But what really brought home the value and impact of the USB Control was the opening to Concerto No. VI. Often presented with an almost simplistic arrangement for two violins and a pair of celli, Savall adopts a typically iconoclastic approach that transforms the piece. Using two violas and two violas da gamba, the closer interplay of the instruments and the cleaner tone of the violas da gamba (compared to the woody body of a cello) brings an interwoven, almost flirtatious quality to the piece. Without the USB Control in place, the carefully balanced contrasts between the instruments collapse, the music as a whole quickly descending into a confused and confusing jumble. Used to the more mainstream presentation, the first time I played this disc, I thought that Savall had committed an uncharacteristically a-musical faux pas, placing not just one but both feet in an original instrument quagmire. I eventually unravelled what he was about, but had I been using the USB Control, the subtle brilliance of his approach would have been immediately apparent.
Switching to the D1.5 as a standalone player, the USB Control once again worked its magic. Playing the Schumann Study… (from Víkingur Ólafsson From Afar – DGG UCCG 45060/1) it brought a warmer, sweeter balance and removed a hint of glare from the top end, but most importantly of all, it brought a new sense of grace and fluidity to the all-important phrasing of the piece, its classical canonic structure – previously submerged beneath the welter of notes – now clearly apparent. Moving on to the Shostakovich 1st Symphony (from the excellent Sony/RCA box-set, Yuri Temirkanov conducts Shostakovich – 888430636026) the USB control brought a greater sense of spatial coherence, instrumental focus and location to the jaunty, sporadic opening passages, making greater sense of the orchestration and instilling the performance with Termirkanov’s characteristic creative tension and drama. What might have sounded somewhat ordinary before was now captivating: and the one word you’d never use to describe Temirkanov is ‘ordinary’!
That’s what the USB Control does in the context of the CH Precision digital components. Lord knows, they aren’t short of musical clarity and purpose, but that doesn’t stop this innocuous looking little dongle elevating their performance by a significant, musically worthwhile and monetarily justifiable margin.
Analogue devices…
Of course, it’s not only the CH digital devices that are software controlled and have firmware update ports. It’s also their analogue devices, like the P1 phono-stage, L1 line-stage and the various amplifiers. I used the USB Control in all of the above units, although the L1 line-stage and P1 phono-stage proved to be by far the most effective applications: more effective than the X1 power supplies feeding them, although that was effective too, suggesting that, given your druthers, you should probably do both. Here, the recording that really told the story was John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London’s recent Chandos release of English string music (Vaughan Wiliams, Howells, Delius and Elgar – Chandos CHSA 5291). Following firmly in the steps of Barbirolli’s seminal recording for EMI, the Wilson programme also starts with the Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis. There’s nothing quite like aiming high! Except that on first listen, the new disc falls someway short of Sir John’s best efforts, lacking the air and tension he brings to the piece. Instead, the performance comes across as slightly muted and distant, stately and polite rather than brooding, dark and intense. But inserting the USB Control into the L1’s firmware port wrought what can only be described as a transformation in terms of immediacy, presence, the palpable sense of an all-embracing acoustic and most importantly of all, the shimmering harmonics and texture that add that vital tension and bite to the music. The result was a performance that captured and held the attention, an acoustic that reached out to envelop the listener, a disc that was now very much in the running. The newfound musical poise and sense of overall shape elevated the performance close to the same level, if not quite on a par with Barbirolli’s – and that’s no mean feat.
