Then there’s the ease with which you can separate Colvin’s and Mary Chapin Carpenter’s vocals on the duet, ‘One Cool Remove’. It’s not just about the certainty with which you know who is singing what: it’s about appreciating the arrangement of the vocal parts, the way they add to the song, the beauty and intimacy of the harmonies, a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts – and why.
And finally there’s the live tracks, instantly identifiable through their distinctly different acoustic, but also through the change in the character and quality of Colvin’s voice, partly down to the change in venue and microphone, but also due to the added power she needs to project in a live environment. It’s not just that it is instantly and obviously different: the reasons for that difference are equally obvious, testament to the natural expressive range of which the Peak speakers are capable. It’s not about neutrality – although the Peaks are certainly neutral, in the classical sense. It’s about the ability to track signal and dynamics, density and musical emphasis. So when Colvin sings ‘(Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night’ she does so almost deadpan, the rhythm and emphasis in the song injected entirely by the attack, shaped notes and phrasing of the acoustic guitar. The result is at once yearning but also desperate, emotional qualities the Sinfonias capture without you noticing them doing it. It’s indicative of the ease with which the speakers incorporate and reveal such musical nuance and performance detail, information that all adds to the creation of an engaging and convincing whole.
A wholesome approach…
Roll all this together and what does it add up to? I’ve talked before about products (and particularly speakers) that separate instruments tonally as well as or instead of spatially. The various Vienna Acoustics speakers are a perfect example. They throw a huge soundstage, but don’t populate it with the pin-point, etched or spot-lit images that are so characteristic of high-end, high-resolution audio systems. Instead, the clarity and separation of musical strands is a function of the speakers’ ability to define the tonal distinctions between individual instruments. The Sinfonias follow that musical path. Their bandwidth pretty much guarantees a spacious acoustic and they deliver a natural perspective with good instrumental spread or spacing across the stage. What they don’t do is give you the mic’s-eye view of the space between individual instruments. It’s not that the layout of the band isn’t defined in space, it’s a question of degree. The Peaks simply don’t portray the ultra focussed and extreme separation that you hear in certain systems.
You pay your money and make your choice, but it can be (and frequently has been) argued, that what the Peaks deliver is more akin to what you actually hear in a live, acoustic performance. Or, to put it another way, that the pinpoint location of instruments on the stage is a stereo artefact. Listening to the Locatelli Concerto Grosso in C Minor Op.1 No. 11, I hear enough natural, spatial separation between Faust’s instrument and the second soloist to be convincing, while the distinctive character of each instrument separates their musical contributions with complete clarity. That clarity of musical purpose certainly contributes to the engaging vitality of the recording, but the natural, unforced perspective also underpins its ability to convince.
