Greetings friends, I hope your week is going well.
I've got an incredible performing set of audio kit here right now that I'm listening to: My West's with their usual silver / copper Duelund CAST crossovers, the all-silver Ongaku 211 SET integrated amplifier, the all-silver M8 RIAA phono preamp, the all-silver AN-S8 SUT, my CTC 301 turntable, and the rather intoxicating Io Ltd field-coil moving-coil phonograph cartridge with its field-coil power supply, with silver interconnects and speaker cables connecting everything together, and my favorite Acoustic Revive Absolute power cables connecting everything to AC.
This system performs at such a lofty level with the Audio Note (UK) Level 5 components that it is really a revelation as to what kind of performance is really possible in audio. It's way higher than I thought. If I win the lottery this system isn't going anywhere!
Many thanks to Peter Qvortrup for letting me listen to this set of primo Audio Note (UK) Level 5 components, it's a real musical adventure!
I'm going to do my best to tell you all about it, and that may take a new audio language to accomplish that goal.
Tomei (left), Ongaku (center), M8 RIAA phono (right), and AN-S8 SUT and Io Ltd field-coil power supply (behind the M8).
Speaking of Peter, when I first met Peter way back when, he told me that he thought we needed a new audio language to talk about the performance of the best audio components.
At the time I didn't really understand what Peter was getting at. Peter builds audio systems according to performance levels, and I've listened to Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, and now Level 5.
Of the thousands of high-end audio systems I've listened to over the years, the normal sort of performance level that one hears is what Peter calls performance Level 2 and Level 3. I'd say 99% of what I've heard falls somewhere into that range.
Up to Level 3 the traditional audiophile terminology, plus a little musicality terminology, a little about emotional impact terminology, with an exploration of dramatic realism, describes what kind of performance level they can achieve pretty well.
Tomei 211 integrated amp (left), M6 RIAA (center), M3 RIAA (right)
But when I got to Level 4 with the Tomei 211 SET integrated amp and the M6 RIAA that all changed, as I was hearing, feeling, and experiencing things from the music that can't really be fully articulated by typical audio reviewing language.
What Level 4 does with my records is just so satisfying and surreal feeling that I've never heard anything else come close to that level of overall performance.
But the thing is, it's a bugger to try and articulate what is going on at Level 4, because it is so far beyond normal high-fidelity musings.
When I have visiting audio pals I ask them, "Tell me what you're hearing." Usually there's silence for a bit, and they shake their heads, and say, "Wow. How do you describe that?"
That's where I keep getting to as well. "Wow. Just wow. How is it doing that, and what exactly is it doing?"
Tomei (left), Ongaku (center), M8 RIAA phono (right), and AN-S8 SUT and Io Ltd field-coil power supply (behind the M8).
Now with the Level 5 components here, figure on another order of magnitude of this kind of indescribably good performance enhancement that it is almost impossible to understand and articulate what's going on.
Records that I've heard many times are like a completely new and profound experience. It reminds me of what I experienced when I saw the original of van Gogh's The Starry Night at the National Gallery. In person The Starry Night radiates an intensity, a supercharged aliveness, that is just mesmerizing. It cast a spell on me. I could feel its presence as a powerful entity.
From a design standpoint I know that Level 5 has mature circuits with primo vacuum tubes, silver in all the right places, Black Gate caps in select positions, fully silver wired driver and output transformers with AN-Perma 50 nickel C-cores, and a mains transformers that are fully silver wired around HiB double C cores. That sort of thing, the nuts & bolts of the circuits, but oh the voicing, it's absolutely ... it's an art. There's magic in the voicing.
I think it was the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus that said wisdom was a learned art, and this is a musical sort of wisdom that manifests as art in the form of audio components.
I'll tell you what, there's a lot more one can get out of those LPs than you normally hear even in really good audio systems. More information, more living presence.
A clear view into the recording style, into the recording venue, a real feel for the music's dramatic elements, timbral textures that are so realistic that it is truly uncanny.
Even though there's an incredible amount of musical information coming through it all sounds utterly natural and real, with a flesh & blood heft to it. Like the way people playing music in life sound real, that kind of presence.
Those visuospatial elements that we audio nuts like to talk about ... well if the top rating of the visuospatial range was a "10" ... well this Level 5 kit is playing at "15" or something above that. Imaging: real flesh & blood musicians are in my living room. Soundstage: vast. The sense of ambient space around the musicians' is easily discernible and palpable. It's all off the scale of visuospatial performance.
The utterly natural clarity and transparency is just astounding. The amount of musical information coming through is astounding. The amount and type of drama the artists intended for the music is there in spades. Agile and powerful, or soft, dynamic shadings, as the musicians and recording engineers intended, are all there.
Listening to LPs with this system is like having the best seat at the concert, except better, for every album I've played. Regular ol' albums sound better than albums targeting audiophiles, and those carefully mastered reissues from magicians like Chad Kassem are out of this world. I didn't know anything could sound that good. They sound that good.
Peter was absolutely right when he told me that he thought we needed a new audio language to talk about the performance of the best audio components, like those at Level 4 and 5. Normal audio reviewing language just doesn't describe what a complement of components like this is capable of.
Oh, and another important point; you don't have to crank up the volume to get that level of performance, it's all there in the 60-70 dB range. It is because there is so much there in terms of musical information, and it is presented as so utterly natural and real sounding.
If you want to crank up the SPLs that's cool too. It functions more as a realism dial for depth of soundstage and size of images. Turn up the volume and the images get closer to you, bigger, but still sound utterly natural like they are in the room with me.
Even if you can't afford this level of kit - I can't - it is nice to know that this level of performance is possible, and that there is an audio art form out there that can deliver more than one ever dreamed was possible.
There's magic occurring all across the frequency bands of the audio spectrum, all at the same time; the sub-bass, the bass, the low-midrange, the midrange, the upper-midrange, the presence region, and the brilliance region. I've never heard the sub-bass and bass regions articulated so perfectly, with so much real sounding timbral texture, such realistic touch. It's like every frequency band is at its optimized best.
As I listen to more records I'll update you with any new discoveries I've made in trying to describe what this Level 5 kit can do.
I really am at a loss of words to fully articulate this level of performance, but you can bet I'll be trying to figure it out.
Much more to come about all of this.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!
