My goa trance DJ set is saturday morning 07-09, after Derango and before Dimension 5.

Aquarius Records of San Fransisco run a web shop that’s looking quite distinctly 1990′s, which is not a high mark in 2011. But what they lack in web savvy, they make up in spades when it comes to dedication. Their newsletters, which are now running double pace and are sent out weekly, have reviews written by the staff themselves, unlike pretty much every other record shop on the planet who just copy the distributor mumbo jumbo verbatim. This is practically a full time job in itself!

Their insatiable lust and love for all forms of weird music is contagious, and when their site tricks me and a record turns out to be sold out even though it’s listed (which honesty happens with probably 50% of what I order) they go on a quest to find that missing record no matter what. Today I received a CD that I initially ordered on May 5th, 2010. That’s right — 14 months later, they found the damn thing for me! That level of service and commitment remedies any shortcomings their site may have, and if I ever go to San Fransisco I will visit the store just to personally shake hands with their mailorder staff.

The record in question is an epic 43+ minutes of brainmelting sitar, synth, tablas, overtone singing and god knows what else. If you like your music esoteric, unrelenting and profoundly hallucinatory, this is mandatory listening.

You can find some samples through Juno or Aquarius (direct link). A quick googling will lead you to a download of the whole thing. The label behind this, aRCHIVE, is now defunct but this disc can be found cheap through Discogs.com.

DATacide – The Extasy Of Communication

Woody McBride – Rattlesnake

It feels surreal that these are now 18 and 17 years old, not only because it makes me feel old but for how well I feel that they hold up even to this day. My collection of mid-90′s underground dance music vinyl weighs over a metric ton for good reasons, and it’s likely to keep expanding.

Both records purchased through Discogs.com.

Anyone familiar with the 1970′s Berlin school of electronic psychedelia from names like Klaus Schulze might object to me calling the recently launched Spectrum Spools label “adventurous music on the outer brinks of the artform”, as there is an obvious heritage here. But the resurgence of tripped-out, neo-kosmische synth psychedelia in recent years has a fresh take on the style that I would argue is expanding into new territory.

A sublabel of avant-garde powerhouse Editions Mego, Spectrum Spools vinyls are cut at Dubplates + Mastering Berlin and everything oozes of quality. Emeralds played a fantastic set to an undeservedly sparse crowd here in Stockholm last night and I bought two LP’s from the band. Do the clicky-clicky on the cover images below to be taken to the label site where you can listen to a preview track off of each. The colored editions are sold out from the label but can be found through some distributors still.

SP003: Forma – “Forma”

SP004: Mist – “House”

I arrived just 40 minutes before I started playing, since I had to get up at 6am on Saturday to catch the flight to Brussels and hence needed to get some sleep before playing. Then I also had to jump into a cab to go straight to the airport after my gig, so I didn’t get to socialize much. Thanks however go out to Arne for booking me, Joske and Sammy for their neverending hospitality and friendliness, Philip for the record (nice to finally meet!), Matthias for buying some vinyl from me and Billy (Cosmosis) for the nice handover and for being such a nice bloke.

What impressed me the most with the MBL 121 speakers was their stunning ability to illustrate the space of a recording. This makes them nearly unbeatable for classical, jazz, singer-songwriter and live recordings. Since I don’t listen to those types of music much, instead often drawn to “produced” sounds, this argument loses some of its weight in my case. Instead, their ability to provide an accurate and deeply satisfying soundstage from virtually anywhere in the room, including standing up, becomes their most compelling advantage. For social listening, this is tremendously valuable.

While the sweet spot of the MBL’s is essentially everywhere, the Focal Diablo‘s laser precision are less forgiving. But once in that spot, are they ever rewarding. Sounds are given such body and texture that the tastebuds are triggered — I can literally sense the taste of vanilla and cream when Mari Boine sings “Goaskinviellja“, so smooth is her voice. Likewise, fizzing, distorted, black metal guitar resonance noise can trigger a taste sensation similar to that dry, astringent tongue sensation provided by an extremely hoppy beer. While I am mildly synaesthetic, i have never ever felt it this clearly with sound before. This almost supernatural effect aside, they still sound mindbogglingly controlled and tight, yet wide open and completely unstrained regardless of what madness is forced through them.

So in the end, love at first sight did prevail. The choice I had feared having to make blossomed into certainty. I made a pact with the devil and couldn’t be happier.

I am well aware that my purchase means I will have to run them with my existing electronics for some time to come, which means even though the sound is already fantastic, they will not be close to their full potential until the other components have been upgraded. I will do my best to scrape together enough money to upgrade one of my DJ turntables, get some acoustic room treatment in place and most of all put a proper DAC between Squeezebox and amp. In case I somehow manage to keep up my blogging pace, I intend to start a new series on Digital to Analogue Converter technology. It will serve both to help me learn more about the technology and also to sift through the market and try to find the holy grail of DAC’s. I might get a couple of more detailed listening impressions posted too…

I’m both excited and worried about the outcome, however.

I’m excited because according to my google-fu there is no documentation of any comparison between these two, which is somewhat surprising considering that these are two of the finest standmounted speakers on the planet. Surely this shoot-out should have happened by now? I’m also excited because they both have very unique and distinguishing treble elements; Focal has their beryllium tweeter, now larger and with greater spectral range than ever, and MBL have their proprietary Radialstrahler thingamajig. I’m also excited because while their trebles might steal the show, they have both proven to have extremely tight and well controlled bass (see my notes on playing Autechre’s “Surripere” in part IV of this series). A clear winner in that category had made the race uneven and thus removed any reason for excitement.

My worries, on the other hand, are more about the long-term relationship with the speaker I end up choosing. If I go with Focal, will I miss the stereo precision and eerie stage depth of the MBL’s? After all, I listen to Steve Roach more than any other artist and his Immersion : One lived up to its name more over ze Germans than with the Diablo’s. But then on the other hand, Focal has a very slight but not insignificant advantage in terms of resolution and they give the sounds a little extra meat on the sonic bones (both speakers totally outclass my current ones in this regard, though). But is that fleshy Focal sound true? And what about the overwhelmingly impressive 3D scenery from the MBL’s – is it a gimmicky effect that is superfluous when applied to my main diet of electronic music? I guess what I’m really afraid of is to not have a clear winner, to desire the best of both worlds. If I buy speakers in this price range I shouldn’t have to long for greener pastures.

I’m bracing myself for what may well be a rather depressing part VII of this series.

While it’s easy to point out when audiophile excess has entered the land of absurdity, it’s a bit more interesting to look at the conditions where purchasing high-end components makes sense. Since all of my recent hifi posts are basically just flow-of-consciousness ramblings, here’s a list off the top of my head:

If you can hear the difference, it’s there. Anyone can hear the difference between a €5.000 and a €10.000 speaker, and even between two of the same price class. This goes for CD players and amps too, and even, albeit to a lesser extent, interconnects and speaker cables. While increased budgets give diminishing returns (the last percent of any audio parameter is infinitely expensive to attain), you do generally get better sound for more money. Some people are just not as focused on Return On Investment and thus are willing to pay a lot more money for a little more hifi.

Different sound is not necessarily better sound, but if you prefer hearing what comes out of one speaker over another, then it’s better to you. If the sound is grating, lifeless, muffled, unpleasantly coloured or whatever, then you might want something else. If that something else happens to be more expensive, then that’s just the way it is.

Finer equipment should ideally let you hear more of your music (in terms of detail, texture, and so on) with less sound volume, less distortion and less unwanted side effects. This in turn means that a good system will save you from ear fatigue and let you listen for longer sessions. Hence the cost broken time per hour of use might not be so much worse with a pricey system.

Some argue that the recording equipment is much cheaper than what the record is played back on, indicating that this invalidates the whole point of a high-end system. But this is a retarded argument; Even with a poor recording there is no point in making the signal even shittier.

An hour a day for 10 years on a €15.000 system means over €4 per day. That’s not a super cheap habit, but smoking a pack a day probably qualifies as a worse investment. Spending €30 in a bar each weekend, which is not exactly unheard of, would amount to around the same thing. It would also be roughly equivalent of buying one or two new console games each month. And really, if you hardly ever watch TV (honestly!), don’t have a car, boat, summer home or cocaine & prostitute habit, then what’s so bad about spending that sports bike money (or equivalent) on what you’re really passionate about?

If you work 12-hour days and then hit the gym and after that watch TV for three hours every day, there’s just no time to listen to music. And an expensive system can’t really be justified unless you actually listen to it. Unfortunately I find that personally I seldom sit down and just listen any more. It’s like I have to do something else at the same time, which in effect relegates music to play the role of background noise. Now the million dollar question is whether this is because listening through my system doesn’t excite me enough these days, or because I have some sort of ADD. It’s probably a little of both, but I tell myself that if I buy the Focal or MBL speakers I’ll change – I’ll sit peacefully on the couch for hours on end, right in the sweet spot of course, reading fancy intellectual books while every now and then skippity-hopping around our vast music library using the Squeezebox remote, all while immersed in the highest of audio fidelity. This, of course, is the most delusional and self-betraying form of purchase justification. Damn it.

Somewhat hesitantly the sales guy started talking about speaker technology, indicating that a regular loudspeaker with the membrane, coil and magnet is actually a fundamentally flawed principle of generating sound, but that it’s prevalent mainly because it’s relatively cheap and it gets you “close enough”. He then explained how cones of sound projected towards your ears can never be fully like the real thing as for example the strings of a violin or whatever emits sound in all directions. And so with that introduction he pointed me towards these:

They’re the smallest speakers from German manufacturer MBL, Who like Focal invent, develop and produce their own speaker elements. But where Focal have Beryllium, MBL have the Radialstrahler. It’s essentially a set of lamellas that flex with the audio signal, generating a fully omnidirectional sound (at least for the treble and mids). I was cautioned that these speakers would demand a new way of listening, with a tone that almost assumed that I would not prefer them over the Focal’s. But I gave them a listen anyway.

On my first go with the MBL 121′s, they were in the setup pictured above, in a room as acoustically perfect as a box can be. They also had support of additional subs, something I was informed that they could not bypass for my session. So while I could not do a very fair comparison to the Focal’s due to the radically different setup, I liked the very silky quality that especially voices had, but more than anything else I was extremely impressed by how the sound was just not in any way seeming to come from the speakers. Instead it was as though I could pinpoint in X, Y and not least Z axis where each sound was emitting from. I played some Björk off of Medúlla and I swear I could hear exactly where here head was as she was singing. Not only side to side, mind you, but in depth, about a meter in behind the speakers, and even the goddamn height. Yes, I could hear how tall (or rather, short) she is. Fucking amazing.

But the sound was in no way as insanely detailed as with the Focal speakers, as not only the treble but also the mids were a bit blurred in texture and resolution. I wasn’t sure whether to blame the speakers, the room or the electronics but despite the absolutely mindboggling 3D imaging I would prefer the Focal’s. I can’t buy speakers knowing how much detail I’d still be missing. But I realised I needed to investigate these suckers further.

In my next visit to the store, I asked to compare the two. I started with the Focal’s in the old spot, now with the Bel Canto e.One s300iD amplifier, passing up the on-board D/A for a Weiss Minerva DAC. Now the Diablo’s too had that amazing silky quality I first heard in the MBL’s – clearly the amp and/or DAC was the key here, so one less advantage for MBL. After this warming up session I moved into the acoustically trated room again to have a go with the MBL’s, now playing on über expensive Spectral Audio amplification and an older GamuT CD. Again the subs were in, and again there was a muddiness to the sound. I’m sure the frequency response in the room is absurdly flat, but it felt boomy and muddy. The 3D imaging was there again, the silkiness too, but somehow, maybe, a very slight hardness of the treble compared to the beryllium-equipped Diablo’s. Normally monodirectional speakers should be tougher on the ears, but the sick resolution of the Focal Utopia elements might get the edge anyway. But this is in a room with zero dampening, so perhaps it’s acoustics?

Next up was to get the Diablo’s into the treated room, also with the subs. The 3D depth was better here than outside, but still can’t really match MBL. Detail-wise they fared better than MBL and the bass felt much more integrated with the rest of the sound. But I might still prefer how they performed without the subs and, perhaps surprisingly, without the diffusion-ripe room.

So the last test was to take the MBL’s out to the open, slightly dry sounding area and play them on Bel Canto / Weiss. Here they sounded much better, even more so than I had hoped. Aside from the Diablo’s they’re the only speaker that has yet passed the test that is Autechre’s “Surripere”, including the growling bass weirdness starting at around 4:40, that most speakers just don’t play at all. The 3D magic was somewhat subdued, but still clearly superior. Even here, sound wasn’t coming from the speakers, it was just there, in the air.

The sub matching was clearly bad with the MBL’s, as on their own they were much, much better, albeit not as deep. I could no longer sense the slightest trace of treble harshness either, but the Diablo’s might still have the edge in resolution. I did not have time (after 4 hous of listening) to do an A/B test, but that will come soon and will the the final elimination round. For the longest time I was sure Focal were going to win, but the comeback that the MBL’s did without the subs was astonishing, and over the last few days I’ve been going back and forth. I could really go either way; Do I stick with the Focal sound I love and possibly the best non-floorstanding traditional speaker ever, or with what is probably the speaker concept of the future with it’s amazing immersion?

Whatever I end up buying now will probably be with me for ten years, or more. But it’s not only I that will be affected long-term by this decision; These will probably be the speakers that my eventual children will grow up listening too, the speakers whose sound characteristics through which they will feel all those emotions that music can bring.

I don’t know how much of a drop in quality it will be to go with the built-in DAC of the Bel Canto amp, but if it’s within an acceptable range of the clearly superior Weiss Minerva, I´’m starting to think that I might actually be prepared to take the plunge now and buy a new system. I’ll have downpayments for 3 years at least, but should still be able to buy a golden horn diffusor every now and then to try and tame the concrete ceiling of our apartment. And I’ll have absolutely spectacular sound, so what else would I need money for? =)