What the Telos Monster brings to the music is a sense of unity. The recorded event is reproduced as a single, coherent and purposeful whole, utterly separate from the speakers and the system driving them. When I said that you hear the notes that Zimerman plays, rather than the system reproducing them, that’s exactly what I meant. You hear the piano, an utterly stable and three-dimensional presence within the expansive soundstage generated by this socially distanced recording that spread the LSO across the entire floor-space at the familiar St. Luke’s venue. But despite their physical dispersal, the ensemble impact of the orchestral sections has real musical impact to match the presence that underpins the piano’s delicacy and agility. The event is utterly whole – and utterly distinct from both the system and the listening room. It brings a communicative power and concentrated energy to the performance that is much closer to the live musical event than most audio systems achieve – and this from a relatively narrow-bandwidth set up with smallish, two-way loudspeakers!
Steppin’ Out…
The Zimerman is an interesting example, with its contrast between solo instrument and the full orchestra. Bridging that dynamic and spatial divide is impressive enough, but go smaller and more intimate and things get even more impressive. If you are looking for an example of inteligent, sensitively produced acoustic rock, then look no further than Dolly Varden’s noughtie’s masterpiece The Dumbest Magnets (Flying Sparks TDBCD052). Built around close harmonies that often invert the male and female voices, chorusing guitars and a drum-tight rhythm section, the production plays with layers and density to focus on each song’s emotional and lyrical compass. Listening with the Monster connected is a joyful revelation. Its not just the detail and natural textures that emerge in the hand-claps that open ‘Be A Part’, but the fact that you never even question that they are continuous, rather than a looped recording, the subtle variations in sound, the cupped, explosive emission of each distinct collision accepted as natural and present, an integral part of the performance. Nor is it limited to low-level resolution or micro-dynamics. The communicative intensity in the vocals draws you in to a sing-along intimacy, the utterly natural diction and tonality bringing the voice(s) eerily to life, while the beautifully meandering line that soars above the middle eight is just made for air-guitar aficionados. It’s the sheer musical unity that gives the music this power and purpose, from the crisp drumming and tactile bass, through the incredibly intimate vocal relationship and generous space given to the guitars. Everything is positively connected to a single musical path, a path that reaches its apogee in the natural progression of heartfelt lyrics and instrumental interludes in the closing track ‘Simple Pleasure’: and it is!
Step down in scale still further, to Eliza Gilkyson’s coruscatingly personal ‘Separated’ (Land Of Milk And Honey, Red House Records CD 174) and the achingly intimate vocals and natural acoustic instrumentation delivered by the Monster-ed system will have you catching your breath, so directly do they connect. The bleak desperation that underpins the world and the US in the shadow of America’s post 9/11 bluster is as palpable as it is painful. This is an album that says there are no easy answers and it says it without the sugar coating. Like the Dolly Varden it is an album that has been a constant companion across the audio and musical journey of the last 20-years, but adding the Monster to the musical equation has opened these emotional and expressive windows wider than ever before. The binding of musical and vocal, sense and sensibility to a single, united core has never been as apparent – or as affective.
Steppin’ Up…
If the Monster can do all that for a relatively small system (albeit one comprising carefully chosen and in some cases, individually exceptional components), what can it do with a much bigger system? Will it rise to the challenge or buckle under the demand. The answer is – that depends. It depends on how diligently you configure the grounding topology of the system and how completely you implement it. Running the Wadax Ref DAC and Atlantis Reference Transport into a CH Precision L1/X1 and a pair of A1.5s driving Stenheim A5SEs, at first the results were less than remarkable – roughly on a par with the existing grounding set up using Nordost, CAD and Chord elements. But even a cursory examination suggested some remedial steps.
