Specs & Pricing

HP’s Workshop
smaller than Room 3, but which has been the
happy host of some quite large speakers from
the multi-paneled Magneplanars to a series of
Infinity IRS systems.
Hansen, who did an initial positioning of the
speakers—which I changed as soon as he left—
said they were only doing two-thirds or so what
they could have done in a larger room, like 3.
He specifically thought one could achieve
a more impressive soundstage, with far better
depth, and true extension of the speaker into
the bottom octave (which I define as being that
below 32Hz).
118 December 2006 The Absolute Sound
As it came to pass, with exquisitely careful
adjustments in Room 2 (whose acoustic strengths
and one major node I know oh-so-well), and the
just right combination of associated equipment,
we were able to achieve dramatic results, and
with a superb soundstage and soundfield and
considerable strength audibly flat down to 32Hz.
It did not plumb the depths, e.g., the 16Hz
pedal point on Reference Recordings Felix Hill
organ recital—to be specific, it happens on the
Rheinberger “Abendfriede” cut—but THE
KINGs did move a great deal of air, and with
such definition—articulation—that you’d never
think anything at all was missing.
I want to backtrack a bit. We first used in the
Room 2 setup, the EAR Acute CD player with
the Burmester 04 preamplifier and 911 Mk III
monoblocks (actually stereo amps wired for
mono operation). We switched from a motley
arrangement of interconnects and cables to
an all Nordost Valhalla system, complete with
the company’s superb Thor power-distribution
device and listened that way. In the next phrase,
we inserted an ASR amplifier. We did not bypass
the Burmester preamp, as we could have with
the ASR’s battery-operated input stage, feeding
the EAR directly in. When we did try a bypass,
without the 04 in the system, the ASR, surprisingly,
didn’t sound quite right, and, at the point of this
writing, we still hadn’t isolated whatever gremlin
was causing the eccentricity of the sound.
Then, in the next phase, we warmed up the
Conrad-Johnson Premier 350 solid-state amp
and inserted it in the system. Around this time,
we made final modifications to the speakers’
placement in the room, returning actually to
what I’d called the “classic” position, one that
obeyed what I jokingly call the Pearson Rule
of Thirds (which is not how the speakers were
first placed, nor where they were “re”-placed
by Hansen himself) but this time farther out
into the room, one-third of the way actually,
and moved the speakers closer together until
both were positioned at the one-third points of
the side walls. In a good room, which 2 is, the
Rule of Thirds should always be your starting
point in setting up a system. (See diagram.) By
this time, I knew we were getting extraordinary
results from THE KINGs, and decided to go
one step further. Out went the EAR player and
in came the Lab 47 Pi/Tracer, to my way of
thinking, the very best CD playback system I’ve
yet heard. And the increase in resolution, clarity,
and scarcity of distortion was nothing short of
revelatory. But this did not work to the Premier’s
advantage, since the new setup revealed its
rather soft and slow response in the 30 to 50Hz
region, manifest as a lack of articulation there,
and a subtle but gentle veiling throughout the
frequency range, and a slightly colored sound
that will be familiar to anyone who knows the
Conrad-Johnson’s family “character,” that is, a
mellow almost goldish glow.
So out went the C-J, and back came the
Burmester 911s and the system came “alive”
in a way that belied its less than grandiose
dimensions (at least compared with the Nolas
and other monsters).
So back in went the Burmester amps into
the system now dominated by the Lab 47 player
and repositioned speakers, and the results —
not quite literally, but almost—took my breath
away.