853, your words very much chime in with what I feel about what we two both, and obv many others, but absolutely not all, are looking for their musical reproduction at home
Vinyl for me has always been a no brainer, having bought lps from a young age in the mid-late 70s, although exposure to the SGM streamer/T&A Dac8 at 512 dsd/HQ Player has brought me a whole step closer to the analog gestalt on digital
However the lean twds tubes and horns has happened much later on in my development, with my Paul's "Road To Damascus" conversion complete with NAT Audio 211s
Hey Spirit,
First, I’ll try and share my thoughts on the vinyl/digital thing. My first digital experiences were Naim. Naim does some things great, but in a kinda obvious and metronomic way that tends to emphasize the beats rather than the space in between them. It’s initially really impressive, and gets more impressive as you go up the line, but after a while I began to tire of the monotony of its repertoire and long for a bit more subtlety and nuance. I then went Wadia which kinda did the exact opposite - lots of space and subtlety but no sense of momentum. Ultimately it was a backward step musically (and made me realise the importance of a great pre). A bunch of other contenders were auditioned and rejected, and in the end I decided I’d bide my time and invest in vinyl.
As I began to reacquaint myself with various options, I shifted away from belt drive solutions to idler drives (mostly modified Garrard’s and Lenco’s) which managed to make the most of the beats and yet allow the momentum to remain across and within the silences, giving the space in between the notes as much gravitas and significance as the notes themselves - in other words the “and” took on as much meaning as the “1” and “2” (if that makes sense. Sorry, English is actually my first language, but sometimes I wonder…). So far, I’ve yet to hear a belt drive or suspended turntable that does that as well (reel-to-reel does, or at least, can, and obviously, I’ve not heard everything, so all the usual caveats apply) but I had never heard digital do it.
Until Saturday. Like I alluded to in my previous post, the Aries Cerat stuff nailed the “1” and the “2” (etc) but also allowed the “e” and “and” and “a” to emerge fully formed - all distinct, all individually weighted in which the momentum and meaning of the silences was even more pronounced but without calling attention to themselves. Ugh. I’m struggling here. Maybe the best way of summing this up is to say that even slower-tempo stuff - stuff around 60bpm, jazz vocal stuff and symphonic fare - totally swung in which you were always aware of where the “1” was, but never at the expense of allowing the fullness of the silences and spaces in between to swell and peak and fade. It meant that even the spaces were captivating - there was still music happening in there - even when there was no rhythmic instrument “keeping time”, and I’ve never, ever heard digital do that. In fact, given there was no turntable in the room, I'd still go as far as to say that in terms of sheer weight, musical momentum and micro-dynamic filigree, I've never heard a better source than the Kassandra. And without sounding like some sort of brain-washed convert (too late, probably), if you get a chance I would definitely try and hear it. There’s certainly no other digital source I’d consider ahead of it, and we were only listening to the entry-level version. Sheesh.
Horns remain a frustratingly mirage like journey, with so many summed up as one-trick ponies, reproducing any number of female vocalists beautifully, but any number of rock rhythmn sections lame and redundant
A good pair of horns great across a whole spectrum of music remains my Holy Grail
So, if you know of a pair that locks down Lee-Peart, Bruce-Baker, Squire-Bruford, Wetton-Bruford, Levin-Bruford, Rutherford-Collins, I think you get it, please let me know...
As to horns… Oh, man.
I’m still on my journey. Like you I’ve had the best and worst experiences which is why I often think a pair of ESL57’s or LS3/5a’s might just be a better option. They're far from perfect but they do coherence better than most and in a way I think really allows a rhythm section to groove. Heck, after hearing the YG Carmel 2's I think they'd be far more acceptable from a sonic, musical and practical perspective compared to many of the disjointed, incoherent horns I’ve heard (which is a lot of them). I do like a lot of the more-domestically acceptable compromises from Living Voice (the OBX/IBX), Altec (604’s and 19’s), and DeVore Fidelity (the 0/96) but they lack the ultimate presence (and “inner detail” - cue geeky snort) of a field-coil compression driver and sympathetically partnered horn. Ultimately, like you, there are certain compromises I can live with (20Hz - 20kHz in-room linearity and pin-point imaging), and some I can’t (disjointed bass, lack of micro-dynamics and bleached harmonics). You pays your money and you takes your choice.
I’m planning (tentatively) on hearing some Western Electric replica horns driven by single 555’s (the 12a and 13a) and considering a trip to Cyprus to hear Stavros’ Symphonia in person (even my wife liked the CES video on YouTube). The idea of a Feastrex appeals to me but I’ve no direct experience. I should probably try and hear some of Wolf von Langa’s stuff, and the Maxonic/Natural Sound field coil speakers, but it all just comes down to time. That, and a place to accommodate them. Most of the bad horns I’ve heard have been wedged into spaces that just couldn’t come close to doing them justice. Having said that, the same could be true of any number of stats, planners and cone-driven boxes. And without a permanent home, it’s pointless to say my ultimate speaker is X when that’s fundamentally contingent on the space.
However, I do sympathise with your desire for a “good pair of horns (that are) great across a whole spectrum of music”. Ha. Join the club. My music taste tends to the extreme (all forms of technical, thrash and hair metal, Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues played by Nikolayeva, free, fusion-esque and avant-garde jazz, ridiculous 80's synth pop and new wave, electronica and dark-ambient noise, alt-country, and lots and lots of Coltrane, Miles and Beethoven), so I understand completely. If it’s any encouragement, the severe and intense reaction I had to an all digital system fed from a tablet in a small room with flippin’ Magico S1’s was musically superior to anything else I had heard up until that point. Horns are my ultimate destination too, but with the Aries Cerat stuff further upstream, I’m sure I could pair any number of alternatives with them and be happy forever.
Or
could I?