Tube Preamp Reviews

Notwithstanding my earlier comments about the importance of equipment reviewers making subjective evaluations of components regardless of price, very early in my process of reviewing the Lamm LL1 Signature I decided that, to truly impress me, any $42,790 line stage would have to clear three hurdles:

1) The quality of its parts and construction would need to be consistent with its price: in other words, as high and as good as possible.

2) There could be no sonic flaws.

3) In at least one aspect of its sound, it would have to exceed in quality every other tubed line stage I've heard. (In recent years, I've heard over a dozen with prices in four and five figures.)

Hurdle 1 was easy—Vladimir Lamm has used the highest-quality parts in every corner of the LL1's design. Moreover, in 30 years of reviewing, I've never seen a more logically laid out, more ruggedly constructed electronics component.

Hurdle 2 turned out to be easy as well. Every voice and instrument on the dozens of recordings I listened to through the LL1 was rendered in completely uncolored and undistorted detail on a wide, deep soundstage, with no shortcomings in dynamics, transient articulation, or texture.

Hurdle 3? My reaction surprised me. After many weeks of listening to the LL1, using several dozen recordings I'd heard many times before, I found three areas in which the Lamm LL1 Signature significantly exceeded the performance of any other tubed line stage I'd heard:

1) A sense of unfettered, dynamic ease and drama indistinguishable from live music: I've heard many preamps that can reproduce fff passages without compression or smearing. The LL1 went a step further. No matter how complex the music, I never got the sense that the Lamm was working hard to reproduce the complex waveforms. It reproduced the crashing dramatic climaxes of orchestral warhorses with the same relaxed quality as it did a solo flute. In "Dog Breath Variations" and "Uncle Meat," performed by Peter Rundel and the Ensemble Modern on Frank Zappa's The Yellow Shark (CD, Barking Pumpkin R2 71600), the tutti finale, full of dramatic percussion, was uncompressed and effortless, with no change in the texture of a single instrument—which was how it sounded when I heard the Ensemble Modern perform these pieces at New York's Lincoln Center. Similarly, the finale to Antal Doráti and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Stravinsky's The Firebird (CD, Mercury Living Presence 432 012-2) was as effortless, crashing, and boisterous as it sounded the last time I heard this piece in concert, from my seat at the center of row 20 in Carnegie Hall.

2) Clean, crisp, uncolored, fast, deep, gut-slamming bass: Remember the old days, when everyone thought that tube preamps' bass was inferior to that of solid-state? Ha! The LL1 demonstrated to me that every other component in my system is capable of reproducing deeper, more authoritative bass than I'd ever heard from it before. During the Spaceship movement of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, with Michael Riesman conducting the Philip Glass Ensemble (CD, Nonesuch 79323-2), the rapid-fire ascending and descending bass synth, doubled by woodwinds and covering a range of nearly three octaves, were crystal clean, authoritative, and uncolored, with no sense of smear, and with air after the release of each bass note and before the initiation of the next.

I cued up my acid test for bass, Jon Hassell's Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street (CD, ECM 2077), which features some extraordinarily deep notes from bass guitar, bass synth, and laptop. In fact, I've never heard deeper bass from any ECM recording, and I own several hundred. I've heard this group perform this album in its entirety at Carnegie Hall, which gives me a good reference point. My 13-year-old daughter, Caitlin, was upstairs in her bedroom as I cued up the CD. I felt the house shudder, as it did once when she had a nightmare and fell out of bed. I jumped up from my listening chair. "Caitlin, are you all right?"

"What are you talking about?"

The house shuddered again.

"Never mind." It was the opening bass riff of "Aurora," the first track on the Hassell CD.

However, the LL1 ruthlessly revealed that the seemingly forceful bass synth in Björk's Homogenic (CD, Elektra 62061-2) has been artificially boosted in a narrow upper-bass range, to make it not sound bass shy through lesser equipment.

3) The ability to render each instrument within its own dynamic envelope: In Louis Andriessen's De Tijd, with Reinbert De Leeuw conducting the Schönberg Ensemble (CD, Elektra Nonesuch 79291-2), a dissonant backwash of sustained strings runs through the entire work. Sudden percussion transients emerge from a foundation of strings, then retreat into the background. Through the LL1, the effect was like the dolphins at Sea World leaping into the air for fish, then quickly submerging.

George Crumb's Spanish Songbook 1: The Ghosts of Alhambra, from The Complete Crumb Edition, Vol.15 (CD, Bridge 9335), is scored for baritone, classical guitar, and percussion. For most of the work, David Starobin's guitar remains in the background behind Patrick Mason's powerful baritone and Daniel Druckman's boisterous percussion. But in Starobin's fortissimo passages, the guitarist was pushed forward in the mix through the Lamms, leaving the other two musicians as his backdrop.

I was most surprised when listening to "Walking After Midnight," from Madeline Peyroux's Dreamland (CD, Atlantic 82946-2). I know this recording intimately and have never felt it to be particularly dynamic. Through the Lamms, Peyroux's voice remained fairly consistent in the mix, but I was struck by how dramatically organist Charlie Giordano popped his Hammond B3 chords over and under Peyroux. (The B3's dynamics are very difficult to govern, requiring fine-tuned calf muscles in the leg controlling the volume pedal.) And I was annoyed by James Carter's upper-register solo on saxophone, which the LL1 allowed me to hear how it had been pushed forth aggressively in the mix, seeming out of balance with the rest of the instruments.

I was most floored by the Lamms when, for background music for a recent dinner, I put on the Bill Evans Trio's Live at the Village Vanguard Featuring Scott LaFaro (CD, JVC JVCR-0051-2). In the past I've mentioned the Ellen Test of dynamics: My wife asks me to turn the system down if it's too loud. There is also Ellen Test No.2. My wife has strict rules about what sort of music and volume levels are permitted during dinner. I have to pick the music carefully, lest I trigger the dreaded "Can we just have some quiet during dinner?" I cued up the Evans at a background listening level. Ellen and her sister were engaged in a lively conversation over dinner when a bass solo by Scott LaFaro leaped out of the mix. I was able to tune out the discussion to follow and analyze his technique. When the solo ended, I focused again on what Ellen and my sister-in-law were saying, which had continued undisturbed.

The LL1 had many other strengths. Its ability to render linear gradations of low-level dynamic articulation by small, well-recorded jazz groups let me feel as if I were sitting next to the performers onstage. That happened with pianist Tord Gustavsen's Changing Places (CD, ECM 1834), drummer Paul Motian's :rarum XVI : Selected Recordings (CD, ECM 8016), and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane's Stardust (CD, Prestige PRCD-30168). With the Coltrane, I could almost see the sax master's spit emerging in my listening room.

The LL1 Signature was also able to unravel an extraordinary amount of detail, which made it easy to analyze the minutiae of recordings I know well. My favorite track on my jazz quartet Attention Screen's Live at Merkin Hall (CD, Stereophile STPH018-2) is "Fruit Forward." Through the Lamm, I noted the purity of Mark Flynn's cymbals and the forcefulness of his high-level tom-tom thwacks, as well as the warm bloom of Chris Jones's fretless Fender bass. The woodiness of the lower midrange of the Steinway D concert grand I was playing reminded me of why I'd chosen that piano for this concert recording (footnote 2). Unfortunately, the Lamm also let me hear every little mistake I'd made during my cadenza in that piece, so my listening session with that CD ended on a bit of a down note. David Chesky, however, made no mistakes in any of his solos on his Jazz in the New Harmonic (CD, Chesky JD358). The Lamms revealed the loose but precise rhythmic interplay of his group—it was easy to hear a level of musical communication in these tracks that felt on the level of Miles Davis's groups on Bitches Brew.

Finally, in its detailed and uncolored midrange and highs, the Lamm LL1 had all the strengths I would want in and expect from a cost-no-object tubed preamp. All voices sounded clean, tactile, and liquid. Alison Krauss's soprano in her and Union Station's Live (CD, Rounder 11661-0515-2) was holographic and angelic, and emerged, floating on a bed of air, on a wide, deep soundstage. Highs were clean, crisp, and extended, with perfectly articulated transients. However, when I listened to the gamut of electric and acoustic guitars Bill Frisell plays on his Ghost Town (CD, Nonesuch 79583-2), I did feel that, though they all sounded natural and convincing through the LL1, Frisell's guitars have had a touch more top-end sparkle through the other line-stage preamps I have recently reviewed. I'm not saying that the LL1 rolled off the highs or drained these recordings of top-octave air. Rather, the Lamm's personality seemed a bit reserved at the extreme top of the audioband.

Comparisons
I compared the Lamm LL1 ($42,790) to the Audio Valve Eclipse ($5799), the Zesto Leto ($7500), and the line stage of the Audio Research SP20 ($9000). Although all four preamps excelled in their neutrality and resolution of detail, I felt the Lamm was the best at resolving midrange inner detail, ambience, and low-level dynamic articulation. And while, even in comparison with the Zesto and the ARC, the Audio Valve has impressive bass definition, bass extension, and high-level dynamic articulation, I felt that in all of these areas the Lamm far exceeded the other three preamps. In fact, with complex, high-level, dynamic passages, the Eclipse sounded a bit coagulated and tense in comparison with the relaxed, reserved Lamm. Finally, I felt that the ARC and the Zesto had a bit more high-frequency sparkle than the Lamm, but in this area the Lamm and Audio Valve were very close.

Summing Up
In the LL1 Signature line-stage preamplifier, Vladimir Lamm has stunningly executed a stunning design. The LL1's flawless sound is impressive, but I remain floored by the several areas in which it achieved levels of performance I hadn't thought possible. The LL1 should be on the short list of anyone who seeks the best possible sound from a line-stage preamplifier, and who's willing to deal with the spatial demands of a four-chassis preamp, some minor ergonomic quirks, and a price tag of $42,790! It's worth every penny.

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Footnote 2: The concert director at Merkin Hall gave me a choice of two 9' Steinway grands: a refurbished pre-WWII model, and the newer D. When I told her that I wanted the D, she said, "Yeah, Cecil Taylor preferred that one when he played here last month."