Spin Doctor

Forty years ago, as I was starting out on my audio journey, I railed against the flashy mainstream audio gear of the day. To me less was more, and I tried to convince my friends that my small, austere British-made audio rig, including what my friends jokingly called my Lynn Swanndek turntable (after the Steelers wide receiver), really did sound much better than their big silvery Japanese stacks loaded up with shiny knobs, switches, and meters. Audio was all about the sound after all, and I wasn't interested in some dazzling visual display that had nothing to do with what I was hearing. I gravitated toward gear that wasn't flashy or fancy looking, feeling that meant that the effort and expense to create it went where it counted most, to the parts that made it sound great.

While I've mellowed a bit over the decades, my basic attitude hasn't changed that much. I have owned a lot of pedestrian-looking but brilliant-sounding hi-fi equipment. Highlights include my Julius Futterman H3aa mono OTL amplifiers, with their unpainted aluminum chassis and Dymo labelmaker stickers printed out by Julius himself to identify the various connections and tube sockets, and my Croft Audio Vitale preamp, with its laughable attempts at bling: gold-plated knobs and a faceplate of roughly finished wood.

First place in the ugly stakes, however, has to go to my Symdex Epsilon loudspeakers (although Herb Reichert's legendary Jamaican-flag–painted refrigerator speakers, which had 15" Altec 416 woofers cut into the main doors and Altec 604 drivers cut into the freezer, may have given them a run for their money). The Symdex was the first speaker created by future Snell and Revel designer Kevin Voecks. When new, these speakers looked a bit like a skinnier Vandersteen Model 2, with fabric-wrapped cabinets and wood end caps, but I modified them to within an inch of their lives, turning them into very likely the ugliest speakers ever created.

For starters, I removed the crossover from the base of each speaker and replaced some key capacitors with giant military-spec oil-filled jobs that the supplier cautioned would poison me if they ever leaked. With replacement parts that were so much bigger, the crossovers no longer fit into the base of the speakers, so they sat off to the sides with all their dangerous parts exposed.

I then rewired the speakers with some cable made by Meitner that used dozens of individually insulated strands per conductor, stripping and soldering each one directly to the crossover and drivers, avoiding lossy connectors. The work took weeks, and when I was done, I estimated I had stripped and soldered more than 1500 strands of wire. Then, to reduce diffraction, I removed the grille covers and attached a 1"-thick layer of dense felt with holes cut out for each of the three drivers. Finally, I braced the woofer by installing a steel rod through the back panel of the speaker, which applied pressure against the magnet from behind.

Once all this work was done, the speakers sounded amazing. Symdex owner Leland Wallace even took photos of my mods and incorporated some into the production models—in a more aesthetically pleasing form. I, meanwhile, still owned a pair of the ugliest speakers on the planet. I am still amazed I was able to find a willing buyer when I decided it was time to move on.

The Black Swan from Austin AudioWorks
It would be unfair to call the Austin (footnote 1) AudioWorks Black Swan phono preamplifier ugly—not in the way some of the stuff I've owned was ugly. But it clearly isn't aiming to have you salivating at its sexiness before you turn it on and listen. Perhaps I'm being too polite considering that Austin AudioWorks uses the word "ugly" several times in their promotional material (footnote 2).

Housed in a black-painted chassis about the size of a motorcycle battery, the Black Swan, with its plain-Jane looks, seems to be making a statement about what's important in audio design in the opinion of Barry Thornton, its designer. It would have been easy and relatively cheap to use nice, brushed-aluminum knobs for the Black Swan's many controls; instead, Thornton appears to have gone out of his way to find black-plastic pointer knobs that look like they were stolen from a 1960s missile-guidance system.

Austin AudioWorks may be a new company, but its key principals are seasoned industry veterans with many decades of experience. Thornton has been around the block more than a few times in the last 60+ years, creating products for SAE, Parasound, Adcom, and Hegeman, among others. His bio says that in an earlier life, he designed and built PA systems for Jethro Tull. Thornton teamed up with veteran marketing and sales guy Bill Leebens; I start to see a lot of parallels with another high-end startup formed by seasoned industry professionals with an irreverent streak, Schiit Audio, another company that operates out of Texas. Schiit, too, employs what Leebens calls a "no bullshit" approach.

The first thing I noticed when I unpacked the Black Swan is just how many switches and knobs its front panel is festooned with. Those knobs do serious things, which makes the Black Swan seriously versatile. While some fancy high-dollar phono pres like the CH Precision P1 and the Mola Mola Lupe offer a lot of adjustments, others have few if any controls. My Vendetta Research SCP-2B and the Sutherland Dos Locos (review coming soon) don't even have a power switch. The Black Swan lacks the app-based controls of the Mola Mola and CH Precision, but it is prepared to handle just about any cartridge you connect to it.

Most high-performance phono preamps give you several adjustments for optimizing the interface with different moving coil cartridges, but most provide a single, fixed setting for moving magnet cartridges. The Black Swan, in contrast, has front-panel switches for gain, resistive loading (1k–100k ohms), and capacitive loading (0–470pF). A typical moving magnet input is 47k ohms with 100pF of capacitance, but the wiring between the cartridge clips and the end of the tonearm cable introduces an unpredictable amount of capacitance, typically 100–150pF, so a capacitance adjustment on the phono pre provides another way to tune your moving magnet's sound. What's especially important (and really cool) is that this versatility makes the Black Swan an excellent match for "moving iron" cartridges like the top SoundSmith and Grado models that work best when you can combine high gain with a high impedance load.

While it's clear that a lot of thought went into making the moving magnet inputs as versatile as possible, the moving coil stage gets plenty of attention as well. The gain control can be adjusted in 4dB steps between 20dB and 60dB, though this gain is only for the output section; it doesn't include the gain stages at the input or losses from the passive RIAA EQ. The overall gain ranges from 20dB up to a whopping 85dB. This should cover pretty much any situation imaginable.

Around back, you'll find connections for up to three tonearms, one moving coil and two moving magnet. If your tonearm has appropriate wiring, a toggle switch allows the moving coil input to run balanced, even though the connectors are RCA. (With respect to the RCA jack, the ground floats; a ground wire runs separately.) This will work with most tonearms, though not with a Rega, because it's intrinsically unbalanced: the ground is connected to one channel's shield. Both RCA (single-ended) and XLR (balanced) outputs are available, while a set of RF-blocker caps are provided to cover up unused socketry. Juice is provided by a small, 16V AC wall wart. With a power draw of just 1.7W, the Black Swan is intended to be left powered at all times for optimum performance. Finally, a multipin socket labeled "AAW Link"—AAW for Austin AudioWorks—lets you make a simple balanced connection to other AAW components, which at this time means the Black Amp headphone amplifier.

Typically, I use moving coil cartridges to evaluate a phono preamp, but I wanted to test out Black Swan's wide range of adjustments, so I started off using an Audio Note IQ3 moving magnet cartridge installed in my Brinkmann La Grange turntable with the Brinkmann 12.1 tonearm. The IQ3 is based on the venerable Goldring 1042, with a titanium cantilever and a different stylus profile specified by Audio Note. This has long been a favorite of mine among moving magnet cartridges, with a sound that is detailed yet relaxed, reminiscent of Audio Note's more exotic IO moving coils.

Audio Note specifies a typical MM load—47k ohms—and warns against using more than 200pF of combined capacitance. I estimated the capacitance on the arm's internal wiring and the Cardas lead out cable at just under 100pF, so I set the Black Swan's capacitance switch to 100pF. While the resistive load is continuously variable, the capacitance switch operates in six discrete steps, with 68pF and the next option below 100. AAW encourages users to experiment with these adjustments, and the Black Swan allows you to make changes on the fly, without the risk of damaging anything. They also have an excellent guide on their website that describes what to listen for when making adjustments.

After some experimentation, I settled on a resistive value of about 50k ohms and 68pF, which injected just a little more life and sparkle than the standard 47k ohm, 100pF setting.

Starting out with jazz bassist Paul Chambers's 1957 album Bass on Top (Blue Note BST 81569), the system with the IQ3 sounded clear and relaxed, notably when guitarist Kenny Burrell was soloing on "Chasin' the Bird." This is a very early stereo recording for Rudy Van Gelder, made when his studio was still in Hackensack and monitoring was in mono. Hank Jones's piano has the slightly closed-in and boxy sound that is typical of Van Gelder recordings from this era. What impressed me was how the Black Swan let all of these recording anomalies shine through clearly, making it possible to hear through the recording to the music.

Switching things up, I played Rostropovich's recording of Benjamin Britten's Cello Sonata, accompanied on piano by the composer (Decca SXL 2298). Here, the cello is up front and close, the piano set well and obviously behind the soloist. As with the jazz album, what struck me at first was the sheer purity and clarity of the Rostropovich's tone and the relaxed nature of the sound. During the second movement, the cello is played pizzicato; you can really hear the wood of the instrument,

To audition the moving coil section, I swapped in a Lyra Delos and set the resistive loading to 150 ohms. Normally, capacitive loading has little effect on the response of a moving coil cartridge, but the Black Swan gives you this option, over a much wider range than on the moving magnet input, up to 1 microfarad, which is equal to a million picofarads—so yes, it has a sonic effect! Playing the same Rostropovich record, I heard an improved level of transparency and overall detail from the Delos but the same clear, relaxed sound. The Black Swan makes it very easy to listen to records for hour after hour without becoming fatigued.

With all of that relaxing music, I wanted to be sure that the Black Swan could rock out when required. I played "Under the Boardwalk" from Rickie Lee Jones's Girl At Her Volcano EP (Warner Bros 1-23805). Reassuringly, all the familiar snap and punch from the drums remained, along with the deep dynamic range of Jones's vocals. But the relaxed presentation was also present, with never a hint of harshness or insecurity.

The Black Swan is a phono preamp backed by a lot of experience and considered thought. Barry Thornton clearly knows what his priorities are and how to achieve them, while giving a stiff middle-finger salute to things he doesn't feel are important. The Black Swan can be optimized for just about any setup while delivering a musical performance that is easy and rewarding to listen to. Each time I started listening, I really didn't want to stop; I kept pulling out more records to hear what it could do.

Best of all, by leaving off thick milled-aluminum casework, fancy knobs, and boutique footers, Austin AudioWorks is able to sell the Black Swan for an exceptionally reasonable $1649. It is only available direct, but there's a 14-day return policy (albeit with a 10% restocking fee, and you must pay return shipping). And if you don't like the way it looks, once you've got it optimized for your particular cartridge, you can put a paper bag on its head or shove it to the back of the shelf.

Definitely recommended.

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Footnote 1: No relation.—Jim Austin

Footnote 2: Austin AudioWorks, Suite 350-256, 12400 Highway 71 W, Austin, TX 78738. Tel: (512) 912-6820. Email: info@austinaudioworks.com Web: austinaudioworks.com