Photos courtesy Peter McGrath.
On Wednesday, October 6th, John Atkinson and I hurried out of the office, hopped in a cab, and made our way to
Innovative Audio, one of New York City’s premier hi-fi dealers. It was my first time at the shop and I was very impressed. Strikingly beautiful women floated around the front room, while the large, open space soon became crowded with press and guests. Along one wall, a long table held all kinds of colorful and curious-looking treats: finger sandwiches carved out of enormous loaves of bread, Thai spring rolls, grilled satee with peanut sauce, fruits, nuts, candies, cheese. Along another wall, a seemingly endless collection of wines and sparkling water. Pictures of rock stars and celebrities on the walls—here Drew Barrymore, there Fiona Apple. And everywhere possible, the most visually impressive loudspeakers, amplifiers, and music servers.
Along with representatives of Innovative Audio, Vladimir and Elina Lamm of Lamm Industries and Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio Specialties were on hand to present the latest Lamm amplifiers and Wilson loudspeakers.
I walked into the smallest room first, Showroom 5, where a Meridian Sooloos Control 15 served as the center of a system comprising a Lamm M2.2 Hybrid amplifier and Wilson Sophia 3 loudspeakers. I heard monumental bass, bass unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my own home, bass that was taut and alluring and
massive. All this with treble performance that sliced through the storm with clarity and precision. Innovative’s Chris Forman tapped a few buttons on the Sooloos’s touchscreen and soon Paul Simon was singing “Diamond’s On the Soles of Her Shoes,” a popular choice for its thrilling percussion and lovely vocal arrangements. The percussion was immediately impressive—natural-sounding and impactful—and the voices spread across the stage and floated way back behind the speakers. And if everybody here would know what I was talking about, I mean everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about.
It was beautiful and fun and there were about a dozen people who suddenly came to my mind, people who I thought would love to be sitting there with me, experiencing the music as I was, people who
should be experiencing the music in this way.
In the next room, Showroom 4, I was treated to an outstanding demonstration by Peter McGrath. Peter has a strong and assuring voice and, in this extremely quiet, controlled room, that voice carried us along as we prepared to listen to some very fine recordings. The system featured Lamm’s ML1.2 Reference amplifier, the LL2.1 preamp, and Wilson’s Sasha W/P,
reviewed by Art Dudley in our July 2010 issue. As a source, Peter was using a Mac outfitted with Amarra 2.0 software and an external hard drive. From the Mac, Peter ran a FireWire cable to a Weiss INT-202 format-converter box. And from there, Peter connected an AES/EBU cable to the Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC. Using Amarra, Peter was able to bypass iTunes completely, dragging and dropping files from the computer’s hard drive directly into the Amarra play list.
Peter started with a piano track, and the system came surprisingly close to conveying the scale and impact of a real piano. Later, an opera track produced the performance space with an eerie realism and offered climactic passages with great force. Voices were displayed with intoxicating clarity and warmth. Finally, a Pan Sonic track showed off the Wilson’s fine spatial abilities, shooting darts across the room.
It was in the last room, though, Showroom 3, that I heard the most interesting, captivating music. I walked into a packed room and took the only remaining seat. Featured here were Lamm’s LP2 phono preamp, L2 Reference Hybrid preamp, and the 4-chassis, 32Wpc ML3 Signature monoblock amplifiers. Speakers were the mighty Wilson Alexandria 2s. (In the darkened room, the speakers were not as imposing as I usually find them, though they did look as though they’d knife you in the back if you weren’t careful. Still, I was not so overwhelmed by their size as I was by what I perceived, perhaps fancifully, to be the ease and fluidity they contributed to the overall sound of the system.) Scale and weight were obviously greater here than in other rooms, and there was an unmistakable sweetness and liquid tone to guitars. I was happily surprised—though I shouldn’t have been—to learn that the sound I was hearing was coming from vinyl. Innovative’s Scott Haggart was crouching beside a fully-loaded Linn LP12, cueing records and nodding his head to the music.
Scott was playing a side of Moondog, the eccentric American composer/poet who lived on the streets of New York, dressed as Thor. It was the first time I’d ever heard him, I’m almost embarrassed to admit, and now I know what all the fuss is about. Next came a track by a fellow named Jim Bartow. Google “Jim Bartow” and you will find a curious and refreshing lack of information on the man, but, during our listening session, we learned that Jim was a professor and friend of Scott’s wife. The album we played,
Ritual Love Songs, was inscribed to her. Bartow filled the room with a voice like liquid copper, like a thick cloud of smoke and incense, like so much light and love. My scribbled notes read:
Sexy, laidback, oh man awesome voice! In my solitude you taunt me! What?! What a fucking voice!
What?!
I had had about all I could take. I also had to catch up with Art Dudley and John Atkinson and Steve Guttenberg before going to dinner, so I thanked Scott for introducing me to the sounds. No excellent night of music is complete without some new albums to hunt down, and this had indeed turned out to be an excellent night of music.
The very next day, before doing anything else, I got on eBay and clicked “Buy Now” on a couple of Jim Bartow records. At dinner, we had discussed different strategies for saving the hi-fi industry. What a waste of time—we could've been listening to music. The more I think about it, the stronger I feel we need to focus less on “saving the hi-fi industry” and more on simply sharing incredible music and sounds. If we do that, hi-fi will be just fine.
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For more on Innovative Audio, read Steve Guttenberg's interview with Innovative founder,
Elliot Fishkin.
