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AESG - Tonality, Transparency and Superb Detail!
Today I had 2 special guests that visited the AE showroom. They were Professor Karst De Jong - music professor at the Yong Sew Toh Conservatory of Music - National University of Singapore, and his colleague - Martin Jaggi, a renowned cellist who also lectures composition and contemporary music at NUS.
Karst and Martin brought along Jazz records to play. We first played Weather Report’s ‘Boogie Boogie Waltz’ first on the Davinci Gabriel / Fuuga / Zanden 1200 Signature setup. They had never heard the track sound so good before! I then suggested we play it on the Vertere SG1 / Thales Voro / Engstrom MPhono. They instantly preferred it to the Davinci! Both felt that Weather Report on the Vertere / Engstrom setup sounded very ‘live’ with great bass and detail!
The Jazz Bar comes alive in AESG! ‘Some Day My Prince will Come’ from
Miles Davis and Brad Melhldau Trio’s ‘Since I fell for You’ both sounded
superb on the Vertere / Voro / Engstrom. I was trying to understand
why? The Voro is a high output cartridge. The combination with the
Engstrom M-Phono is almost too good to be true for Jazz! (And I suspect
for Rock and Pop). The Swedish are also huge Jazz fans. In fact when I
visited the Engstrom design office in Stockholm last summer, Lars
Engstrom was playing Jazz throughout the visit.
I was happy that these two accomplished musicians were impressed with the sound. We had spent a lot of time and effort over the year to get the sound ‘right’ with rock, electronica and jazz using the Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC/Server streaming Tidal.
Not with Classical and not on Vinyl, however. So I was a little nervous when I started playing YoYo Ma’s ‘Unaccompanied Cello Suites’ on the Davinci Gabriel / Fuuga / Zanden 1200 signature. So you can imagine my delight when Martin said - “The tonality is perfect and the details are fantastic. It is very slightly bright but it can also be Yoyo Ma's Cello. I am also surprised that the room sounds much bigger than what it is.” Karst concurred! After a few more listens he said “I detect that the decay on the YoYo Ma’s Cello’s ‘A’ string is not as even as it should be. The other strings are correct.” Only the most practiced and experienced ear could detect this, and Martin as a professional cellist instantly spotted it. The superb transparency of the AESG system also helped.
Chris later informed me, “All analogue front ends with low output cartridges without SUT usually exhibit such phenomenon.” He suggested that the addition of a SUT will address what Martin was hearing. He went on to say “The majority of audiophiles would not be able to detect the difference. The Fuuga cartridge captures the very finest of details and if you want to hear the transients on this low output cartridge, a SUT is required.”
So what did I learn? I am on the right path and with AESG, we have a sound system that far surpasses the AE Group crew’s expectations! While the SG team team used different genres of music to tune the system, the sound reproduction of classical recordings is spot on. I was also struck by the comment on the listening space sounding much larger than it is. I have to give credit to Adrian from SoundZipper who has done an amazing job with the acoustics to recreate a concert hall in a small space!
The journey continues!
PS
Once the SUT is in place, both Karst and Martin have agreed to come back to check on that Cello A string!1
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