All of which makes it a hard act to follow and presents the far more expensive CHC ARC6 DC4 option with an uphill task…
All of which makes its marked superiority even more impressive. Those drums on ‘Small Changes’ are more solid and emphatic, deeper and weightier, adding more ballast and stability to the track’s measured pace. The voice and individual instruments are better separated, with a more focussed, dimensional presentation, more space around and behind/between them, more detail and texture, but detail and texture that adds to their natural, convincing sense of presence. The soundstage is wide and deeper, with a significant increase in transparency, reduction in grain. All of which is nice, but the things that really impress are the easy intelligibility of the vocal(s) , the soaring, captivating appeal of the Gilmour-esque guitar break. This is a supply that makes more music and makes more sense of the music it makes. The system steps away from the music, the speakers disappear, the message steps firmly to the fore.
As LPs go, Víkingur Ólafsson’s Continuum (DGG 486 6090) doesn’t look like great value, with a total running time of only 19-minutes. Yep – that’s 19-minutes for both sides together! But played on the Monaco with the Sean Jacobs supply, it’s 19-minutes of the most beautifully played and captured piano you’ll ever hear. Ólafsson’s poised and pellucid style, so beautifully weighted, brings a delicacy and balance to Bach’s music that adds a whole expressive layer to its formal beauty. Of course, piano has always been a central pillar of the Monaco’s performance, but combined here with the Jacobs supply and a ghostly quiet, crystal clear pressing from DGG, the results are astonishingly communicative and convincing. Does it convince you there’s a piano in the room? No – at least not with the limited bottom-end scale of he DAWs I’m listening through. But it communicates with such clarity that you start to question the need. The presence, immediacy and complex textures, the weight and placement of each note is so precise, unforced and unambiguous that the performance transcends the limitations of reproduction and reproducers. The system really does become irrelevant. It’s a function and astonishing demonstration of the absolute stability and authority of the source material and the transducer – and that rests firmly on the foundation established by the ARC6 DC4 power supply.
As an example of absolute temporal control, Das alte Jahr vergangen ist, arranged for four hands and played by Ólafsson and his wife, Halla Oddny Magnúsdóttir, takes some beating. It’s not just the separation of the two parts, it’s the sheer intimacy between the players that is really breath-taking. This is musical expression taken to an extreme emotional level – and the Jacobs supply reveals it with just the right unobstructed, unobtrusive grace.
As you might expect, that absolute dynamic and temporal authority brought both drama and stability to larger scale works. Perhaps the most interesting example was the Karajan/Ferras – Brahms Violin Concerto (from the 1964 box-set SKL 133/139), original tulip-label/stereo banner pressings replayed with the Teldec curve. As impressively dramatic and dynamic as the battery supply proved, the ARC6 DC4 delivered greater scale and weight, wider dynamic range, a more expansive and better-defined stage, more elegant playing from the strings, more poised contributions from the woodwinds. There’s more colour, more momentum and far more drama. When Ferras enters, it’s with greater presence, more obvious separation from the orchestra, with more instrumental body and texture and greater musical swagger. The solo part in particular, is elevated to a whole new level. Karajan was never renowned as a conductor for concertos; arguably, the secondary, supporting role never sat well with his towering ego. But this performance stands alongside the Triple Concerto (with Rostropvich) as the exception to that rule.
