Esoteric Masterpieces

Orchestral Pit
14.03.2012

Quoting Edoardo Sanguineti: “The main virtue of a masterpiece, if we want to keep calling like that, is to create a new manner of looking at things”.

 

Some days ago, we were setting a pair of very revealing loudspeakers. We had great expectations, great as the loudspeakers themselves. They were driven by one brand system, Swiss Soulution, from the CD player to the power amp.

Not bad! A dream indeed.

The designer of the loudspeakers asks us to use his power cable. We switch on the system. Disaster. I was in another room and while I came back, I asked to myself if, maybe during the transport, the loudspeakers had been damaged. Patiently, without getting flustered, the landlord suggests us to use his cables, more adequate for the Soulution power amp. We connect them. The difference, in positive, was enormous.

 

Sic.

 

And there is still someone who dares to say that the cables “do not sound”.

Henceforth, another story. The story of how to interface the components of a system. How to choose and pull up electronics and loudspeakers, cables and accessories. About that we have spoken and we will speak ever.

 

Today instead, we want to speak of the imponderable and the absolute.

Of the fact that everything “performs”.

But also that you cannot measure everything.

You have to listen to it.

 

A step backwards. As we all say, the best systems always have great electrical characteristics: exact, measurable, demonstrable, repeatable and reassuring. As we all know, superior systems due their superiority to imponderable elements, i.e. immeasurable. The best technicians admit that.

You can assemble very good systems with tube amps, transistors and mosfets. You can employ complex crossovers or avoid them totally using a DSP massively.

Please note that this is not about the technical relativism that ‘everything you are going to use is ok’. On the contrary, what you are going to use could be ok, but how are you going to use it? The important thing is knowing what we are doing. Knowing where we want to go. Knowing what we want, starting from something specific, following a rule till the outcome. Are you thinking that the tube in absolute or that a kind of tube is superior to other systems of amplification of the sound? Do you prefer silver cables instead of copper cables? Have you flirted with single-ended triode (SET) and, after been betrayed, now you want to get married to transistors? OK, go for it! But you have to square with the limits of your choices, besides with their merits. The important, as I said before, is being aware of it. I think that the high fidelity is a sector where, with very few exceptions, coherence pays off: both in listening and in sales.

 

To avoid any kind of misunderstanding, let us give a definition of the first word. Masterpiece is an extra fine creation, or the greatest work of an artist, artisan or author. Historically, in the handmade and manual works, the masterpiece was the ability test necessary for the craftsman or worker to get his qualification. That work, usually a handiwork, had to meet the technical and aesthetic requirements of the qualification appointed by the corporations in the Late Middle Ages, and by the sectorial technical directions for the specializing workers, in the industrial era.

Nothing supernatural of course, but lots of patience, manual skill, experience, talent, art, competence and concentration, all applied together. 

 

And now the second word, more delicate and apparently not pertinent, because often abused or badly employed: ‘esoteric’ comes from the Greek word Esoterikos and simply means ‘interior’. The serious study of the esoteric disciplines aims to the esoteric research, in its more radical and pure meaning. It is about researching what is hidden inside us, not perceptible only by our physical senses, although deducible from the deepest and more authentic part of our being.

 

This is the meaning we give when we speak of Esoteric Masterpieces. No mystery or initiation. If you can listen, even supported by measures, some realisations are overcome by the listening, no ifs, ands or buts.

 

If you have some listening experience you know that it is possible to come upon systems that are exaggerate, absolute, paradoxical, and even incredible: click here for an amusing example… Nothing farthest from the products of the market. Sometimes we are dealing with devices or components, which, even if at the beginning belonged to a regular production, then they have been upgraded, modified, changed becoming unrecognizable, divine sons of common fathers. The best hi-fi device can become high-end. And beyond.

 

Elsewhere there is the hard and pure Kingdom of the absolute DIY, where everything can and must be modified and elaborated to become virtually unrecognizable, alchemically transfigured. Because the object made with the best technique but without any involvement or personal participation will be always and unavoidably cold, mechanic, soulless. 

 

There are always anguished and tenacious works, mould-breaker works obtained against everyone and everything. Born by the ‘you have to commit yourself’, by maniacal obsessions, sleepless nights and struggles with your wallet, by continuous polemics and rare and controversial successes. At the end, however, there is an outcome. And you can hear it.

 

These are one-shot achievements that cannot be proposed, even unadvisable to most of you. Out of the market logics and out of it. Often made by using rare exemplars and particular components, or maybe unique. So it is not about purchasing advises but pure listening experiences. No one wants to tell you that they are ‘better’ or ‘worst’ than others. By listening to them you cannot remain indifferent, new perspectives are open and you think and rethink about your ideas of ‘playback music’.

They are not brands, they are not devices, they are not the market where we have to face the reality and the costs: they are the way to reach a better listening. They cannot be reproduced in series, but they are for some reasons better than many, too many others, in reproducing the music.

 

Who cannot recognize and appreciate them, even if paradoxical and absurd for a normal domestic room, does not have his ears open, considering that his brain is already closed. 

 

We will start with LuxSapienti, a system very different from all the others where, instead of stopping the vibrations, they are given into and exalted, to let it resonating at best. An undercurrent path – ReMusic likes it for intellectual curiosity – if compared to the current trends more than justified if pursued with coherence. 

 

In the photo gallery you will find some interesting ideas converted into images. Just a few examples of what you can find online. We are interested in things like that. This typology of obsessive compulsive delirious.

From our part, we are going to seek them and smoke out. If you know them, please let us know or describe them: we want to make some noise.

Perfect8 loudspeakers and BFA prototypes (DAC and amp)
Perfect8 loudspeakers and BFA prototypes (DAC and amp)
Soul Sonic loudspeakers
Soul Sonic loudspeakers
by Giuseppe
Castelli
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