Week Thirty-Four And There’s Tears Upon The Floor

As is so often the case, I had no idea what I wanted to write about for my weekly column when I got up this morning. But I have a confession. Reviewing equipment with music is not an exact science. You are flesh (or a mountain of that, plus liberal bass resistant blubber layer) and far from infallible. Massive learned piles of words have been written about how only the ‘˜double blind’ SPL-matched method with an operator and a panel is the only truly objective method of human hearing evaluation.
Yet also acknowledging that experience and the actual what-the-hell-you-are-listening-for, or education and thus ‘˜golden eared’ status, is also a fact. And folks just want to hear the honest, nakedly honest opinion of someone whose opinion they can respect.
And that’d be me. Inheriting pointy ears like a pixie and a crooked lopsided skull which gives me about a centimetre of vertical offset of my pinnae, means I have a problem getting sunnies to sit horizontal across my big nose and also have good sonic locational abilities. Not as good as cat aiming a pounce into a hedge for a mouse to present us with, live and undamaged in the living room but still good. And I listen to my world.
But while I do think that anyone can review as long as they are not clinically less able of hearing, I also think that caring about how things sound, from my days as test bench boy at a studio rentals company and before, simply being ignited to listening to the outside world by inspiring teachers at school. One pulled all the stops out. Literally, on the big pipe organ and played Bach Toccata & Fugue as loud and deep as the bass pedals would go and another put us all within earshot of a nightingale on a weekend-long trip with the school bird watching club.
I recall it. Warm and dusky, a low bush in front of the Suffolk woodland us creeping closer until Mr. Goater said to stop.. about thirty yards. We never saw it but we were as silent as breathing. And the SONG!. So beloved of poets and yet not possible to capture in words, is so beautiful it hurts. Rich and above all, so deep in register that the sound seems to flow downwards and out of the thicket, to envelop you in velvety soft tones that somehow flow through you and make every erectile hair muscle fire off at the same time.
I felt a sudden cooling, not quite a chill but a stillness. And all the group were gone. It was just I, the wood and the nightingale, singing his soul to the world. But all too soon, we were told we had to leave. it was getting darker and the lot of us had to find a sneaky roadside verge to pitch camp on illegally! Heady days, long ago
But I have to be in a sensible place to do a decent review. And for a bit of a while, it’s been tough. But life and electrons alike, flow yet and I have been threatening in public to get some review tests done. Well I finally have. Largely pre-prepared as to the specs and descriptions, I just needed to connect the Kenwood XR-400-4 amplifier and run the Morel Virtus 602 six inch loudspeaker components and evaluate them.
But it was hilarious, like a scene out of Apollo 13, when they have to juggle a low DC amperage to make it home. Because I couldn’t wake my rig up. I have a 10A marine battery charger unit and a very old Odyssey battery all upon a nest of thick power wires and JL Audio RCAs. I use battery disconnect systems and fuses that are last-to-connect for safety. But at first I couldn’t work out what was wrong and I even changed headunit from a Kenwood with an internal memory recording of Frankie Goes to Hollywood to a Sony MEX-1000 SACD player with my one SACD! A copy of Dark Side of the Moon. I think it was meant. For I spotted I was lacking a fuse at one key point (ahemthere’s honesty, right there) and then it STILL wouldn’t power up.
Fact is the battery is so wizened and consumed by being my test rig biatch for three years, that it won’t hold much muscle any more. There were insufficient amperes to thrust the juice up the wires, into the headunit and back out the blue wire to the switching circuit. (The ‘˜oiYOUyerWANTED’ wire!) So I used a one inch ‘˜jumper’ of blue wire from big live input to tiny switchy hole (only for test rig use, as this will kill your car battery overnight if you do this in an install, of course) and grudgingly, the amp powered up.
This proved a few things. One, the amp is really good. Two, SACD was a totally bonkers medium that still sells at the HiFi shows yet I reckon no reader at all will have one of these car decks Three, the Morel Virtus are breathtakingly fast and sweet and high end and.. Four, listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘Time’ on SACD, at my point in life, and with the very act of firing the test rig back up again properly, will make your face leak. Snot and all, bit of a mess really.
But I am a hippy, just under the generation that was contemporaneous with the flatland prog rockers and this remains as mad a HiFi test as exists, as well as the most wonderful slice of Floyd.
And if you never screamed along to The next track, The Great Gig In The Sky, then you ain’t a true Pink Floyd aficionado.
But it is about the power of music and the track will be a different one for you. For somewhere, somewhen, the music will be resonant with your soul and your very existence. At those times, have your moment and just try and do it in private. As long as you can see, the car is nice and safe. So, enjoy, have a wallow and weep to a bit of Adele or Jimi Bronksi, whatever floats your boat.
I gather Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters is pretty good for this (although I had to ask an expert for the reference.)
Right, I’ll go write those reviews, then.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor