This inner chemistry, whether between a pianist’s left and right hands or the different instruments within a band is what so often escapes proper reproduction. How often have you sat in front of a beautifully reproduced, reach out and touch vocal, only to wonder where the backing band has gone? They may be there, but just how they connect to each other or to the singer is an open question. Listen to Ella singing the Cole Porter Songbook (Verve 537 257-2) on the C1 and it’s all about Ella. Play ‘I Get A Kick Out Of You’ and Barney Kessel’s guitar accompaniment to the song’s intro seems detached and floaty, disconnected and frankly, irrelevant. Switch to the C1.2 and it’s all change. His playing takes on a poise and shape that echoes and accents Ella’s phrasing, cementing the musical bonds between the two. It’s not just that the guitar is located now, in terms of space and the musical structure. You actually know why it’s there – and why it leads so naturally into the full band backing for the song as a whole, making the whole thing swing. Within the confines of audio reproduction, we are so used to one musical strand dominating, that the peaceful, productive coexistence that is so apparent in live performance comes as something of a shock when we hear it so starkly revealed at home.
Family values…
Does the D1.5 accomplish the same inner balancing act when it’s used as a player? Well – yes and no. Rhythmically and in terms of phrasing, the DACs in the D1.5 mirror the C1.2 to an uncanny degree. They deliver an engaging song with plenty of swing and a nice, uninhibited sense of shape, flow and momentum. But switch to the C1.2 and the benefits are as big as they are obvious. The voice takes on more body, shape, presence and immediacy: but so too do the backing instruments. They’re more substantial and much better separated, the ‘stacking in depth’ effect that typifies great mono recordings now fully apparent. That increase in musical substance is what underpins a musical contribution that puts them back on a par with Ella’s voice. And talking about that voice, the improvements in subtlety and diction are not small, fully revealing the vocal control and dexterity that separated Ella from her contemporaries (and Lord help us, any modern wannabes). Don’t get me wrong, Ella is still (quite literally) front and centre, but played through the C1.2, the backing band is now actually providing the backing it’s there to provide. So the D1.5’s DACs capture some, but not all of the benefits that come with the standalone C1.2. They fasten to the holistic temporal coherence but don’t get close to the overall resolution and effortless sense of balanced musical authority.
One of the most obvious musical advances that the D1.5 player offered over the D1 was exactly this new sense of rhythmic and dynamic integrity and expression. In Linn-speak, it does the PRAT thing (Pace, Rhythm and Timing) – something that the C1.2 also exhibits, in Spades! Whilst some of the D1.5’s performance gains are undoubtedly down to the move away from the stilted, mechanical sound of the ubiquitous TEAC VRDS mech used in the D1 (and which blighted so many other high-end transports), it definitely also reflects the introduction of second generation PEtER spline filtering to the player’s dual-mono DACS. In terms of its musical strengths and character, the D1.5 is far closer to the C1.2 than the D1 ever was to the C1. But in terms of performance, the C1.2 hasn’t just restored the gap to the player, it’s actually extended it. Given just how impressive the D1.5 is, that represents a huge improvement over the C1 and a generational step-change for CH Precision’s digital front end.
A wider perspective…
While direct comparison to both the C1 and the D1.5 are instructive, the process is also slightly misleading, in that it tends to promote the obviously apparent differences in performance over the more fundamental and often more subtle changes that underpin them. Swap from the C1 to the C1.2 and it’s easy to get carried away with the increased dimensionality and presence, but those things are symptoms rather than cause. The thing that’s really making the difference here is the increased accuracy and sophistication of the timing. In turn, that brings not only greater clarity to rhythmic patterns and phrasing, but brings order and intelligibility to proceedings as a whole, the temporal integrity increasing the spatial organisation. The C1.2’s increased ability to define the space between instruments is a natural extension of the clarity with which it defines their musical relationship. Add to that the lowering of the noise floor and it’s really no surprise that as well as hearing more, what we hear makes more sense. In fact, in very real terms, what you are hearing is an overall reduction in ‘noise’: at least, if we define noise as any signal that isn’t what, where and when it should be. You are hearing more, more easily, which is pretty much the mission statement for high-fidelity. It’s also what separates the C1.2 from the likes of MSB, TotalDAC, dCS and Esoteric, all DACs that generate detail for fun but are less adept at translating that detail into a meaningful, musically anchored yet mobile whole. Listening to any of those DACs trying to reproduce a samba beat is as painful as watching some overweight celebrity trying to wiggle to one on Strictly…
