home entertainment 2007

not due to any bass emphasis, or to
changes in speaker position or acoustics,
but to the No.433’s ability to give shape
to sounds that could otherwise be
obscured by what was going on in the
midrange and treble. One result of this
was that the low end of deep voices that
descend to the frequencies where room
modes begin to have their pernicious
effect were not differently colored from
the upper end of their range. The very
lowest bass was equally tight and potent.
It was in the high frequencies that
the No.433 most distinguished itself
from the other amps on hand. The
clarity of its midrange seemed to carry
on up through the highest frequencies
without restriction or loss of resolution.
With the 802Ds, the result was
extremely satisfying—the No.433
opened up the soundstage while taking
nothing from the defining qualities of
the bass and mids. I doubt I would
have made such a determination with
earlier 800-series speakers from B&W,
but the smoothness of the 802D’s diamond
tweeter, particularly as it
approaches the crossover frequency
(4kHz), combined with the No.433 in
a way that was a revelation.
That revelation occurred when I put
on Christoph Eschenbach and the
Philadelphia Orchestra’s new SACD of
Saint-Saëns’ Symphony 3 (see sidebar,
“Recordings in the Round”). From the
very soft beginning, I could hear individual
instrumentalists and “see” exactly
where each was seated. As the forces
gathered, there was no loss of such
specificity or balance, even in tuttis.
Add the organ-pedal tones in the second
movement and, again, there was
an expansion of the tonal and dynamic
palettes, but with no compromise of
the rich detail. I was transported.
The No.433 might seem a bit bright
in direct comparisons with other amps,
but, as I’ve emphasized before, you can’t
make a completely objective determination
of a product’s accuracy with only
subjective tools and no primary references.
With the Pioneer S-1EX speakers
as well, the No.433 created an impression
of transparency and lightness, but it
was as if the otherwise excellent mids
and lows played less of a role in defining
the sound’s character. Perhaps this was
due to the difference between the
B&Ws and the Pioneers’ more highly
damped bass tuning. The Bel Canto
REF1000 monoblocks, despite their
power, had a bit less slam than did the
No.433 with either speaker, but they
provided a remarkably satisfying spectral
MUSIC IN THE ROUND
MY ENTIRE SYSTEM, GOOD AS IT WAS, HAS
BEEN PUSHED ANOTHER STEP FORWARD BY YET
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF COMPLEMENTARY
ADVANCES IN SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE.
balance with the Pioneers, much as the
Levinson and the Classé CA3200 did
with the 802Ds. I continue to waffle
about whether I preferred the Levinson
or the Classé with the B&Ws. The
Levinson made them sound tighter and
quicker, while the Classé made them
sound a bit more warm and rich. There is
a real difference in price, too: $10,000 for
the Mark Levinson No.433 vs $6000 for
the Classé CA3200. Take a careful look
in your wallet but, given my experience
and my current room acoustics, I’d go for
the Levinson No.433.
Back to Bassics—JL Audio’s
f113 Subwoofer
The arrival of Christoph Eschenbach
and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s spectacular
new SACD of Saint-Saëns’ Symphony
3 drives me to say a bit more
about JL Audio’s Fathom f113 subwoofer
(see “Music in the Round,”
November 2006). Because I listen to
music, not movies, in my main system,
the f113 is not called to duty every day.
If fact, most of my listening is in twochannel
stereo, for which there’s no easy
way to do optimum bass management
in this all-analog system. But after my
first listen to this disc, I got myself off
the couch—I had to hear it with the sub.
The disc is 5.0-channel, so I tried two
ways: 1) I hooked up the f113 in parallel
with the L/R channels and used the
built-in LP filter to roll it in from 40Hz
down. Then, 2) I used the Bel Canto PL-
1A’s bass management to set all of my
speakers to Small. The latter might seem
suboptimal (sorry) because the crossover
to the sub is fixed for all channels at
80Hz, and a lower crossover frequency is
more effective with the B&W 802Ds.
Nonetheless, I greatly preferred that configuration;
in this room, the f113 is a vastly
superior reproducer of low bass than
even the quintet of B&W floorstanders.
In 5.0 channels, the Saint-Saëns was
no less than glorious (see above), and
the organ was powerful, rich, and distinctive
in its colorations. In fact, it was
simply the best-sounding recording of
this piece that I had heard. But, like
Oliver Twist, I wanted more, please,
sir. With the f113 rolling in below
40Hz, there was added authority and
weight in some, though not all, of the
organ-pedal passages. It was thrilling,
but not all that different from the
unaugmented 5.0 sound.
With the invocation of bass management,
with which I passed the low end
over to the f113 below 80Hz, there
seemed to be a dramatic expansion of
the entire soundstage and an increased
definition of the extreme bass, to go
along with the enhancements noted
above. At several points in the second
movement I could barely hear the
organ, but I could feel it through my
feet—and this in a steel-reinforced concrete
building. Who knows what others
in the building might have thought
was going on?
Why was this so? I think there are
two reasons. First, the f113 is simply
capable of more output with less distortion
below 40Hz. Second, the f113
is equalized to be more linear in this
region. I didn’t measure the B&W
802Ds, but if the unequalized f113
showed a highly irregular response in
this room, odds are that the 802Ds,
positioned as they were for maximal
imaging and midrange smoothness,
probably had a low-end response that
looked like a view of the Alps. Bass
management simply deleted this and
passed along those frequencies to the
equalized and powerful f113. The
result? My entire system, good as it
was, has been pushed another step forward
by yet another example of complementary
advances in software and
hardware. Now I need to rethink all of
my connections to permit better and
more frequent use of the JL Audio
Fathom f113…
Next Time in the Round
Having distributed my Stereophile card
to many prospects at the 2007 Consumer
Electronics Show, I hope lots of
juicy stuff will soon arrive. The Audio
Research MP-1 and the Cary Audio
Cinema 11 pre-pros are next in the
queue, along with some more discussion
of equalization. As for recordings,
the spate of multichannel SACDs continues.
See you in July. ■■
www.Stereophile.com, May 2007 43