Gramophone Dreams

I told Joe he was a super-nice guy and a super-talented engineer, but a below-average explainer.

All I know for sure is that the new Abyss AB-1266 looks the same as the old, costs the same, weighs the same (620gm), and sounds only slightly different. I had both models here to compare.

Listening
The new and old Abyss headphones were voiced using a Woo Audio WA5 integrated/headphone amplifier, with 300B tubes, like the one I reviewed in the January 2017 issue. Therefore, to get the full measure of authorized Abyss pleasure, I used the Woo WA5 for most of my evaluations. I also used Schiit Audio's Yggdrasil and Mytek HiFi's Brooklyn DACs, as well as Linear Tube Audio's microZOTL2.0 and Pass Labs' HPA-1 headphone amplifiers.

With the Woo: I'm an artist, so I tend to favor artful modernist-expressionist, and mercurial compositions like fellow painter Arnold Schoenberg's Suite, Op.29, performed by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players (LP, Deutsche Grammophon 2531 277). The Suite is a lighthearted and slyly intelligent atonal work in which bass clarinets dance the foxtrot while cellos speak in voice-like tones. In this composition, Schoenberg relies heavily on the contrapuntal actions of three types of instruments: strings, clarinets, and piano. This beautiful recording is deeply satisfying, both for its rich instrumental tones and its wide, deep, transparent soundstage. I've played this engaging recording countless times, on innumerable stereo rigs, and never has it sounded as natural, open, and real as it did through the original Abyss AB-1266es. While listening, I scribbled the phrase perfectly natural several times. I never felt more kindred or connected to Schoenberg than I did while enjoying the Suite's four variations and coda on "&#196nnchen von Tharau," a folk-like song by Friedrich Silcher, and a final Gigue that made me forget I was wearing headphones.

The original Abyss AB-1266es made Schoenberg's wistful Suite into a full-spectrum chromatic delight that appealed to both my mind and spirit. The Boston Players were so well proportioned and properly toned that I found it difficult to listen for sound quality. But I swear, the sound was exquisite: no peaky aberrations or frosty bites, no haze or grain, no forced detailing—just smooth, easy-flowing musical forms. The original Abysses distinguished themselves from the herd of perfectionist headphones by being what I've already suggested they are: the opposite of hi-fi.

With the Woo WA5 amplifier, part of that oppositeness resulted in a reproduction of transients and musical energy that just rolled by, almost softly, very organically, never drawing any attention to itself. This highly musical motional effect kept me from being distracted by unnecessary instrumental details and textural reliefs, as I often am with more blatantly high-resolution audio devices. With the original Abyss AB-1266es, my mind was always on the music, consistently and contentedly directed forward. I couldn't imagine how JPS Labs could improve on their supreme quality.

My attempts to find easily recognizable differences between the old and new Abyss AB-1266es brought me to a Christmas Eve fiesta in Oaxaca de Juarez, capital city of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where I stood before the Catedral Metropolitana de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, surrounded by throngs of revelers. Wearing the old Abyss AB-1266es, I felt like a happy tourist as I played "Christmas in Oaxaca," from David Lewiston's field recording Mexico: Fiestas of Chiapas and Oaxaca (LP, Nonesuch Explorer H-72070). I collect these Nonesuch Explorer recordings because I'm a student of world music and because of the simple way they were recorded. On this fantastically spatial recording, Lewiston placed his stereo microphone tree in the zócalo (main plaza), and the brass and percussion ensembles performed almost randomly around it. It sounds fantastically real: bottle rockets arc noisily and repeatedly overhead. People clap, blow whistles, shout in the distance. Children squeal happily as adults sing in groups. Bands march by with that ol' Doppler pitch-change effect. This spectacular recording makes me feel as if I'm actually there—and especially so with quality headphones.

The new Abyss AB-1266 Phis exposed those real-life carnival sounds and chaotic spatial coordinates exactly as well as the discontinued model, but instead of noticing a subliminal amount of transient gentleness (as I had with the original), I heard a bit more cinematic display and precise camera focus. The Phis sounded two brushstrokes less colorful and one tequila less relaxed than their predecessors, but were unquestionably more focused and panoramic. They made the Christmas moon shine a little brighter over Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.

Attention Luddites
High-quality headphones can always do something that even the best two-channel loudspeakers never can: put you in the middle of the musical action. With stereo speakers, the music appears separate from you and in front of you—lower in energy, smaller in size. With speakers, we sit in our soft chairs and observe the fuzzy or sharp illusions they cast with an unavoidable degree of detachment—a detachment that, I imagine, most audiophiles find comforting. But! Therein lies the intrinsic fakeness of stereo sound from loudspeakers. With speakers, the entire illusion of the musical performance is ghostly, and distinctly over there. The listener, separated from the illusion, must mentally reach out and adjust to apprehend it.

Not so with headphones, where the illusion is attached—in and around your head and body. Headphone listening creates a unique you-are-actually-there illusion of audio reality because headphones and microphones are the same form of full-range electromechanical transducer. When you listen with headphones, the recording microphones and your ears become precisely coincidental; the recording mikes are no longer little phantom things that we search for between the speakers—they are our ears! With headphones, we are the mikes. (Remember what Joe Skubinski said about "standing on the surface of the microphone.")

Because of headphones' perceived ear-microphone coincidence, the illusion of realistically sized performers is more accurately preserved. Energy is reproduced more believably. When loudspeakers reduce the size of an opera stage to something that fits between the speakers—that is a gross distortion.

The space of the recording venue is now the space I perceive that I am in. I'm not staring at some ghostlike, doll-sized hologram superimposed over my equipment rack.

I suggest that you not underestimate the power of this experience of being inside the music to positively enhance your emotional and intellectual connections to a musical performance. It really works.

Don't believe me? Well then . . . just purchase some David Lewiston field recordings (Nonesuch Explorer) or some David Chesky binaural recordings (HDtracks), and play them alternately through headphones and speakers. If you use the new Abyss AB-1266 Phi headphones, you'll likely be surprised at how you-are-there live a recording can sound.

There is, however, one unfortunate side-effect of this synchronicity of ear and microphone, and sometimes the extreme verity of the Abyss AD-1266 Phi headphones made it distractingly obvious. With headphones, our listening pleasure is extra-dependent on microphone placement. This is especially true with recordings of solo instruments such as piano, flute, or guitar. Obviously, it's exciting to feel as if I'm in the room with the musician, but it can feel weird to have my face inside a piano, or 12" from Pepe Romero's guitar strings. As I wrote this, the JPS headphones made Romero's performance of Joaquín Rodrigo's Fandango (LP, Philips 9500 915) sound enjoyably natural (guitar timbre was perfect) and dynamically lifelike—but I was annoyed and disoriented to find my head that close to the strings. For me, close-miked instruments such as Romero's guitar are easier to enjoy via the over-thereness of loudspeakers.

So what about Tina?
I spent a whole morning listening, with every headphone in the bunker, to that LP of Ike & Tina Turner's River Deep—Mountain High. I played it on the Palmer 2.5 turntable with Audio Origami tonearm and EMT TSD 75 cartridge, feeding an Auditorium 23 step-up transformer, connected to a Parasound Halo JC 3+ phono stage feeding my reference Pass Labs HPA-1 headphone amplifier.

Without LSD or cognac, it was hard work—but Tina's sweaty hotness and deep soulfulness came through every set of 'phones. So did the rough character of her voice. What differentiated all of these excellent headphones was their widely varying ability to accurately delineate the bass—and sort out all that Wall of Sound hoopla happening behind Tina. I felt that the Audeze LCD-Xes displayed Tina's voice in the most exciting and expressive way, but they lacked the Abysses' or the HiFiMan HE-1000 V2s' resolution and deep space. I thought the HiFiMan HE-1000 V2s were the most precisely detailed, but that detail seemed to add one more layer of haze to Spector's already fuzzy Wall.

And I was surprised to hear how unreasonably close Sony's MDR-Z1Rs ($2299) came to equaling the relaxed, resolved deep space of the Abyss AB-1266 Phis. Next to the Abysses, the Sonys are the most natural-sounding, most musically satisfying headphones I have experienced.

Two more comparisons
Many headphone connoisseurs consider the Stax SR-009 electrostatic headphones ($3825 + dedicated amplifier) to be the best-resolving of all candidates for best headphone. My numerous but brief auditions of this venerable classic suggest that the SR-009 does indeed generate the most beautiful and fascinating midrange, but it also sounds identifiably electrostat-like—and, hence, less natural than the Abyss AB-1266 Phis, which appear to have almost no sound of their own.

Besides producing more authentic-sounding bass and more naturally rendered upper octaves than the SR-009s, the Abysses delivered detail and soundstage images with an uncannily visual—nay, infinite—depth of field; the Stax SR-009s' focus was distinctly more limited and camera-like.

I've spent a lot of time with another five-star headphone model: Focal's Utopia ($3999). The Utopias make music with a sparkling neutrality that reminds me of dry Champagne. They also possess a unique, breathy athleticism that may exceed the dynamic capabilities both the Stax SR-009s and the Abyss Phis—but! The Abysses took absolute openness, lack of grain, and relaxed purity further than the Staxes or Focals could go.

View from the bunker
JPS Labs' Abyss AB-1266 Phi headphones appear to be the most solidly built, luxuriously packaged, and most true-to-life–sounding of all headphones. And if that statement is true, then the JPS 'phones must also be the best value in perfectionist audio. And if any of these ravings are not true, I must sit on the naughty step until I learn to eat my okra and listen better.