Dean Peer’s remarkable electric bass playing on ‘Mars’, from Think…it’s all good (Turtle Records) has huge dynamic shifts, massive wedges of sound bursting out of explosive leading edges, with equally sudden and subtle string harmonics, making full use of his instrument’s possibilities. Bundle in complex tabla work and this is a track that has foxed many a system. The Kims are totally unfazed, the bass is not only exactly as fast as it needs to be, but tuneful and solid, and the tabla is both tactile, and tightly focussed. Timing is exemplary. There’s a clear sense of just how dialled-in these musicians are to each other. It’s a track which it is tempting to play just for the sonic fireworks, but that would be to miss the levels of almost subliminal musical communication between bass and tabla players, the way they complement each other, sometimes mirroring phrases, sometimes in counterpoint, but always in absolute lockstep. Whether you love this piece like I do, or hate it (as I suspect many might), there’s no mistaking the levels of musicianship on display here. It’s a perfect example of the Kims doing their job, making more music more accessible, to more people. I have come to take these sorts of insights for granted, the Kims raising my expectations of what is achievable in my system.
Arguably and as is so often the case, the biggest benefit of the AMT tweeter is felt in the bass, which is tight and tuneful, powerful without being overbearing. Which helps explain why this relatively compact speaker performs so convincingly on the Dean Peer track. The leading edge of plucked bass notes is fast and clean and ‘on it’, and the upper harmonics that provide a lot of the pitch information remain firmly attached to the note that generated them. So often bass notes are flubby and dull because the woofer can’t respond fast enough to the transient information at the leading edge of the note, and the tweeter, whose job this is, doesn’t always shift enough air for long enough to keep the illusion alive. I think the decision to use an AMT is probably one of this loudspeaker’s defining characteristics: both the Kims’ bigger stablemate, the Borg, and the Göbel Divin Noblesse I heard and liked so much on a recent visit to CH Precision, use an AMT tweeter. In each case, the integration is pretty much beyond reproach, with no sense of a disconnect, either temporal or in terms of projected musical energy. It’s not that you hear the AMT; rather that you don’t – at least not in the same way that domes or ribbons so often draw attention to themselves. There’s no obvious tonal or sonic signature that identifies an AMT. Instead, using one offers different solutions and a different musical and design path – although you still have to get that implementation right!
