSMedia recordings of the San Francisco Symphony performing live in Davies Symphony Hall serve extremely well, since it’s the orchestra and hall I know best. But if I have made it past the chamber music test, the odds are that the gear is going to pass the orchestral test with flying colors.
I don’t worry about more artificial stuff like pop albums or movie soundtracks. I don’t listen to them all that much, but equipment that can meet the above tests is bound to do a creditable job with such lesser fare.
My ideal headphone-listening rig took some time to get together. I started with Sennheiser HD 800s, the only headphone I’ve ever tested that aced the Handel Trio Sonata with nary a quibble. And that was with electronics that weren’t altogether in synch with the Senns, headphones that are notoriously finicky about their sources and amplification; they are simultaneously power-hungry and ruthlessly revealing of the slightest imperfection. Think of an HD 800 as a Rolls-Royce limousine that handles like a two-seater Italian sports car.
I noticed that Sennheiser reps tended to demonstrate the HD 800 with warm but not overly-colored amplifiers such as the Lehmann Black Cube. And that led me to audition Luxman’s flagship headphone amplifier, the P-1u. I knew within a few minutes that I had the perfect partner for the Senns; warm but not smushy, clear but not clinical, elegant but not reserved, here was a fine synergy indeed.
The same thinking led me to replacing my Benchmark digital-to-analog converter with the Bryston BDA-1. That isn’t to knock the Benchmark; it’s a superb product. But the synergy wasn’t quite ideal; there was a thin slice of musicality missing, somehow, with the Benchmark/Sennheiser pairing. But the Bryston put that thin slice back into place. It’s clear that the Sennheisers enjoy working with the Bryston DAC. It’s also clear that the Sennheisers are head over heels in love with the Luxman amp.
So with my quest completed and the new electronics given a reasonable breaking-in period, I’ve been listening to several vocal albums—Bryn Terfel’s The Vagabond, an exquite collection of English songs with pianist Malcolm Martineau, and René Pape’s Gods, Kings & Demons with Sebastian Weigle and the always-welcome Dresden Staatskapelle. I’m fascinated by hearing Sennheiser 800s purring like happy kittens as Terfel and Pape emerge with their humanity and physicality not only intact, but palpable. There’s a heightened realness to them now, a fleshly organicism, as they take their places within their respective clearly-defined environments.
I tried the Handel Trio Sonata. Perfection.
Just to even things out, I also cranked up Come Together from “Abbey Road”. Works just fine—bass down to there, cymbals up to there, masculine energy in spades, details all over the place.