Separating Sounds: Brown's Law
To begin: these are outstanding speakers. Start with the quality of resolution, the ability to separate sounds from each other. Some analysts say this is the most important of all qualities to listen for in a component or system. This is what Richard Brown of Brown Electronic Labs (BEL) listens for when he designs his amplifiers, which are still the very best I have heard, though they cost "only" $3,000. Here is Brown's Law: Equipment is capable of smearing, confusing or otherwise distorting two different sounds. Thus a speaker may mute a loud bass note, making it sound like a softer one; the intended dynamic contrast is lost. Or an amplifier may layer the entire orchestra with sweet chocolate; there is no apparent difference between one woodwind and another, or between a violin and a viola.
But whatever distortion is imposed by a component will necessarily tend toward uniformity. It is not possible for any component to make two like sounds seem different. The best, the most accurate a component can be, is to preserve the difference that already exists. There is not, there cannot be, more of a difference between two musical sounds than was created when the instruments first set the air about them vibrating.
Therefore, says Brown, the way to use our most sensitive measuring devices - our ears - is to listen for the sharpest difference between notes, between instruments, between voices. The greatest differences will mark the most accurate reproducing equipment. This is true for tonality, for harmonics, for dynamic contrast and shading: the more internal differences, the greater the accuracy.
Of course, to hear the difference made by one piece of equipment, the rest of your equipment should itself preserve the maximum differences. (Here Brown's Law dovetails perfectly with Ivor Tiefenbrun's classic theorem, that the most important element in a system is the first reproducer, which for him is the turntable. What is lost when the stylus hits the record, or the laser hits the pits, can never be recaptured.) In the last two years, I have made a series of changes to my system. Each has increased its resolution, making it possible to hear what changes were effected by the other components. The first piece was the BEL 1001 MkII. Never did I believe a piece of electronics could make such a dramatic change, at one stroke stripping away layers of distortion and grunge that all other amplifiers put upon the sound. With the 1001 MkII came BEL's The Wire speaker cables and interconnect; Tom Miiller claims that MIT speaker cables beat the BELs (at a much higher price), but he doesn't have anything better than the BEL interconnect for connecting the turntable to the phono stage. Then I put in a new cartridge that cost me (old price) all of $200 - the Audio-Technica AT ML-170, which outperformed all the moving coils that had cost me so dear in the past.
Of course each change, each improvement, each increase in what I was hearing, only increased my thirst for more. So out went the fine Rega Planar 3 turntable, and in went Harry Weisfeld's VPI TNT Jr. Just as Weisfeld promised, the bass extended, noise vanished and overall resolution increased. But I was waiting for the pièce de résistance, his JMW arm. That increased resolution more than any component since the BEL 1001 MkII. Then Brown sent along his new, improved speaker cables, which make a relaxed and open sound even more so. And for Christmas, and this review, arrived the improved BEL interconnect, which just disappears. With wire, you can't ask for better.
Enter The Vivaldis
All this was by way of preparation for the Vivaldis. My reference speakers are the Apogee Stages. These planars are uncolored and transparent - the sound seems to come "clean," which is probably just another word for the same quality of resolution. But the Vivaldis are another order entirely: they let you hear differences even speakers as fine as the Stages only hint at. Here is an example. One of the first records I played was the Mozart Symphony In C Major, K. 213c, an eight-minute miracle that flows continuously from one singing passage to another, including an astonishing segue into slow three-quarter time. It was derived from his opera The Shepherd King, and the glorious andantino has the oboe taking an aria once sung by a castrato. The recording is by Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music (L'Oiseau-Lyre D171D4), for the most part with Eighteenth Century instruments. The violins were initially so sharp that I could listen only by greatly lowering the VTA (on the VPI arm, this is done during play with the turn of a large dial). After about half an hour, the cartridge warmed up, and the sound relaxed - the cantilever mounting loosening, perhaps. The point is that with the Vivaldis the difference between a cold stylus cantilever and one flexed by the heat of playing was startlingly obvious. I thought this might have been the speakers warming up from their shipment, but the effect has persisted into every listening session. With these speakers, you hear everything that your system feeds them.
A Meaningful Musical Dialog
What does this mean for the music? Most concerto recordings, played over most systems, give you a reasonably good idea of the dialog between the soloist and the orchestra. But the great concerti aren't simple dialogs; they are full of other voices, as in the counterpointing solo cello and the softly plucked strings in the finale of Beethoven's G Major Piano Concerto. In the concert hall, we hear all of this without strain or effort: it is just there. With most home systems, those voices are muted, and if you don't listen very carefully they disappear. With the Vivaldis all of it is laid before you. This contributes directly to enjoyment of the music. Mozart wrote his Concerto For Two Pianos And Orchestra, KV 365, to be played by him with his sister, and its charm depends on the dialog between the two pianos, in which the pupil repeatedly mimics the master. My record is by Emil Gilels with his daughter Elena (DG 2530 456). Their playing is captivating, but it is easy to lose track of which is playing when. The resolution of the Vivaldis keeps them clear and separate, and the piece holds its meaning. Moreover, the Vivaldis give the sound of the piano a fullness and weight that is rare in reproduced music. I don't know whether to ascribe this more to resolution or harmonic rightness; but comparing the performances of Beethoven Opus 53 ("Waldstein") by Charles Rosen on Nonesuch (NC78010) and Hyperion Knight on Wilson Audio (W-8313), I was able to hear not only every nuance of their different renditions, but I could also almost to feel their instruments, their use of the pedals and the pressure of their fingers on the keys. Or listen to the Corelli and Handel recordings of Nicholas McGegan with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (Harmonia Mundi 7014 and 7010). These are brilliant small-force recordings, fewer than 20 players. With the Vivaldis, you have the illusion that you are hearing each individual player, each violinist with his own tone. (Of course you're not supposed to in the concert hall; composers deliberately rely on the effects of what we would call intermodulation distortion, taking the edge, for example, off brass instruments by combining several of them. Recordings, however, provide a more immediate perspective and greater separation.)
The Harmonia Mundi recordings are sonic spectaculars, engineered by Peter McGrath in HM's last analogue glory. The reason for great systems, however, is to better hear great music. I have a 1964 Angel record of Klemperer and the Philharmonia playing Mozart's Symphonies No. 31 and No. 34 (5-36216). For years I could barely listen to this record, because my previous system produced from it only a thick glob of bad-tasting sound. Today, especially on the Vivaldis, the Mozart is all disentangled, the sounds as they should be. The finest recorded performance I know of the under-appreciated Beethoven Mass In C is a mid-Sixties Angel (5-36775) with Giulini conducting and Elly Ameling, Janet Baker, Marius Rintzler and the incomparable tenor, Theo Altmeyer. On any lesser system (like my old one), this is as sonically turgid as it is musically soaring. The music is ethereal and dynamic all at once, in the manner that Beethoven shares only with Bach. With the VPI/BEL/Vivaldi combination, it is still not a great recording, but you will get lost in the music without electronic interference. (And when they are remastering old EMI-Angels, why don't they look for the great music like this and the Klemperer Mozart, and leave the sonic highjinks alone?) When voices are well recorded - as on the marvelous Marriage Of Figaro of Erich Kleiber, with Cesare Siepi, Hilde Gueden and Lisa Della Casa, now available on a vinyl reissue from Acoustic Sounds (Decca SXt 2087- buy this record) or on CD from London (417 315-2) - the effect is lovely and powerful as only the human voice can be.