When it comes to stands, Stenheim offer a choice of two, a relatively simple steel version and a more sophisticated aluminium model. However, shipping lumps of inert metal around the globe makes little financial or ecological sense. I opted to use the superb Track Audio stands, with the stackable uprights set for the required 28” height. Sticking to the idea of compact/affordable partnering pieces, I used the CH Precision D1.5 or Wadia S7i CD players, the VPI Classic 4 or Telefunken CS20 turntables. Pre-amp (when required) was the VTL TL-5.5, with its built in phono-stage and all cabling came from the Chord Co’s affordable Epic line.
Small can be beautiful…
Although like any decent compact speaker, the A2’s ability to reproduce voice or solo acoustic instruments is first rate (after all, the LS3/5a is – and always has been – a speech monitor rather than a speaker for music) but it’s the ability to take that to another level that makes you realise that this Stenheim is a bit special. Sure, play a familiar vocal recording and its combination of uncluttered presentation and immediacy give that voice a real sense of presence and diction. But try hooking up the A2s to an amp like the JA30 and take a listen to Ella singing ‘Night and Day’ from the Cole Porter Song Book (Verve 537 257-2). That voice is there, solid and central but there’s so much more besides. There’s the explicitly layered depth in the mono recording, the solid presence and metronomic beat, the swell of the band as it enters, the stab of the brass and the sense of structure in the arrangement. But there’s also another, expressive dimension to the vocal; just listen to the almost monotonic opening bars, with their repetitive notes and lyric. Except that it isn’t monotonic at all. Instead it has an almost subliminal, pulsing life that lifts and shapes each succeeding note, almost as if Ella simply can’t help herself. In her hands, the song is transformed, the lyric taking on a darker, sinuous, seductive quality that almost caresses the listener. Suddenly, you don’t just know that’s she’s thinking, you get a pretty darned good idea what exactly she’s thinking about…There’s no two ways about it – this is just downright dirty! But it’s a quality to the performance that way too many speakers entirely miss. Any speaker can give you the words and it’s not like the recording and arrangement are challenging. But getting past the surface, digging into the sense behind the singing? It’s something that few speakers do and very few do as well as the A2.
It’s a question of musical coherence, tonality, tempo, pitch and amplitude bound together to recreate the purpose and intent in the performance. You hear it in Ella’s inimitable artistry, but with the A2s you hear it from Billie Holiday (on pretty much all of Lady In Satin) Eliza Gilkyson (‘Tender Mercies’) and Jackie Leven (‘Single Father’) too. You hear it in the intensity of Marty’s Kreutzer (Coup D’Archet COUP 003) and the incredible fragility of the mother/daughter duet and delicate instrumental backing on ‘Marceta No’m Faces Plorar’ (Ninna Nanna, AliaVox AV9826). In each of these extraordinarily varied cases, this speaker fastens on what makes the performance a stand out recording, apparently able to change its mood and mode at will. Start listening to other speakers, large and small, and you’ll soon realise how rare that ability is.
