Specs & Pricing

The Cutting Edge
also has to capture the bravura way the piece
is played—for the extreme means it takes to
produce these timbres is the other great point
and pleasure of Schnittke’s composition.
If leading-edge dynamics were the whole
of these tasks, the Kuzma Stabi XL/Air Line
would win by a nose. It is phenomenally quick
and clear and clean. Though it gets a leg up in
these regards from being paired with the Air
Tight PC-1, which is the “fastest” cartridge
I’ve auditioned (marginally faster, even,
than the super-speedy London Reference),
even when paired with lesser cartridges the
Kuzma reproduces violinist Gidon Kremer’s
pizzicatos, collés (where the
bow is thrown forcefully
against the strings, making
a hard, explosive “T”-
like sound), and ricochéts
(where the bow is bounced
off the strings, making a
kind of rat-a-tat-tat noise,
like “ta-ta-ta-ta-tah”), with
unprecedented realism.
Indeed, anything transientrelated—such
as the little ripping noises
that the hairs of a violin bow makes
just as they bite into a string, or the
slight, soft shifting of a piano’s action
when a key is jabbed or of a foot-pedal
when it is depressed or released—is
more clearly reproduced by the Kuzma
than by anything else I’ve heard, digital
or analog, including the Walker.
When it comes to the performancerelated
details that describe how the
instrument is being played—one of the
twin heartbeats of Quasi una sonata—
the Kuzma is superb. It gives you the
full articulation of each note, no matter
how loudly or softly or lengthily or
briefly it is sounded, regardless of pitch
or register. If, for instance, pianist Andrej
Gavrillov pedals a G minor chord, you hear
harmonics fill the air for as long as the pedal is
depressed. (And the Kuzma will tell you exactly
when he lifts up on the pedal.) If, on the other
hand, he plays an arpeggio staccato in the top
octave, you hear each sparkling sixteenth note
distinctly, without any blur or slur. Resolution
of this order cannot help but clarify style,
tempo, and line.
(What is true of this smaller piece is just
as true of larger ones. For example, on Peter
Maxwell Davis’ parody mass Missa Super
L’Homme Armé for chamber orchestra and
speaker [L’Oiseau Lyre]—another postmodernist
prank that, like the Schnittke piece,
deconstructs a traditional form of tonal music
[in this case, the mass] and derives much of
112 December 2006 The Absolute Sound
its wit and expressiveness from its unusual
timbres and outlandish dynamics—you hear
the performance style, tempo, and inner
voices somewhat more distinctly through the
Kuzma than you do through the Walker. For
instance, the Kuzma makes Alan Hacker’s
flutter-tongued bass clarinet whirr like a card
in the spokes of a bicycle wheel. Through
the Walker that whirr is just a bit less crisp
and clear. Ditto for the individual strokes of
percussionist Gary Kettel’s drum rolls, which
the Kuzma preserves intact and the Walker
slurs just the slightest bit.)
When it comes to timbres—the other
expressive pole of the Schnittke piece—
the Kuzma sounds just plain gorgeous,
without sounding just plain real. It
persistently adds a slight voluptuous
darkness to the timbres of the violin
and piano. In the treble, the Stabi XL
consistently sounds a bit quicker and
slightly more extended than the Walker, but
also brighter, less airy, and more forward. In
the bass, it is just a bit “faster,” leaner, and
tighter. (Because of its speed, definition, and
reach in the bottom octaves—and because
of the overall way it clarifies rhythms and
tempi—the Kuzma is simply a killer on beatdriven
music like rock.)
You’re probably thinking, at this point,
that all of these “little bit fasters and clearers
and better defineds” should add up to a
clear victory for the Kuzma. And were we
talking about the Kuzma versus the Walker
Proscenium Gold—my analog reference for
the past four or five years—I’d be tempted to
agree. Certainly the call would be very close.
However, we’re not talking about the
Kuzma and the Proscenium Gold; we’re talking
about the Kuzma and the Proscenium Black
Diamond. And to me, the call, though a bit of
a split decision, isn’t finally all that close.
Here’s the difference between the Kuzma
Stabi XL/Air Line and the Walker Proscenium
Black Diamond on Quasi una sonata (and
everything else): The Kuzma reproduces the
violin and piano on the Schnittke piece like
the best possible hi-fi—everything you could
possibly want to know about how they are being
played is there for the hearing. All the Walker
does, by comparison, is make that violin and
piano sound a bit less like superb reproductions
and a bit more like real instruments playing in
your room. That’s all.
Returning to Quasi una sonata, the very first
thing you notice when you switch from one
’table to the other isn’t what’s gone missing
with the Kuzma but what’s been added by the
Walker. The change isn’t subtle—not something
you need “golden ears” to hear. It’s as if some
of the air from the Walker’s massive airsupply
box has been piped directly into
the soundstage. The space between the
violin and the piano—and the sense of
space around both instruments—grows
much larger; the stage “walls” seem to
move considerably farther back and
farther apart; and the instruments
themselves sound bigger, as if some
of that same air has been pumped into
them, blowing them up and filling them
out more fully in three dimensions. As
a result, you suddenly realize that this is
a live recording, made in front of a real
audience in a real space. You also realize
that part of what makes Quasi una sonata
work is the way that the violin and piano
bisect that space—each owning (and
holding) its own ground in this contest
of musical wills.
Then there are the changes in the
timbres and dynamics of the instruments.
The Kuzma’s slight overall darkness vanishes,
replaced by a neutrality that simply sounds
“right.” No, the violin’s pizzicatos and collés
aren’t quite as fast as they are on the Kuzma
(though still plenty fast), but its fundamentals
and overtones are considerably more realistic;
no, the piano doesn’t have quite the articulation
of the Kuzma in those top-octave runs, but it
has more of the color, authority, and solidity
of an actual grand piano from bottom to top.
That hard-to-find but essential quality that I
call “action”—the way instruments change
their size, shape, and projection with changes
in register and intensity, making them seem to
“bloom” out towards you and recede back away
from you as the pulse of the music rises and
falls—is much more clearly in evidence. Indeed,