AXPONA 2023

I'm not one for abusing punctuation, as in ending every sentence of a press release with an exclamation point. (It happens more frequently than you may wish to know.) But when MBL named its top-of-the-line loudspeakers X-treme ($398,000/pair), they weren't kidding. These speakers are as huge as they are imposing.

Nor were the speakers the only extreme element of a system auditioned after hours at Chicago-area retailer Kyomi Audio. Two MBL 9011 mono amplifiers ($128,200/pair), two more MBL 9008 mono amplifiers ($70,200/pair), an MBL 6010D preamplifier ($32,400), Zanden 1200 Signature phono tube equalizer ($29,500), Ideon Audio Absolute DAC-Epsilon ($47,000) and Absolute Time Reclocker ($10,000), Vertere Reference Groove turntable($33,495) with Vertere New Gen tonearm ($59,995) and Vertere Mystic MC cartridge ($3495), and a good $100,000 worth of Stealth cabling made this was one of the more expensive systems I heard during my time in Chicago.

It took a while to get things going. Multiple attempts to play files back from an Audirvana-equipped computer using special DSP failed until, in a last-ditch save-all effort, a USB to S/PDIF converter and cable (cables) of unknown provenance were called into play. Hi-rez files sounded quite good, but 16/44.1 sounded far flatter than I would expect from MBL, a company known for its breathtakingly spacious, three-dimension presentations.

Thankfully, I asked for LP. When Kyomi's George Vatchnadze showed me his collection, I enthused over a recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert's Schwanengesang with Gerald Moore on piano. It was the first stereo version, from the early 1960s when DF-D was in his early 30s.

I immediately picked one of my favorite late Schubert songs, "Die Taubenpost" (The Carrier Pigeon.) The presentation was mesmerizing. Breathtaking, really. Voice and piano were set way back in space, and tonalities were gorgeous.

Even more significant to this lieder lover, the music-making was on the highest level. Fischer-Dieskau often overthought his interpretations, changing emphasis and tone so many times during a phrase that he drew more attention to himself than to the music. But here, his interpretation seemed alive to the moment, fresh, and virtually spontaneous. As the recording played, I felt I had been invited on the most wonderful Easter egg hunt ever staged. "What is he going to do here? Wow, listen to how beautiful his voice sounds. Oh my gosh, listen to what he's doing with that." Such was my internal dialog as every word and phrase seemed more wondrous than the one before. I'm sure my mouth was agape and my eyes wide as the recording played. Only one of the finest sound systems on Planet Earth can present vocal artistry on this level.

After the session, George Vatchnadze told me that two of the secrets to the system's success with LP was that the Zanden 1200 Signature phono tube equalizer has a special EQ curve for EMI LPs of a certain vintage. George also learned from Zanden that those same LPs were often recorded in negative polarity and required phase reversal to sound as intended. Based on what I heard, the assets of both device and advice were vindicated.