If the selective audio psychosis that has people believing that 95-year old speaker systems represent the state-of-the-art is taken even remotely seriously, then brands like Oswald Mills Audio are more easily explained. The products are borderline bizarre, with a thrift-shop aesthetic that simply looks shabby and anything but chic, but it’s the prices that are truly outrageous, even by high-end audio standards. Looking old or being old are not to be confused with retro, an aesthetic nod to earlier times.
When it comes to creating a retro vibe, then record players and tube amps have a significant head start. If Thorens can update the TD-124 with a direct-drive motor then all power to them. Turntables like the Linn never looked modern and thus, never really got beyond retro status and ProJect are manufacturing something that looks an awful lot like a Micro-Seiki DDX-1000. All of which is fine with me. In none of these cases is performance being sacrificed for visual affect. But it’s worth remembering that we moved on from 3 watt SETs driving speakers with the size and appearance of a garden shed for a reason. Instead, understand what IS appealing about those old systems and apply it using current technology.
Bringing antiques to an audio show is interesting in an academic sense. Building a high-efficiency speaker that’s small enough to accommodate, constructed from superior materials, that delivers enough bandwidth to be musically satisfying and costs less than the majority of modern mini-monitors: now that’s clever. Slap on the retro styling, include a range of properly engineered stand and mounting options, throw in the possibility to add a proper sub (or any other sub) and suddenly you’ve got a product that talks not just loud and clear, but to a whole new generation of customers. Why? Because it learnt the lessons of history and, rather than trying to repeat them, it applied them to the current situation. Does Avantgarde’s Colibri C2 have all the answers? Definitely not – but at least it’s answering some of the questions that other companies seem afraid to even ask.
The question of record replay EQ isn’t going anywhere…
Which brings us to another quirk of audio history. CH Precision was not the only company actively promoting the benefits of switchable EQ curves for record replay. The new P10 ups the ante by adding not just additional curves (Capitol, NAB and Philips) but offering the option to add the Neumann Pole to any curve on an as required basis. Meanwhile Soulution launched their new 575 Deemphasis Preamplifier (which is Swiss for phono-stage) that includes – you guessed it – six record replay EQ curves and two more for reel-to-reel tape. Nor is this tendency limited to phono-stages so expensive that few of us can afford them. Even ProJect is getting in on the act, with a pair of phono-stages that offer both RIAA and Decca curves and start the right side of four figures. With companies like ARC, FM Acoustics and Zanden not just fully signed up but having offered switchable EQ for years, the RIAA-Jihadists are finding it increasingly difficult to portray this as some kind of elaborate con. In fact, it’s increasingly difficult to understand just why on earth they are so exercised on the subject…
