Interesting thread. . . how did I miss this until now? I have had the priviledge to audition the Vienna Mahler last October at the Denver Audiofest in the Soundings HIFI / Rowland suite. The system consisted of a CDp from Sweeden whose brand I regretably do not recall, Rowland Concerto linestage, the just released Rowland 312 power amp, and of course Mahler speakers. The setup had been tuned by Sumiko technicians. The sound was. . . stunning. Not in a fire-worksy-hifish-glitzy way, but profoundly musical, linear, extended, three-dymensional and tuneful. I was drawn back to the suite 4 times during the show because I could not have enough of it. I played exerpts from my own compilation CD, mostly Bernstein conducting the Israel Philarmonic on the 2nd movement from Dvorak's 9th Symphony, Edgar Meyer playing the prelude from Bach's 5th suite on double-bass, and Lara St. John on Bach's Adagio-Fuga from the 3rd violin sonata. I was stunned by the -- albeit subjective -- impression of musical correctness of the presentation. Besides the adjectives employed by me above, on all the selection I played, the sound was marvellously harmonically rich, but without ANY obvious frequency hotspots nor any of the bass bloating attributed to the Mahlers by some other contributors in this thread. Even in the critical bass register -- bass trombone in Dvorak and lowest string in the Meyer performance, the sense of pitch remained perfectly defined, outlined, and I should say perfectly sculptured. At the other extreme, the treble was extended, clean and filigreed, without a hint of harsheness. The midrange was cleanly fleshed out, but never forward. Macro dynamics was magnificently authoritative but not Bombastic. But what made my jaw drop was the subtlety and interplay of microdynamics and micro detail, which rendered for me this system by far the most emotionally involving of the whole show.
Granted, a significant part of my unconditional praise must go to the new Rowland 312, because whenever the 312 was replaced by its smaller twin brothers, the 501 monoblocks, while still extended and broadly dynamic, the system lost a lot of its great magic, musicality, microdynamics, and ultimately a substantive portion of its profound emotional impact.
In the end, ported vs sealed, dynamic vs. planar, tubes vs solid state vs ICE modules. . . matter not an ounce. Rather, the final result is a product of the total design, overall construction, engineering quality control of the individual components, their mutual synergy, the care of the setup, and finally the synergy of the whole with the musical taste and expectations of the listener.
