Musicality is a much overused and misunderstood descriptor. Too often it refers to an overly warm and rounded balance that draws a veil across a host of system sins and discontinuities, audio polyfilla to help hide he cracks and shoddy workmanship. To me, it’s a far more definite ability: one that allows a system or product to discern the pattern and structure within the sound, allowing it to unearth the music buried in even the most congested or limited recording. Whether it’s the machine-gun lyrics and wall of sound rhythm tracks of rap or a compression wars era pop recording, some systems can dig down to the music buried within – and some just wallow in the flood of noise. My own ‘reach for’ recording when it comes to musicality, is the Elvis Costello ‘official bootleg’ Live At The El Mocambo, a murkier, straight from the desk, recording you are unlikely to find, especially given the frenetic pace and energy generated in Costello concerts of this My Aim Is True vintage.
I really wasn’t prepared for the presence, immediacy, musical intent and intelligibility that the Minuets brought to this disc. The speakers didn’t just sort out the tracks, they captured the sweaty, heaving, intensity of the live event, the youthful excitability of the crowd, the wired energy of a really tight band on a roll. From mono transcriptions of radio broadcasts to Life After Death, the Minuet’s consistently drew me into the music, individual tracks running into whole album sides, one work leading to another as structured listening got diverted into some unplanned left turn and left-field musical destination.
By now you might be concluding that Clarisys has produced a perfect speaker, one that renders the competition if not obsolete, then certainly redundant. Well – not so fast. Whilst the Minuet’s musical attributes and sonic strengths are considerable, it also presents its own fair share of challenges. Chief amongst these is its very nature: this is a hungry speaker. Not hungry in terms of power, but demanding in other ways. If you want to achieve the performance I’ve described here, it’s going to take considerable time, effort and experience expended on set-up and not a little space. Which brings me directly to my second caveat. The Minuet is what I’d call a ‘whole picture’ speaker. It’s spatial and temporal coherence allows it to recreate the single, contiguous acoustic space around the instruments in a recording – assuming there is one. That in turn places those voices and instruments within that space, a holistic presentation of the event. Combined with the moderate efficiency, that robs the speaker of the kind of spot-lit imaging and separation, detail and immediacy that you can get from modern speakers built around multiple, high-tech drivers. That beautifully integrated and paced bottom end lacks the sharp, slab-like leading edges you can get from big bass cones in infinite baffle boxes.
