Gramophone Dreams

The golden rays pouring in through the left oculus transport a tiny child carrying a cross: ". . . the devil was vanquished, as if he had just swallowed the bait in the mousetrap." In his essay "'Muscipula Diaboli,' The Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece," the late art historian Meyer Schapiro explains how every object, every surface—even the smoke, light, and volume of space—depicted in the famous triptych by Robert Campin (ca 1375–1444) is a coded symbol explicating the mystical underpinnings of Netherlandish Protestantism (footnote 1).

The painting, now in the Cloisters of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, shows how a 15th-century Dutch fabric merchant—which describes the donor who commissioned this painting—might have imagined the Annunciation. This image was the beginning of a radical new art that would be valued more for its ability to represent philosophical or metaphysical concepts and crystalized thought than for any amount of craft or skill. The painting's main purpose was, as Schapiro's put it, to help churchgoers "picture in their minds . . . a long ago, far away, mystical event."

The central panel (see photo) shows the inside of a small Dutch living room in which the archangel Gabriel is about to announce to Mary that she will be the mother of Christ. The room has two rectangular windows, and two oculi—circular or oval windows—that represent human eyes. The room itself symbolizes the interior of the skull of the kneeling male donor in the left panel.

The altarpiece represents a sudden shift in the nature of painted representation, from the didactic, two-dimensional, illusionary "space" of all European painting up to that point, to a dynamic, three-dimensional allegory of the workings and imaginings crystalized inside the viewer's—and patron's—minds.

This early-renaissance paradigm shift is still an important part of our culture. Thinking, reading books, and, especially, listening to music—all require our personal awareness of this aforementioned "inner-skull" space. As we listen to recorded music, what we feel stimulates the production of images, and those images connect us with events long past. (Which is precisely why I hold stereo imaging in such high regard.)

When I lie on the bed in my darkened monk's cell, listening through headphones to a recording of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, I experience that same form of crystalized thought—directly between my ears. The space inside my skull becomes the nave of St. Thomas Church, in Leipzig, and I contemplate the mystical underpinnings of the Protestant Reformation. If you can imagine the beauty of this connectedness, then you are ready to explore the intimacy, power, and glory of great music experienced via great earspeakers.

The Guttenberg Bible
Steve Guttenberg, who writes for CNET and our sister magazine Sound & Vision, is my audio-reviewing runnin' buddy. He got me into headphones. He kept nagging me: "I know you, Herb. You're going to really like the way headphones connect you with the music." I showed him my Koss Porta Pros and Grado SR60s. He didn't give up. He loaned me a pair of over-ear Audio-Technica ATH-M50s and advised me to take my time, focus my mind, and listen patiently.

I looked up the ATH-M50s on the Internet and read all the reviews. Since then, I've been doing my homework: reading Tyll Herstens's writings at Stereophile's sister website InnerFidelity.com and Guttenberg's own Audiophiliac blog at CNET.com. I've been borrowing a lot of headphones and listening at least an hour a day, comparing Steve's and Tyll's reviews against my own impressions. Here's what I've learned from these two major, full-time, professional headphone gurus: The last thing the world needs is another wise-ass pontificator (like me) babbling to the masses about which headphones are the best and which they should buy.

Audeze EL-8 open-back headphones
After Audio-Technica's ATH-M50x headphones ($239)—the well-balanced, musically involving, and extremely comfortable 'phones to which I recently upgraded to ATH-M50s—the next audiophile-quality headphones I spent time with were Audeze's LCD-2 open-back model (footnote 2). Their rich, solid musicality was beyond what I'd imagined headphones could achieve. The LCD-2s' detail, momentum, and unabashed beauty of sound took me inside the music, and revealed to me the exact words each singer was singing and each songwriter had written. The bass let me feel the music in my bones. The extreme high quality of the LCD-2s cured my ADD and committed me to the benefits of lying in bed and listening in the dark. With headphones, you're always in the sweet spot.

The LCD-2s showed me something else: Headphones are the same as loudspeakers—except that they're designed to be experienced in the listener's extreme nearfield. I've always preferred listening to my Quad ESLs and Falcon LS3/5a speakers very close up—say, from a distance of 3' to 7'. Sitting so close minimizes room colorations and intensifies the energy field, making instruments and voices extraclear and physically tangible. Listening to earspeakers is a natural extension of that practice.

Soon, I got lucky again, and began spending nights with Audeze's then-new LCD-X open-back 'phones. The 'Xes reproduced reverberating hall sounds, giant pipe organs, and massed voices with a crystalline beauty that turned the inside of my skull into the nave of a cathedral.

Then, last January, at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, I entered Audeze's room, where I encountered former Stereophile fabulist and current public-relations person extraordinaire Jonathan Scull. He smiled like a naughty Frenchman. "Herb, I hear you're into headphones. Try these!" He handed me a pair of Audeze's new EL-8 open-back model and turned up the volume on the Burson Virtuoso Conductor DAC-headphone amplifier ($1995).

Within 30 seconds, I was thinking, These 'phones seem more transparent, detailed, and open than the LCD-2s or the LCD-Xes. Within minutes, I was thinking how much lighter (420gm vs the LCD-Xes' 600gm) and more comfortable (than the LCD-2s) the EL-8s felt. I asked the price. J-10 smiled again. "$699!"

I mumbled something and started switching tracks on the music server. Then I plugged the EL-8s into my iPhone and listened to "Raga Basant Mukhari with Jogia: Gat in Jhap Tala & Teen Tala," from Ali Akbar Khan's Artistic Sound of Sarod (CD, Chhanda Dhara SNCD 3386). This recording sounded stronger, faster, punchier, and more transparent than it ever had—even through my big floorstanders. "Jonathan! I need to write about these. What do you think?" Again he flashed that naughty I have a dirty secret smile.

Unlike my LCD-2, the LCD-X—and all of the newest Audeze models, including the EL-8—come equipped with a Fazor apparatus attached to the twin magnet structures (footnote 3). Audeze claims that the Fazor guides and manages the movement of sound pressures around the dense magnet grids, thus creating a more symmetrical acoustic load on the diaphragm; theoretically, this should improve the phase and impulse responses, especially at high frequencies. To my ears, the Fazor-equipped models sound more airy and transparent, but less weighty and punchy than the non-Fazor models.

The Audeze EL-8s are made in the US, and are available in closed- and open-back models. I report here on the open-back version, but I listened to both and found them equally worthy—but different. I tend to prefer closed-back headphones for serious critical listening, such as evaluating recordings or audio equipment—and especially for setting a phono cartridge's azimuth, vertical tracking angle, and stylus rake angle. But for late-night motets, masses, and British folk music, I usually go with open-back 'phones—they feel more relaxed and expansive.

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Footnote 1: Reprinted in Meyer Schapiro, Late Antique, Early Christian, and Medieval Art: Selected Papers, Vol.3 (New York: George Braziller, 1993).

Footnote 2: Audeze LLC, 1559 Sunland Lane, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Tel: (714) 581-8010. Fax: (702) 823-0333. Web: www.audeze.com.

Footnote 3: See Tyll Herstens, "The Audeze LCD-X, Fazor, and a Fresh Listen to the Current LCD-2 and LCD-3."