Yesterday I went to Ian's place to listen to music, specifically to a lot of jazz that I didn't know yet (and for Ian there was a lot of exploration of to him not yet well-known stuff as well). Normally I listen mostly to classical and classical avantgarde, but lately I have been deep into jazz, including jazz avantgarde. Last time when I was at Ian' s place, together with Peter A., I was drooling over his record collection, which included a whole lot of old-time jazz that I didn't know yet, and I told him that I wanted to listen to that stuff, which he graciously agreed to.
We spun one album after another for just musical interest, regardless of sound -- drums on 1950s recordings usually sounded suboptimal, because at that time sound engineers mostly had not yet figured out how to record them properly, but we lived with that. We started at 10:30 in the morning and, after a lunch break, listened until the evening. Apart from jazz we had a short venture into progressive rock, and a few other things. The only two audiophile things we did during the entire day was a quick comparison of two pressings of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" soundtrack (a recent 45 rpm re-issue won) and a brief switch between two gain settings on the phono amp (more about that below).
Here is the playlist of artists:
Duke Ellington
John Hodges
Duke Ellington & John Hodges
Count Basie
Pianist Andrew Hill
Ornette Coleman (Shape of Jazz to Come)
Henry Mancini (Peter Gunn)
Ian Garbarek
Sax player J. R. Monterose
Drummer Pete La Roca, featuring Joe Henderson on sax
Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt
Modern Jazz Quartet
Trio of Doom (Jaco Pastorius, John McLaughlin, Tony Williams)
Trombonist Grachan Moncur III (Evolution)
Prog Rock:
Gentle Giant (album Free Hand)
Genesis (Lamb Lies Down on Broadway)
Ian was not sure if I would like everything because he said some of it was an acquired taste. But I loved practically all of it, also the 'crazy' stuff', including the early jazz avantgarde (e.g., Ornette Coleman, Grachan Moncur III), and I also loved the Prog Rock. We even went for some Indian-flavored music (Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt). We both were also really impressed with sax player Joe Henderson on the Pete La Roca recording.
We spun mostly at least one LP side of each recording, and in more than a few cases we listened to the whole thing. It was a fantastic musical experience.
The sound:
We started with side 2 of a Duke Ellington recording which we had spun side 1 from the last time and which I had loved. I was struck by the much greater impact, incisiveness, and presence of the music over last time, with also greater transparency. I was puzzled at first, but then it dawned on me that Ian had the Pass XS Phono stage for audition, as potential replacement for his Pass XP-25. I completely had forgotten about that, I only had come to listen to some music! Could just a phonostage make such a huge difference? Then Ian told me that on the XP-25 he could not use the 76 setting because it sounded somewhat distorted in his system, but that he had it on setting 66. On the XS Phono the 76 setting was what he used. We switched to the 66 setting on the XS Phono and indeed, it sounded more like the XP-25, more polite and less impactful. It still sounded considerably better than the XP-25 at that setting, but with the XS Phono on 76 it was when the lion really started to roar, at least in Ian's set-up. Even at a much lower sound volume the music on that setting had more impact than at 66 played at high volume.
While I had previously described Ian's system as the best that I had heard, it did sound a bit too polite to my taste on some music (that's a personal assessment; some listeners like a more polite sound without that necessarily being a bad thing). That changed yesterday. The system stopped being polite at all, but rather, it became 'obnoxious' in the best imaginable way: the music grabbed you by the ears and didn't let loose, like it does in my system, at least as I personally perceive it. At once I heard all the excitement of the music as I experience it in my system, and perhaps even more of it, but then at a much higher level of sound quality, transparency and realism -- as it should be, given the difference in quality of components and investment. Everything sounded incisive, like live music usually does. But then, there it also depends on the venue and seating, so there is room for the personal taste of everybody; yet clearly the greater incisiveness and sonic impact of the music was to Ian's and also my taste. For those who want a more polite sound, Ian could play the phonostage at setting 66.
So far I had had my reservations about brass bite through the analog medium of vinyl. On lesser vinyl brass usually sounds too 'soft' and mellow, compared to the real thing. While on mostly early digital playback artificial harshness has stood in the way, once that electronic artifact is stripped away, like on great current digital playback, digital turns out to have this great innate ability to portray the natural hardness and bite of brass sound. In Peter A.'s excellent analog system I heard for the first time that the best analog can do that too and that on some recordings brass can have real bite like it can on digital. I had heard some of that brass bite in Ian's system as well, which had been reassuring, but I had kept some reservations about vinyl because I had thought that on a number of recordings brass sounded too mellow, including on that Duke Ellington recording. Yesterday that changed completely. Not only the Duke Ellington recording had plenty of brass bite, but so did virtually every other recording with brass that we spun. Obviously, pressing quality in vinyl is a big issue, and a good amount of vinyl fails to convince because of poor pressing, but a lot of the vinyl that we listened to was re-issues, where clearly great care was taken of pressing quality. Not just did the brass have bite, but it sounded more convincing than on the digital I have heard, simply because timbral realism, transparency and detail was so much better, at an insane level of resolution that I had not heard before.
Now that the brass bite issue is resolved, something that had made me keep some reservations about vinyl, I have a hard time seeing anymore any sonic advantages of digital over analog, and analog is superior over all the digital that I have heard, including mine, in terms of timbral resolution, among others (I haven't heard the best digital though, but given the incredible sound that I heard from Ian's vinyl rig I am not holding my breath). I say all this as a die-hard digital-only guy who doesn't have any inclinations to invest in a vinyl set-up, for several reasons, most importantly the fact that a lot of the new music that I listen to is simply not available on vinyl. I call it as my ears tell me, not as by my personal source preferences I might be biased to do.
Vinyl in Ian's system was also superior to digital in terms of dynamics. Yes, you read that right, dynamics, even though nominally even plain Redbook CD is supposed to have more dynamics. So far I had thought that the one area in which my, relatively spoken, humble system could compete with Ian's system was dynamics. Even Ian had written on my system thread that my system has "an abundance of dynamics". That changed yesterday too. The new phonostage that we auditioned made vinyl reproduction even more dynamic, and not by a small margin. You just had to listen in some of the music, including the Duke Ellington (a 65-year old recording!), to the explosive dynamics of the onset of blowing through a brass instrument at the beginning of a new phrase, and you knew this was dynamics at a whole new level.
In addition, through the XS Phono the music had considerably more bass power. Ian now had a REL subwoofer in his system, which integrated seamlessly into the sound just like the REL does in my system, but even with the subwoofer turned off drums had much more drive and heft. Also the left hand of piano had enormous heft in a Count Basie recording from the 1970s (that recording featured tremendous brass dynamics too). In general, the sound was fuller, through the entire midrange as well.
We could have checked if, probably so, orchestral strings sounded even better than before, or if string quartet sound was even more believable, but I was just not in an audiophile mood, and neither was Ian, apparently. We just wanted to listen to the music that we were interested in at the moment. And so we did.
The new phonostage would bring Ian's system to a whole new level, not just in terms of sound, but importantly, also in terms of communication of the music. I had said previously that Ian's system is the best system I have heard. With the XS Phono in place I would now say that Ian's system is twice the best system I have heard. And it is the most dynamic system that I have heard. Period.
Congratulations, Ian, for exploring this component, and congratulations on your spectacular system! And thank you very much for such an enjoyable day of music!
