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The Martens Miscellany

The Martens Miscellany

Wish lists not only tell us a lot about the kinds of objects we prize, but also help explain why we prize them. With that thought in mind, I’ve done a bit of head scratching to create an admittedly fanciful and highly personal audiophile’s wish list. Following a philosophy that holds that, if you are going to dream, it pays to dream big, my wish list begins with some extremely expensive audio ‘toys’.

Over the past year or so, one of the most inspiring audiophile moments for me came just after the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest when I took the opportunity to visit the YG Acoustics factory in Arvada, Colorado and to hear an extended demonstration of the firm’s Hailey 1.2 loudspeakers ($42,800/pair, UK price TBC).  The Hailey 1.2 is the middle model in YG Acoustics’ present line-up and is a three-way, three-driver floorstanding loudspeaker that uses a two-chassis/channel enclosure system. The bottom chassis of each Hailey 1.2 consists of a large, tall, and tapered woofer enclosure, while the top chassis provides a matching two-way monitor that perches atop the woofer. Both enclosures are precision machined from thick slabs of aircraft-grade aluminium. In turn, internal wiring, drive units, crossover boards, and crossover components are all of exceptional quality, so that saying that YG Acoustics speakers feature a high standard of build would be like saying that Fabergé made some ‘pretty nice Easter eggs’.

But candidly, awe-inspiring build quality is only part of the draw behind YG’s loudspeakers, because the main thing is their sound. In YG’s modestly appointed but very effective demonstration room, the Hailey 1.2’s made me think only in adverbs. It sounded arrestingly, blindingly, jaw-droppingly great, offering a brilliant combination of unfailing tonal neutrality, extraordinary top-to-bottom resolution and focus, with plenty of dynamic muscle and nuance on demand. As a result, the Hailey 1.2’s honoured the music in an uncommonly faithful and uncompromising way, yet without ever putting a foot wrong, musically speaking. The result is my idea of a ‘happily ever after’ loudspeaker—one I think I could savour for years and years to come.

 

Great loudspeakers call for equally great source components and one such component that has been calling out to me of late is Chord Electronics’ new DAVE (Digital Audio Veritas in Extremis) DAC, which sells for £7,995. Why crave the DAVE? The simple answer is that the DAVE represents a multifaceted and all-out assault on the state-of-the-art in digital audio sound quality—an approach that in many respects ventures into unexplored technical territory. Perhaps more importantly, Robert Watts, designer of a string of successful DACs for Chord (including the Hugo and DAVE), says the DAVE addresses three particular areas of sonic performance: the realistic recreation of depth information in recordings, the proper rendition of timing aspects of the music, and the reproduction of instrument timbre.

, The Martens Miscellany

With these ends in mind, the DAVE incorporates an extremely sophisticated noise shaper with 48-bit resolving capability (meaning, says Watts, that DAVE “can resolve signals below -300dB)”, a massive FPGA-based tap length and interpolation filter (offering a staggering 164,000 tap length filter) backed by Watts’ proprietary WTA filter algorithm, and a host of other design features aimed at giving the DAVE a low noise floor and at eliminating noise floor modulation. In short, DAVE takes all of the design thinking behind the firm’s critically acclaimed Hugo portable DAC/headphone amp and elevates it to the highest level possible given the limits of contemporary technology. For more details, I encourage you to read Robert Watts’ interview in the Hi-Fi+ Guide to Digital Audio (download our guide for free at www.hifiplus.com), where he explains the design of the DAVE DAC in some depth. As I see it, the more you learn about the DAVE DAC, the more you’ll want to hear it in action.

Assuming the YG speakers I mentioned above are a bit much to hope for, then another terrific loudspeaker on my Christmas wish list is Magnepan’s flagship 20.7 dipolar, hybrid planar magnetic/ribbon-type loudspeaker, featuring so-called ‘push-pull’ magnet arrays (£16,500/pair). Frankly, the 20.7s have tempted me from afar ever since their inception and it is easy to understand why. Few loudspeakers—regardless of size, price, or type—do a more convincing job of coherently conveying the realistic scale of instruments, vocalists, and recording venues. The 20.7’s don’t merely place instruments ‘in your room’, as some speakers claim to do, but rather they transport you to the venue where the performance was captured, which is a rare and beautiful thing indeed. What is more, the 20.7 stands as one of those rare sub-£20,000 loudspeakers that can and do successfully compete on a level footing with speakers many times its price (did Magnepan forget and leave a zero off the end of the 20.7’s price tag?).

But let’s not forget analogue audio in this wish list. Some years back I once reviewed the Wilson Benesch Full Circle turntable for our sister magazine, The Absolute Sound and came to admire the WB design greatly. In fact, I debated buying the review sample, ultimately deciding to pass—a decision I’ve regretted (off and on) ever since. In the intervening years, however, Wilson Benesch has significant refined the original design to create a new and improved version of the Full Circle called the Circle 25, released in 2014 to commemorate Wilson Benesch’s Silver anniversary. What’s changed? Well, the chassis materials have changed and improved, adding density, damping, and about 3kg to the turntable’s weight, the main bearing has been updated, and the tonearm has been upgraded from the Full Circle’s A.C.T. 0.5 to the new A.C.T. 25, which is said to be 15% lighter and better damped than the original. Like the original Full Circle, the Circle 25 comes pre-fitted with Wilson Benesch’s carbon fibre-bodied Ply moving coil cartridge, which is a modified/enhanced version of the popular Benz Glider. Put these elements together and you have an artful and refined turnkey analogue system that sells for an as-yet-undisclosed but manageable sum, a sum which puts the Circle 25 in direct competition with Rega’s RP10 with Apheta 2 moving coil cartridge. The choice between them would be a tough one, but what has me leaning toward the Wilson Benesch is the sophisticated A.C.T. 25 carbon fibre pickup arm with its tapered arm tube, ingenious kinematic bearing system, and—this is a big one for me—its provisions for VTA adjustment (VTA adjustment is verboten at the house of Rega). I hope to be looking at the Circle 25 in a review soon.

 

But if all these cool pieces of audio gear sound enticing, and they shouldn’t let us forget about the thing that drew us to audio in the first place: the music.

I love new music especially in two forms: high-res downloads accessed via HD Tracks, and access to a huge variety of CD-quality (or better) content via a subscription to Tidal. HD Tracks, under the expert guidance of the Chesky team, has been offering high-res music downloads for longer than just about anyone, and the firm’s selection of titles reflects this fact. But how can one best discover new music? This is where Tidal comes into play. For me Tidal represents a flexible, high-quality vehicle for exploring new music or for resurrecting forgotten favourites, all at a sensible price (subscriptions for Tidal HiFi, which is the lossless version, run £19.99/month, which is money well spent).

, The Martens Miscellany

Of course, some are sure to ask, “Isn’t there anything on your wish list apart from audio gear and music?” Actually, there is. As it happens, a great many of my audio colleagues turn out to share my secondary passion apart from hi-fi: fine, mechanical-movement wristwatches. I haven’t taken the plunge yet, but a watch that has caught my eye is the IWC Schaffhausen Pilot Automatic Chronograph (£4,600 and up). It speaks to my love of aviation, my fascination for precisely made mechanical objects, and my profound respect for engineering at its best.

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