Reviewing the reviewer - The TW riders blow a fuse

With our ears still ringing from the Battle experience, there were bound to be casualties with our latest trip to our resident HiFi+ reviewer Jason “Lord Lucan” Hector just five days later. At the final furlong, Mr Lees pulled up with some excuse about a sickly spouse – rumours abound that he had run out of new CDs to play. Every cloud has a silver lining, and after a knocking back a glass of wine to get over the disappointment of not being the full complement, we put some Duke Ellington on the CD player and listened to what jazz sounds like without endless shuffling and sighing in the background.

Jason’s sistem definitely belongs in the exotic category, so will need a bit of explanation.
At the front end, Jason has probably one of the strangest CD players I have ever seen, the Micromega Duo CD2 transport and Duo Pro DAC. Like the CDS it is a top-loader, but the Perspex lid is the size of the player, half an inch thick and very heavy. Like Naim CD players it also has a puck, but this is more like the hockey variety – no chance of track skipping with this beast. In the first couple of minutes I almost trashed the player by dropping the lid down – needless to say I was kept well away from the turntable.

To appreciate the analogue side of things also requires some personality profiling – Jason is of the mad scientist persuasion, and is known to dabble in those incendiary devices know as (Paul Stephenson close your ears) Home Made Power Supplies. Anyway, the turntable is an LP12, ARO, Hectorgeddon, Prefix, HectorSuperDuperCap, with the reassuringly expensive Dynavector Te-Kiatora.

Amplification currently consists of a 32.5, another HectorSuperDuperCap and Dynavector HX75. All equipment sits on Hutter (a man of taste obviously), with Musicworks mains leads and block (OK everyone has their faults). To maintain the unusual theme, the back end of the sistem consists of the omnidirectional Shahinian Obelisks. As far as potential upgrades, Jason is very patiently waiting for the mythical Dynavector L300 preamp to go into production.

Now on to the consumer unit, mains leads, plugs and fuses……no, on second thoughts, lets not go there.

Where the sistem is near complete, the room is very much a work in progress. It certainly looked like Jason had been having good fun with a sledgehammer. What he’s been left with is a room of about 30ft, partially split about halfway with the two sections about 11 and 12ft – so quite challenging. Attempts so far to fire the Obelisks down the length of the room has lead to a horribly disjointed sound. As experiments continue, the current set-up is to fire across the 11ft dimension of the room - is that clear? What this does mean, is that we were sitting very close to the speakers – usually something I struggle with. Not so, with this sistem – the arrangement seems to work with the Obelisks, although moving the speakers into the 12ft section in time will I’m sure bring additional benefit.

On the night, the LP12 was obviously the star of the show – the sound was simply sublime. I think I’m going to have to stop listening to vinyl like this, I could develop a very expensive habit. Whilst it was a drop in performance to go to the CD player it certainly was still very listenable. One of the CDs I brought along for the evening was the Haitink/Concertgebouw Shostakovich 8 – the sistem produced one of the best renditions of a full orchestra I have ever heard. The other star of the night for me was the 32.5 – no it is not a 52, but it is certainly extremely musical and must be one of the best bargains around. As far as negatives I had my suspicions that some of the smoothness was being produced by the dreaded Musicworks. Jason assures me that they were beneficial in his previous place, but I think it would be worth investigating getting rid of these.

As for the speakers – this is one area where I’m none the wiser. One of the reasons I was keen to visit Jason’s was to hear whether these were THE speakers for me. One thing that did become clear is that they improve quite considerably with warming up. I’m certainly getting used to the sound – although you can walk round the room and still get the full picture, I was surprised to find there is a sweet spot between the speakers, which Tom managed to hog for most of the night. The Obelisks are very room and position dependent, and there was none of the disconnected bass I have heard with dealer demos of these speakers. Where the speakers continue to surprise me is in trying to predict how certain pieces would sound. Jason has quite a collection of female vocalists, and on this they obviously excel. The Shostakovich was simply astounding. On the downside, a disc I really expected to work of the Hilliard Ensemble singing a work by Perotin, just didn’t produce the hypnotic and atmospheric sound I get out of my own sistem. On balance though, they have a warmth and space that I find very addictive and easy to listen to – I would have happily listened to them all night.

So, a big thank you to Jason for letting three complete strangers into his house. A visit with the full complement will definitely be arranged when the L300 finally arrives.

There were a lot of new music purchases to be made after this night, but I’ll comment more when someone provides a track listing.

David