Adrian

I have always argued that the voice is the sound we recognise the best because we are most attuned to it from our mother’s voice as a baby and onwards through life to wanting to hear the exact characteristics of a favourite singer’s voice.

I went to the Milan Hi Fidelity show last weekend and the same 3 things struck me as happens in just about all the Hi-Fi shows I attend.

1) Some absolutely dreadful Muzak is played just because they are excellent recordings. This means that when I request a decently-recorded CD track I know well to be played, I am nearly always disappointed compared to my own system.

2) Some systems have impressive bass; more than I am used to. From experience, having owned some bass behemoths in the past, I know that – for me at least – it is just a novelty that soon wears thin. I much prefer a fast, transparent bass to room-shaking depth and the compromise in midrange clarity that comes with that. The unrealistic desire many have to recreate orchestral scale in their rooms detracts from the delicacy needed for World Music, Jazz or Folk.

3) And now for my most controversial point. I am used to what some would dismissively call ‘pipe and slipper’ speaker designs such as old Spendor BC1s, Harbeth HL Monitors and Rogers LS5/8s. As often happens, I heard a track I knew well at the show, a viola da gamba track played by Jordi Saval. The speakers were Brave New World designs built from what looked like solid aluminium billet. The natural resonances and reverberations I expected were, for the most part, bleached away! Many recordings seem to lose much of the natural resonance and 3 dimensionality of the music. The approach of most modern Hi-Fi systems is to be clean, focussed, tighter-than-reality and rather uninvolving. Valves add a global 3 dimensionality often lost.
There is an intuitive understanding that for music to sound real something more Yin and Yang than simple resonance control is required. It is not that subjectivists condone adding colouration, as many objectivists claim, but that they instinctively seek that extra connection and engagement you get with the original performance which the recording often lacks. Furthermore, valve amps generally sound more natural than transistor probably because the signal travels through a vacuum rather than silicone.

I have tried cleaning records in various ways over the years.

From tap water and washing-up liquid which can leave a calcium residue to wood glue which  can get stuck in the grooves where spread too thinly.

I recently tried Covid hand sanitiser rubbed gently into grooves with my finger tips and used warm water to rinse it off. This works very well and leaves no calcium deposits. By using finger tips one can feel how much attention each record needs before it becomes clean.

Record sleeves even with specialist pressings are often made of cardboard and put fine scuffs on the records every time they are removed. This can cause surface noise. E.g. Aldous Harding – ‘Party’ my most recent buy. I have had to buy plastic-lined paper inner sleeves which work well but the original cardboard one doesn’t fit alongside them.

I often get asked about this and some speaker manufacturers like to avoid stating average impedance when they quote speaker sensitivity…

In 2002, Paul Messenger described beautifully the paradox of 4 Ohm speakers.

‘Over the years, speaker makers have tended to evolve their designs to suit the typical transistor amplifier which is essentially a voltage source with a low source impedance.

Halve the speaker’s impedance from 8 to 4 Ohms and the speaker draws twice the current and power from the amplifier. This extra power gives an increase in apparent (though mythical) sensitivity. Once one manufacturer adopts the strategy, others feel obliged to follow.’

A 4 ohm speaker actually draws 2W when provided the voltage required to provide 1W into an 8 ohm speaker so a 93db 4 ohm speaker is no easier to drive than a 90db 8 ohm one!