Brilliant Corners

This may sound like a small thing that I'm inflating into a larger one, or even a case of audio-reviewer sophistry, but I'm beginning to think this may be the most important thing there is to discuss about a hi-fi component. Many of us equate peak listening experiences with peak sound. This suggests that nothing short of a mind-blowing hi-fi can reliably hold our attention, which if you think about it for even a moment is a pretty miserable predicament. So anything that allows a reprieve from the endless tweaking, optimizing, fussing, and comparing—activities that sometimes occupy more of our listening sessions than enjoying our music—must be considered a small miracle. Imagine sitting down in front of your hi-fi and actually having fun.

This is what the little Mac allowed me to do more often than any other amplifier in recent memory. When I replaced it with the aforementioned amps from Ampsandsound and Manley, I was rewarded with appreciably better sound, but I felt less engaged, less able to give myself over to the music. My analytical mind—what Buddhists sometimes call the monkey mind—kept intruding, prattling on about soundstage width or transient response like an annoying roommate. Meditation teacher Pema Chödrön says that when a thought arises in our minds, we should touch it with our awareness as gently as we might touch a soap bubble with a feather. It's a beautiful teaching, yet after some listening sessions I still feel like coming after my incessant thoughts with a dull hatchet. Analysis and enjoyment don't always play well together.

Before I put a fork in the subject of the MC225 and enjoyment, I have to talk about Jimi Hendrix. The little Mac made me reach for Electric Ladyland, one of the most fun records I can think of. But when I put it on, I remembered just how bad my first US pressing sounds—murky, with too much bass and piss-poor clarity, resolution, and scale.

After a little research, I bought the 2010 vinyl reissue (Experience Hendrix–88697 62398), mastered by the album's original engineer Eddie Kramer and George Marino at Sterling Sound. Though I can be a bit of a Karen about vinyl reissues, this Electric Ladyland strikes me as essentially perfect. The two LPs are clean and flat, come in archival sleeves, are widely available, cost less than $30, and sound fantastic. If you need a copy of this monster of a record, you'd be hard pressed to do better.

With the reissue in hand, I dropped the needle on "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)," Hendrix's epic about fleeing the war-torn world of men for the primordial oceanic ooze from whence all living things emerged. I wish I could convey to you how much fun it was to hear Hendrix's guitar and bass, Mitch Mitchell's drums, seagull squawks, and the chiming bell sounds of the flexatone floating around me, sometimes sounding like they were directly behind my seat. I felt the kind of excitement I used to feel at 13, lying on my elbows on the rug in front of our Fisher department-store hi-fi, and I got a little wistful about never having been much of a drug taker.

My time with the MC225 made me think about why we continue to listen to certain components long after they were introduced, despite the alleged advancements in musical reproduction. Like records and books, the vast majority of hi-fi products are soon forgotten—just take a look at an audio magazine from 1961, the year the MC225 was introduced. While people continue to seek out the little stereo Mac, few are still grooving to the Bogen-Presto RP-40 Home Music Center or the Coral Tetraxial Speaker from the unfortunately named Fukuyo Sound company of Tokyo, Japan. So what is it that makes an audio component outlast the ravages of novelty and time?

It may have a bit to do with its looks and something to do with its sound, but I can't help believing it has even more to do with the ability to make listening compelling in a variety of systems and rooms. If that's the truest measure of longevity, the MC225 deserves to be called a classic.

Chris Cheek's Keepers of the Eastern Door
Audiophile record labels have always been a fundamentally lousy idea. Making a good record is difficult enough. And when the label's reason for existence is making "demonstration-quality" audio, it's too easy to end up with pristinely recorded disks of crushingly banal music. Without naming the guilty, does anyone really need to hear another Broadway singer work out her jazzy side into a $15,000 microphone?

There have been happy exceptions. For me, foremost among them are the stunning recordings of Indian masters like Ali Akbar Khan and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt that Kavi Alexander made for his Water Lily Acoustics label. Another exception is jazz saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh's recordings of his own music, which have been covered in some depth in this magazine. With the advent of Analog Tone Factory, a label he runs with jazz pianist and recording engineer Pete Rende, Sabbagh has begun to release music by other artists. I've been listening to the first of these titles—Keepers of the Eastern Door, a jazz recording by a group led by saxophonist Chris Cheek and featuring guitarist Bill Frisell—in three different analog formats, and I'm here to report that I've enjoyed myself.

Happily, the main reason is the music. Though he doesn't have the name recognition of Branford Marsalis or Joshua Redman, Cheek is a first-rate improviser and composer with a distinctive sound; while he mostly plays tenor, he's also one of the greatest living performers on the soprano sax. Since 1997, he has appeared on nearly 30 records with everyone from Lee Konitz to Brad Mehldau, but for me, Keepers of the Eastern Door is the most enjoyable record of his career.

One reason is Frisell. He's recorded everything from bluegrass to orchestral classical music with total conviction, and he brings that curiosity and broad intelligence to this album. Here, he comps and solos with customary tastiness and sensitivity and wrings uncommon warmth from his instrument. The other reason is the mood: Everyone sounds like they're having a blast in the studio. Perhaps it's because the bassist and drummer on the session—Tony Scherr and Rudy Royston—are Frisell's longtime collaborators. Or maybe because of Sabbagh's insistence on having everyone play together, with no overdubs. Or possibly it's the wild range of the material, which includes a version of Henry Purcell's 17th century art song "Lost Is My Quiet" leading into the Beatles' "From Me to You," which Cheek plays like a funk band sax player at a neighborhood barbecue. It's one of those records where you can hear the good time being had, and everything just flows.

The sound is every bit as pellucid and powerful as on Sabbagh's most recent release, Heart—not surprising given that it was recorded at the same studio with the same gear and engineered by the same guy, the masterly James Farber. What's different is that it is being released both as a conventional LP and also as a one-step disc, which dispenses with several mechanical steps used in the normal pressing process. Making it requires more lacquers to produce the same number of albums but essentially converts the lacquer into a stamper.

A few weeks ago, Sabbagh lent me a test pressing of each. The way the regular LP captures the bell-like tone of Frisell's amplified guitar, panned hard into the left channel, is goosebump-inducing, and every instrument sounds weighty, saturated, and crystal clear. But to my ears, the one-step is even better. There's more definition and presence, yet to my surprise the largest difference is that following the music becomes easier. The performance is more emotional and makes more sense.

The day before I sat down to write this, I also heard Keepers of the Eastern Door on ¼" tape at Ana Mighty Sound, a hi-fi dealer in Paris. Playing on an Analog Audio Design TP-1000, the tape sounded magical, with an effortlessness and rock-solid stability that made both vinyl versions sound a bit fussy. All three formats should be available by the time you read this.

Sabbagh is a friend, but I would love this record even if it were produced by Mel Gibson. He (Sabbagh) told me that upcoming releases will include a set by jazz saxophonist Mark Turner, one of his generation's leading lights, and will be engineered using one of two vintage Altec tube consoles, including a stereo version of the 230B, used by Rudy Van Gelder during his 1950s heyday.

I wish Sabbagh luck wrangling that rarest of unicorns—an audiophile record label that doesn't suck.