What’s so impressive? Yes, there’s a reduction in grain and a noticeable ‘blackening’ of the background. Exactly what you’d expect with a drop in noise floor and one you’ll hear in terms of better micro-dynamic discrimination and clearer modulation of tiny shifts in level and musical energy. But what really matters is the clarity with which the ReFract allows the electronics to parcel and place that energy. It releases a sense of natural flow and continuity, of shape and proportion that illuminates not just the human agency in the playing but the sense and sensibility in the performance. At the show, they were using the familiar Víkingur Ólafsson Debussy-Rameau disc to demonstrate the differences, removing the ReFracts from the L1 and M1.1 being used in the system. The improvement in musical flow, articulation, timing, phrasing and expressive range wrought by replacing them was as obvious as it was impressive. The intent and technique in the playing became much more apparent, the performance more engaging and demanding of attention. The ReFracts were managing to release the artistic and expressive excellence in both the recording and the performance, making an already good system significantly better.
Repeating the experience at home I was able to take things a whole lot further, with more boxes to play with and a wider bandwidth system: L10, a pair of M1.1s driving the Göbel Comtesse speakers and an A1.5 driving the PureLow GR subs. Without the limitations of a Munich Show Sound Cabin the musical impact of the ReFracts was even more stark. While they do allow the system to deliver (or at least define) more detail, it’s what it’s able to do with that detail that is so musically worthwhile. Swapping the disc to an alternative solo-piano recording (Maria João Pires, Mozart Piano Sonatas, Denon COCQ-85349) simply to check for consistency across different discs, I set about replacing the ReFracts one at a time. MJP’s cleaner, crisper lines also brought additional clarity to the system’s musical evolution.
Refract-free the system was still engagingly musical, with excellent clarity, shape and musical intelligibility. But one reason I chose the MJP disc is that for all its crystalline dynamic graduation, it has always lacked the transparency and focus to go with it. I started out with some quick and dirty experiments to ascertain the order of priorities when it comes to inserting the ReFracts into the system (or, at least, this system). That proved to be pre-amp audio chassis first, followed by the pre-amp power supply and then the power amps. With that sorted I settled down to some serious listening.
Adding just a single refract to the L10’s audio chassis brought exactly the increase in transparency and focus I’d been hoping for, but that focus extended to the energy comprising the notes themselves, with a subsequent increase in dynamic graduation, immediacy and presence. At the same time the playing gained an effortless fluidity, grace and subtlety. Adding the ReFract to the power supply box just takes all of those improvements a stage further.
