Peter,
When I suggested Ian’s other preamps were less than first-class, I was of course referring to the two I’ve actually heard. I didn’t know he owned any others, including the three you mentioned.
I didn't know you’d tried his Alaap in your system. I couldn’t comment even if I did know, since I wasn’t there to hear it. :-)
Dan_Ed wrote, regarding the Alaap in your system:
What I heard with the Alaap in your system was not ringing. In fact it was just the opposite as I told you in an email. There maybe the first couple of harmonics coming through, but the rest are squashed into one impulse response or tossed out all together. This is just one other approach to music reproduction and it yields a quiet, pleasant rendering of music.
This sounds like what I've heard from much very good SS gear, not to mention many well regarded speakers with soft dome tweeters, one or two very popular cartridges and a vast number of interconnects and cables.
Harmonics that are tossed out altogether are at least bearable (to my ears and Paul's). Harmonics squashed together will send both of us (especially him) flying from the room in literal pain.
Arthur Salvatore introduced a new sonic parameter in his (long) review of his new favorite speakers, the Coincident Pure Reference. He called it "individuation", meaning the ability of a component or system to allow the listener to identify individual voices and instruments during even highly complex passages.
A component which tosses harmonics out makes individuation difficult or impossible. If the stereo plays an "A" and all you hear is the 440Hz fundamental sine wave, you won't know if it was a clarinet, a violin or a human.
A component which squashes harmonics together individuates even worse, since it not only disguises each voice but also mushes voices together when they're playing or singing in concert. Listen to a live choir without electronic amplification. You don't hear an alto voice, a soprano voice, a tenor voice. You hear Mary and Joan and Fred, hopefully singing in harmony, but always as individuals.
Paul and I have been seeking greater individuation from our system for years (without having particularly named it). It is one of our primary criteria for deciding whether any component, tweak or adjustment is an improvement or not. Any component, tweak or adjustment which damages individuation is a downgrade by our priorities. Others listen differently of course. Even Dan, with whom we agree on most things audio, once said he didn't give a d@#% what a harpsichord sounded like or whether his system could reproduce it well. He might think differently now, I don't know, but if a system can reproduce a harpsichord really well (a fiendishly difficult challenge, harder than piano in some ways) then it's probably capable of reproducing nearly anything well.
Heh! We went to a symphony concert the other night and the sound of the Steinway, from just 9-10 rows back, made me despair of ever getting any stereo to work right. The Steinway wasn't even set up properly, but it still embarasssed the best our system can do. I once set up a new rig for George Walker, the Pulitzer prize winning composer. After 5 hours of work I spun up a piano LP and (foolishly) asked him if it didn't sound more real than his old rig. "Well", he replied, "it sounds better. But it still doesn't sound like my Steinway to ME." He proceeded to demonstrate, playing us a piece he'd written 60 years earlier (he was nearly 90 at the time). He was right, obviously.
