Ultimate Audiophile Trip To Hear Steinway Model D

You know, in Home Cinema Choice magazine, they refer to myself in the intro blurb by my ugly face-thumbnail as ‘..the UK’s leading expert in extreme audio.’ I love that and yet it is clear that for some readers and even a slice of our moderation team (that’d be thee ‘˜Rug Doctor’ chortle) there is an impression that I only like extreme power audio. That I am ‘˜an hooligan’ unbothered by fidelity, detail and clarity.
But that is so not true as I am a seriously greedy bloke (one look.. tells you that) and I want it ALL. They call it SQL or Sound Quality, Loud.
Anyway, back in the early days of sound off contests, they would tell you in the rule book to go to listen to a ‘˜real HiFi’ system to learn what correct stereo placement and a good deep sound stage actually sounded like. And having not long come from the world of professional audio, both live and studios (mostly as ‘˜humper’ or skivvy of some sort, although I did run a rehearsal studios for a bit) I had an awareness that the big sexy studio monitors that they used on serious productions in state of the art recording studios was an order of magnitude up from that.
So I made a call or two ‘Hello, Townhouse?’ and while they made me promise that no-one would twiddle so much as ONE knob on the mixing desk, I booked a few hours of ‘˜downtime’ in the control room of a major professional recording studio, so twelve of us at a time could enjoy the playback in the maple-lined, acoustically shaped room on a BIG set of Genelec professional studio active monitors. It was hilarious as Peter Prince of ABC in Newbury, then a famous SQ hound and winning sound off competitor produced a heavy metal CD of a band his friends were in and said he HAD to hear it. It was a good session and I even cooked food and took it with to give them lunch!
However, there IS a quality layer above that for in a studio, the big main monitors may need to pin The Overpaid from their squashy sofa to the back wall of their studio with clarity and power but they are still made to a price. There exists a layer of luxury audio that is made to a standard, then priced. And the company behind the Steinway & Sons legendary pianos, has been making loudspeakers to the same standards as their grand pianos.

I have been lucky enough to go and hear some at the UK distributors’ rather lovely countryside demonstration facility. I was handed this one kilogram remote control

And was allowed to play a track or two. But the man in charge knows my tastes and put a Pink Floyd disc on. Silence in the room and then deeper into the distance than I have ever heard, a skylark is singing. But somehow, with the four infinite-baffle fifteens involved, I can feel the downland hill top ‘˜space’ around me. Hard to describe but ineffably lovely.
The lark gets a bit louder and ascends the heavens and you can never see a lark but you know it is getting higher in the sky.
And a distant drone of bomber aircraft insinuates. You are not sure you can hear it but it increases and throbs and fills and then, a tiny little girl child’s voice says, ‘Look Mummy, there’s an aeroplane up in the sky’ I swear, with my then editor sat behind me, as I perched there holding that damn great heavy gilded remote control, I wept and tears streamed down my face.
I didn’t let editor Steve May see but I got this funny tiny little nod from my host, who had seen this effect before.
Anyway, the bloke is a diamond and in discussing a review of some M&K Sound THX Ultra2 loudspeakers for Home Cinema Choice magazine, as he also distributes those, he offered me his time and space and hospitality.
Thus, I am doing it again and issuing an Invitation to the Keen of Fidelity Simply get in touch and we will organise for six keen audiophiles to come with their most treasured tunes and hear them in a way you may not otherwise ever get to through a set of these!

There will be a small fee involved, literally to cover costs I won’t be taking any ‘˜profit’.