Hi all
I caught up with Hedalfa in Canberra city yesterday at lunch and he was bringing back a couple of CDs. Given we were in close proximity to a local hifi dealer we thought we might as well pop in and listen to a couple of test tracks from the CDs. The system generously setup for us composed of Macintoh CD player, Bryston BDA-1 DAC, Bryston pre and power amps, latest Quad speakers (2905 I think) and Nordost cabling. First we played a couple of Johnny Cash songs from his American recordings V. Well it wasn't horrible and wasn't harsh, though the tone was bleached, timbre was off, there was no depth, the voice was fairly small and had moved up into his upper chest which made him sound like a much younger man. The track "If you could read my mind" was recorded about a week before he passed and you can hear the frailty in his voice...he is clearly dying. With this combo the emotion, wetness and feeling of Johnny on his last legs was almost completely absent.
Next up was Steven's MF gold version of Peter Seeger. Well let’s just say Pete was not in the room...not sure he was even in the street...must have been out to lunch. There is so much emotion and changes in pitch in "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child", a stunning song. To be fair the Bryston/Quad combo did track some of the changes in pitch and emotion in his voice...but only some...he may not have the most beautiful voice but he certainly is skilful at using it. The timbre of his guitar sounded off as well, just as it did with Johnny.
In all fairness the combo hadn’t been running for a long time before we popped in. For $50-$60K I would at least want a system to get the basics like timbre reasonably right. I didn't expect the richness, naturalness and wetness of great valves...but on the other hand it wasn't harsh and brutally hard like I lot of solid state. You pay your $$ and make your choice.
Always good to keep listening