in this issue

a b s o l u t e a n a l o g
Lamm Industries LP2 Deluxe Phonostage
and Clearaudio Titanium Cartridge
Jonathan Valin
I’ve been patting MBL speakers and
electronics on the back so often
lately for their transparency and
resolution that the front-end components
I’m about to review have
been kind of lost in the shuffle. True, the
“grip” of the 101 E Radialstrahlers,
6010 D linestage preamp, and 9011
monoblock amps on very low-level
musical details is phenomenal; in combination,
they simply don’t let go of a
sound until the instrument stops sounding,
reaching with greater clarity higher
into fortissimos and lower into pianissimos
than other electronics, and reproducing
the way a note dies off so clearly
and completely that you can hear the
exact moment when the faintest sound
stops and silence starts.
As I mentioned in my review of the
ARC Reference 3 preamp and 210 amps
in Issue 159, my locus classicus for this
sort of thing is the first movement
cadenza of the Montsalvatge Concerto
Breve [London], where pianist Alicia de
Larrocha sustains a note via finger and
pedal for what seems like an eternity,
providing a primer on the way a piano’s
overtones gradually die out. With the
MBL gear, the instant that de Larrocha
finally lets up on pedal and key and that
last little enharmonic overtone, which
has been sounding at an extremely low
level for several seconds, finally stops is
so marked that the moment of rest
which follows takes your breath away.
The clear divide between very-lowlevel
sounds and silence is something you
hear in concert halls all the time, but
typically don’t hear on stereo systems,
which tend to add enough of their own
noise to obscure both. With this recording
and the superb ARC tube gear, for
example, you would be harder put to tell
precisely when that last overtone stops
and silence begins. The one just seems to
vaguely meld into the other without an
unambiguous line of demarcation. With
the MBL electronics, the moment that
overtone dies out is like a bank vault
door closing.
On the other hand, in the
instants between successive
notes, the ARC gear
has a magical ability to
“hang” harmonics almost
visibly in the air, so you can
hear the way the colors of
one note of, say, John
Ogden’s Steinway—at the
start of the great Andante of
Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto—
harmonize with and reinforce the colors
of the next note, as you would (to an
even greater degree) in life.
All of this perceived detail is a testament
to the class-leading resolution of
MBL and ARC electronics (and MBL’s
second-line preamp, the $8000 5011,
and second-line amp, the $40k 9008
monoblocks, belong in this same exalted
company). But it is also a testament to
the transparency of the Lamm LP2
phonostage, the Clearaudio Titanium
cartridge, and the Walker Proscenium
Gold record player that feed these preamps
and amps.
This front end is a veritable pane of
glass when it comes to low-level
detail—and frankly to just about every
other aspect of high-fidelity reproduction.
It is also neutral enough to allow
the ARC gear to show its set of virtues
to full advantage and the MBL its rather
different one, without stamping its own
personality too markedly on either.
Though other cartridge/phonostage/
record-player combos have significantly
different virtues and several items on
the horizon look promising, as a music
source nothing I’ve yet heard betters
the Clearaudio/Lamm/Walker, analog
or digital.
There was a time
when I wouldn’t have
said this—when I
would’ve conceded that
digital (particularly
SACD) had the edge in reproducing
certain kinds of details,
particularly transient-related
14 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ APRIL/MAY 2006