Specs & Pricing

The Cutting Edge
through the Walker both instruments sound less
like superb two-dimensional reproductions, and
more like living, breathing, three-dimensional
semblances of the real things.
What the Walker’s bloom, space, size, air,
neutrality, solidity, dimensionality, and dynamic
authority buy you, musically, in Quasi una sonata,
is not just more lifelike timbres, but a keener
sense of how each instrument’s timbre both
separates it from and, on occasion, joins it to
the other instrument. You hear that pedaled
G-minor chord of the piano, for instance, and
the answering atonal shriek of the violin, and
because of the realism with which the timbres
of each instrument are stated and sustained, you
suddenly realize that a musical offer has been
made and musically answered—that the piano
and violin (and the musics each represent) aren’t
just insisting on their own separate identities but
are also attempting to share some of the same
harmonic ground. You also realize—once again
because of the truthfulness with which their
tone colors are stated and sustained—that this
will never quite come to pass, because all they
don’t share is also more clearly audible.
Most of all, what you get with the Walker—
and what sets it apart from any other source
component I’ve auditioned—is a “fool-you”
sense that you’re hearing actual instruments there
in the room with you. Whether it is Kremer’s
violin or Gavrillov’s piano, or the coterie of
string, wind, and percussion instruments in
the Maxwell Davies mass, or Joan Baez singing
“Gospel Ship” in Carnegie Hall, or the London
Symphony Orchestra summoning up the
Roman legions in Repsighi’s Pines of Rome, the
Walker Proscenium Black Diamond comes
closer to sounding “real” more often than any
other source I’ve heard in my system. (Just for
the record, the Kuzma comes in second.)
If the differences between these two record
players seem familiar to you, it is because they
are familiar. If I weren’t talking about record
players, you might think I was talking about
great solid-state amplification and great tube
amplification. Like great solid-state, the Kuzma
is a bit higher in low-level resolution, more
extended and incisive at the extremes, gorgeous
but darkish in tone color, and outright superior
on transients, pace, and big dynamic swings. If
fidelity were simply a matter of extraordinary
detail (particularly performance-related detail)
presented with extraordinary beauty and clarity
(and, in the case, of transients, extraordinary
realism)—and I concede that for a number of
you it might well be—the Kuzma would be the
winner of this shootout. But if the “gestalt” of
a live concert or recital—the lifelike presence of
instruments, their colors, their dynamics, and the
space they play in—is what fidelity means (and I
believe that it is), then the Walker wins handily.
Like the best contemporary tubes, it is fuller and
more realistic in tone color; bigger, bloomier,
airier, and more three-dimensional in imaging;
wider, deeper, more layered in soundstaging;
and a bit more authoritative dynamically. If the
Kuzma gets the small parts closer to right, the
Walker gets the wholes closer to right.
Understand that neither of these great
record players is a “loser.” I switch back and
forth between them fairly often and, if push
came to shove, could live with either. For
much less money, the Kuzma is a no-brainer
recommendation—and would undoubtedly
be the best tangential-tracking record player
money could buy, were the Walker Proscenium
Black Diamond not available. But, of course,
the Walker is available. It’ll cost you more and,
though gorgeous, won’t be quite as sexy to look
at or play with, but if you have the dough, are
married to LPs, and are into symphonic or folk
or chamber or jazz you simply can’t find a better
source component for any amount of money.
Sonically, the Kuzma may come a bit closer to
the best hi-fi, but the Walker comes closer to the
absolute sound. TAS
Specs & Pricing
ELITE AUDIO VIDEO DISTRIBUTION (KUZMA)
P.O. Box 93896
Los Angeles, California 90093
(323) 466-9694
info@eliteavdist.com
eliteavdist.com
Kuzma Stabi XL Turntable/Air Line Arm
Type: Belt-driven turntable
Arm: Traveling air-bearing, tangential
Speeds: 33rpm and 45rpm
Dimensions: 15.75" x 12.6" x 12.6"
Weight: 176 lbs.
Price: $28,500
WALKER AUDIO
1139 Thrush Lane
Audobon, Pennsylvania 19403
(610) 666-6087
lloydwalkeraudio@aol.com
walkeraudio.com
Walker Proscenium Black Diamond Record Player
Type: Belt-driven, air-bearing, air-supported
turntable
Arm: Fixed air-bearing, tangential
Speeds: 33rpm and 45rpm
Dimensions: 18" x 23"
Weight: 304 lbs. (not including air supply)
Price: $40,000 (including in-home setup by Lloyd
Walker and Fred Law)
Footnotes
1
The little length of airsupply
hose and the
little loop of tonearm
wire that feed into and out of the Kuzma’s traveling
bearing may exert some progressive “lift” on the
tonearm. I noted, a bit to my dismay, that on the
Kuzma VTF consistently measured .15 grams less at
the end of a record side than it did at the beginning.
Since the Air Line (or rather the stand it sits on) was
leveled perfectly by Scot Markwell of Elite Distribution
(Kuzma’s importer/distributor) and double-checked
by my friend Bill Parish (a Kuzma dealer), I can only
guess that variations in the tension and torsion of
these two sets of hoses may be contributing to the
problem, which is audible, by the way, as a slight
progressive “lightening” of the overall sound, rather
as if VTA were gradually being raised just a tiny
amount towards the end of the record. (The Walker
does not suffer from this problem.)
2
Though expensive to make and tricky to properly
implement, a really well-engineered air-bearing is
perhaps the stiffest and most friction-free of all
bearings, which is why it is so often used in critical
high-end industrial applications.
3
Though Kuzma claims that the Stabi XL’s massive
platter will start rotating within 30 seconds of
turning on the motor controller, more often than
not I found that I had to give the platter a little push
to overcome its inertia and set it spinning. Once in
motion, however, the platter continues to spin, even
if you slow it down or stop it to change records or
put on the record clamp. (The Walker Proscenium
Black Diamond’s giant platter also has to be started
by hand.) Neither turntable uses vacuum hold-down;
both depend, instead, on a massive clamp to flatten
records against the platter surface. Both also provide
variable viscous damping for the tonearm, an option
you can choose to use—or not.
JV’s Exotica Reference System
Loudspeakers: MAGICO Mini with two Wilson-
Benesch Torus subwoofers, MBL 101 E,
Ascendo M-S Mk II
Linestage preamps: Audio Research Reference 3,
MBL 6011 E
Phonostage preamps: Audio Research PH-7,
Lamm Industries LP-2 Deluxe
Power amplifiers: Audio Research Reference 210,
MBL 9008, MBL 9011, Edge 12.1
Analog source: Walker Audio Proscenium Black
Diamond record player, Kuzma Stabi XL
turntable, Kuzma Air Line tonearm
Phono cartridges: Air Tight PC-1, London
Reference
Digital source: MBL 1621 A transport,
MBL 1611 DAC
Cable and interconnect: Tara Labs “Zero”
interconnect, Tara Labs “Omega” speaker cable,
Tara Labs “The One” power cords
Accessories: Shakti Hallographs; Walker Prologue
Reference equipment stand; Walker Prologue
amp stands; Richard Gray Power Company 600S/
Pole Pig line/power conditioner; Cable Elevators
Plus; Walker Valid Points and Resonance Control
discs; Winds Arm Load meter; Clearaudio Matrix
record cleaner; HiFi-Tuning silver/gold fuses
114 December 2006 The Absolute Sound