Playing Eliza Gilkyson’s emotionally coruscating album Land Of Milk And Honey (Red House Records, RHR CD174 – perhaps one of the most insightful commentaries on the gulf in understanding between America and the rest of the world that I’ve yet heard) the Reference DC leads add a depth and genuine pathos to the emotional desolation of songs like ‘Tender Mercies’ or ‘Ballad Of Yvonne Johnson’, expose the ennui of ‘Separated’, bring a burgeoning sense of hope to ‘Wonderland’. They’re all great songs, beautifully performed. The performance is that much better, the vocals that much more direct, the recording so much more convincing with the DC leads in place. Forgetting the system, getting sucked into the songs becomes less of a reach. So much so that you no longer even notice it happening.
With the Reference DAC so clearly enjoying the company of the Reference DC umbilicals, it’s time to move on to the Reference Server, starting with the addition of the Reference Power Supply, initially using the standard umbilical to hook it up. Unlike the CH Precision components, adding the external power supply, you don’t need to maintain the head unit’s connection to the AC supply. The Server’s power supply is still utilised for housekeeping functions (isolating those from the signal path) but it takes its own feed from the Reference PSU. That means that you simply swap the power cord you were using for the Server to the Reference Power Supply. As usual, you will need to address the mains polarity of the new component. In an extremely welcome innovation, the Reference Power supply offers on-the-fly switching of AC polarity from its front panel. The display tells you the phase of the incoming AC polarity and the touch screen allows you to switch the phase of the output between 0 and 180 degrees. Anybody who has experimented with mains polarity will be familiar with the benefits of getting this right: increased focus, separation, dynamic range and low-frequency definition. I’m not sure if it is a result of the instantaneous switching on the Reference Power Supply, but in this case the differences are both immediately and unusually apparent – even obvious. Once you’ve sorted that, you are ready to listen in earnest…
Adding the Reference Power Supply to the Server can only be described as a major upgrade. Playing a locally stored DSD64 file of the Shostakovich 1st Symphony (a live concert recording of Kurt Masur conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra) you can hear the difference before the music even starts. The familiar sound of the Royal Festival Hall (and its typically noisy, shuffling crowd) comes up with the mics, the space and the incidental noises much more clearly defined in space and depth. The sparse, orchestration of the quixotic, almost jokey opening bars is beautifully located in space, the contrasting location and tonality of each instrument distinct and individual. The double basses are wonderfully textured and float free of the stage – just as they should. The dimensionality of both orchestra and acoustic is both more stable and more natural. But it’s not just dynamic range, transparency and separation that are improved. The temporal security and sense of flow are also fundamentally improved, whether it’s the disparate instruments and phrases of the Shostakovich gelling into a single and more convincing musical whole, or the power and drive, pauses and percussive cannonades of Elvis Costello’s ‘Little Triggers’ (This Year’s Model). In fact, if you want to hear just what the Reference Power Supply does to not just the sheer solid substance of drumbeats, but the precision of their placement and patterns, I can think of few better places to start. The whole track hangs off of those drum figures and if they aren’t spot on, it really does die a slow, lingering death…
Better beats!
In the same way that the Server/PSU conjures the RFH acoustic, in the same way that it captures the way the energy of the orchestra comes off of the stage, it has an uncanny ability to capture the flow and presence in the performance. The Akasa Reference DC cables give you the Ref DAC but better. The Reference Power Supply makes a more fundamental change to the Server, rendering both locally stored and streamed files significantly more natural, rhythmically, tonally, dynamically and in terms of stereo perspective. Particularly with acoustic music – whether pop, jazz or classical – the Server/Power Supply creates a solid musical presence in the room, one that ranges free of system constraints and draws the listener into the performance. Vocals are particularly captivating, the subtle details of diction and articulation combined with the almost physical presence particularly natural and convincing. Of course, the better the recording, the greater the pull, but even on mediocre and mainstream material, the sense of substance, uninhibited dynamics and fluid progress carries the listener along. There’s such a natural sense of pace that I found myself anticipating familiar music exactly as I do at concerts.
