The presence and intent you hear in those plucked strings and in Batiashvili’s bowing, reveals something that’s even more important. The A5-SX has gained a new temporal precision and authority. The speaker ‘times’ better, bringing the players’ expressive range to the fore. It’s a quality and capability that impacts all forms of music. I might have chosen acoustic classical recordings as examples so far, but be in no doubt, the injection of clarity, pace and purpose the SX base brings to the A5 is just as impressive on pop, rock, jazz and dance tracks.
As soon as you listen to this speaker, you’ll be reaching for those records with attitude, because the A5-SX does musical attitude with the best of them. Just try the murky magnificence that is The Cure’s ‘End Song’, all thudding drums, layers of keyboard wash and fuzz guitar (Songs Of A Lost World, Fiction 7503683). The sheer substance and power generated by this track via the A5-sX is astonishing. The speakers don’t just bring a solid sense of power, they keep things moving forward, building momentum and density as the track moves from insistent to majestic to intense. Smith’s vocals, so often lost in the mix, are clear and intelligible – but more than that, they make sense: sense of the track’s intent, sense of the musical and lyrical conjunction. If this is the last track on The Cure’s last album (and it might well be) then it’s a fitting epitaph.
But the A5-SX is about much, much more than raw power. It’s about poise and focussed energy. Play ‘Cracking’ from Suzanne Vega’s Close-Up Vol 3 – States Of Being, Music On Vinyl MOVLP375) and it’s an object lesson in perfect timing, the pacing, placing and spacing of the notes, the careful vocal phrasing and rhythmic accents in the playing. The voice manages to be both dead-pan and intimate, testimony to the range of vocal expression that stretches from spoken to sung to vocalised. It instils the song with both a personal connection and heightened emotional power. Move on to Nanci Griffith or Gillian Welch and you’ll find the same thing. Whether it’s the bittersweet yearning of Little Love Affairs or the darker shadings of Storms, the wrenching intensity of Time (The Revelator) or the Blues Grass (not a typo) of Woodland Studios, the vocals carry home with greater power, the playing is more articulate, the performances tighter. The A5-SX reveals better musicians, playing better and playing for you.
In many ways that sums up exactly what the SX base brings to the A5 mix. It lets the speaker dig deeper into he mix, carrying you with it and bringing you closer to the performers and the performance. But as attractive and engaging as that musical integrity and access is, it also has implications for system matching, beyond the choice and number of driving amplifiers. As connected to and as honest as it is about the performance, the speakers offer the same insight into the balance and virtues (or otherwise) of your front-end components. If you’ve got the front-end you always wanted, the A5-SX will likely deliver more of it than you’ve ever enjoyed before. If however, your previous speaker was papering over the cracks, those blemishes will be shown up. It might be as simple as a turntable re-set or attention paid to the level of a disc transport, cable/interface choice or input gain/impedance values. Just be prepared to tidy things up if necessary; it will be well worth the effort.
