Working through the individual settings, backing off the Input Gain robbed the music of pace and attack, while advancing it simply clogged the sound, making the playing clumsy and closing down the space. I left it where it was. Adding a notch to the Speed control injected substance, energy, body and colour to proceedings, adding a more defined sense of dimensionality and musical personality to the instruments and voices. I backed the Output Gain off a notch and that made for a more immediate performance, with quicker, more agile playing, more articulate singing (anybody familiar with this recording and Ms. Andueza in particular will understand exactly what I’m referring to) and a greater sense of temporal clarity and security. Roll those benefits together and suddenly you’ve got something that’s musically very special indeed.
How does the record stack up against the CD and the file replay, especially given that it’s a digital LP? I’ll get to that in a moment, because it’s very much a part of the wider discussion and the question of just where the Reference Server ranks in terms of overall performance. But first, I want to look at the implications, as well as the limitations of both DWC and file quality. The Christina Pluhar file delivers fantastic results, but the real questions revolve around the how and why? After all, at 24/88.2, it’s hardly the last word in ‘hi-res’ files – even if it is one of the better sounding examples I’ve found. Therein lies the tale – and it is definitely cautionary in nature…
Teetering on the brink…
One of my more surprising and enjoyable purchase of the last few years was the Alina Ibragimova recording of Shostakovich Violin Concertos, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and released on Hyperion Records (Hyperion CDA68313): surprising because Ibragimova is far better known for her sublimely agile chamber playing, enjoyable because this is music made with real passion and feeling for the material. With Jurowski’s sure hands on the helm of a Russian orchestra, I decided to take a punt and have been extremely glad that I did. What makes these performances so special, besides Jurowski’s innate connection with Russian repertoire, is the sheer commitment and emotional intensity of Ibragimova’s playing. Even her smallish instrumental voice contributes, adding to the sense of longing and striving in the most intense passages. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the (in)famous Passacaglia of the First Violin Concerto. The solo violin, isolated in front of the silent orchestra cuts a lonely, emotionally desperate and intensely powerful line through the demanding piece, qualities that have made this a ‘reach for’ recording, both for reviewing and listening pleasure. It’s a sure gauge of any system’s emotional range.
It is also available as a 24bit/192kHz download – which should have been an exciting proposition. Unfortunately, that simply wasn’t the case. The downloaded file has a thickened, aimless quality that robs the music of its pace and tension, the performance of its intensity, not so much a pale imitation as a lazy and unfocussed facsimile of the original. But aren’t these exactly the type of sonic and musical challenges that the DWC is so adept at dealing with? Well – yes and no. I love this performance and I wanted the hi-res file to elevate it to new heights. Perhaps I wanted that too much – but I spent an inordinately frustrating period jiggling the DWC controls one way or another, convinced that if I could only find just the right settings the magic would be revealed. Sadly not as my disappointment underlined the hard learnt lesson: DWC is NOT a cure-all. It is a corrective for errors in the replay chain. There isn’t a thing it can do about errors in a file’s encoding…
