It started as a planned distraction. A 19” TV, an orphaned Laserdisc player, a pair of AR Rock Partners and the integrated amp lowest on Pioneer’s totem pole hooked up with wire bought on Shaw Blvd. You see I had sold all my DJ gear. SL-1200 Mk2, my amps, my “turbo sound” horns, Jr. Earthquakes to finance a trip to see my girlfriend who had moved to the States. Ironically, the very same gear that gave me the income to take her out on dates prior to her relocation was what was to be sacrificed to see her. My folks wouldn’t spring for it and challenged my resolve. I never regretted it for a minute. Had I not done so, we might not have been married eventually and I wouldn’t be blessed with the family I have today.
A working student with a penchant for having fun, liquidity came in the form of oversized shots from the bartenders who loved our cash strapped but perennially jolly crew. Money was tight, my health beginning to suffer and I knew I needed to do something to curb the “thirst” which was beginning to be more than just social. I hopped on the AV train to keep me home more instead of going out to dull the pangs wrought by the dreaded long distance relationship. I figured I always liked movies anyhow and music had always been an integral part of my daily life. Little did I know just what type of commitment I would be prepared to make down the road. This road has been well chronicled here at WS. Illustrated best by the evolution of what WS members have come to call Camp Big Falcon or more affectionately, The Lair. I have never fully divulged however, the overriding performance objectives. Objectives I had in my mind the day I recorded and mixed my first live multi-track session almost ten years ago.
When recording I was taught that the integrity of the microphone feed was to be protected at all times. Place the mics correctly, unfurl the cable a certain way, choose the signal path on the SSL 9000J that introduces the least distortion, get the levels right and finally get it on the Studer 2” machine as unadulterated as I possibly could. 5 months of intensive training taught me the value of a clean signal path but more importantly taught me to respect the musicians feeding my microphones. This meant going between two very different listening environments, the control room and the recording space, one acoustically dead and one very much alive with living, breathing men and women and their instruments.
With the musicians looking over your shoulder, mixing is a different animal altogether. Using the clean tracks it is time to piece the jigsaw puzzle together to recreate the recording space. The objective here is to get what’s on the 2” tape onto a 1/4” tape AND a CDR dub while again preserving the details but mending the whole mess into a cohesive whole. Sound hard? Not as hard as it sounds actually if you know your tools, trust your instincts and are prepared to listen to the same song over and over until you’ve memorized every bar.
Did I mention that there is a whole lot of detailed documentation of signal paths, equipment lists, track assignments, settings and parameters to deal with as well? I tell you. We used up a lot of Sharpie’s and Mongol No.2s and a lot of masking tape.
Perhaps it is this training that led a friend and fellow WS member to call me Dr. Lecter for my alleged ability to zoom in and out on details while keeping the big picture together while also extracting motive and intent. Dr. Lecter? I sure hope it’s meant as a compliment!
Isn’t that strange? How an education in Recording Engineering allowed me to set the record in the history of the Philippine Congress for most number of bills (26) consolidated in the least number of days (3 afternoons). I got a new moniker there too. I was dubbed Chairman Red Bull because the staff said they needed the energy drink to keep up.
Anyhow back to the story…..
As a result of this ingrained mental disciplines my audio objectives therefore always seemed to be at conflict with each other. I wanted the detail of the mic feed and I wanted the natural sound of the recording space, just as I would during a mixdown. The difference is now I am the passive listener and no longer have the level of control I had before. As a passive listener, I needed a new “toolbox”. I needed tools that were fast but could SIMULTANEOUSLY be warm. I needed tools that were dynamic but not stiff. I needed tools that could produce powerful transients WITHOUT masking lower level events. Is this a tall order? You betcha. Is it possible? Apparently so. Emperor put his trust in us, his gang of suppliers, (AVDriver, Architectural Audio, Tatang, Jadis, FLD) and we achieved it for him. Proof that even for the jaded a reproduction system could be reviewed in the Live Music forum and not in Equipment Reviews, Listening Impressions. My trip to CES 2008 demonstrated that in the here and now, hooboy! Choices abound!
Now why do I always refer to equipment as tools? When it comes to material objects, except my wedding ring and other objects of deep symbolic significance, I am not nostalgic. I imagine what I want to achieve and I acquire the tools that I hope might get me there. It’s a lot like cooking actually. You imagine the flavors and textures and go for it. More often than not (the not being measurement exact processes like Baking) recipes don’t cut it. Cooking without a recipe knowing that the quality of ingredients may differ even as measurements stay the same necessitating tasting every few steps and adjustments along the way. This makes me somewhat “disloyal”. I don’t care what or how a piece of gear is made or what its name is. Planar, Dynamic, Solid State, Tube, SET, PP, Hybrid, I only care about what it brings to the table. I have no “camp”. I put together systems based on the planned use for that system. I guess you can see I’m heavy on utility. While we obviously use our own products and are thus loyal to them as we should be, our products don’t have the monopoly. A major factor in why we often direct potential customers to other dealers who we think will give them more of what “cuisines” they are looking for. That’s business however. For my soul, the brands we carry reflect what is important to us. These are the tools that weren’t around before and were forced to bring in ourselves because for our needs, nothing here could cut it quite as well. Thankfully this limits us too because in many instances, other tools are here already and as you’ll see we are just as hard core as clients ourselves as we are as dealers.
It seems however that I am now at a point where these objectives have been substantially met. The symptoms are all there. Going through reviews has gone from acute interest to keeping abreast of the audio market for our distribution company’s business interests. I uncharacteristically can’t bring myself to nitpick the Big Rig. When the needle drops, consider me transported. Yo! See you on the other side.
Gear wise, there is NOTHING in the here and now (except that TW Acustic AC-3) I even remotely lust for. NONE. The gear has overtaken the room. The tools are now under utilized in their present environment. Both have taken me to my personal limits in both skill and finances.
So what came in and rocked my world?
These guys.
This pair, named Sepang, like all VR-9 SE’s and an incoming VR-11 SE is a custom job unique to the Philippines. We are the only distributors that have the factory use V-Cap silver in oil teflons on all tweeters. This is an internal upgrade that costs a whole lot of dough. To illustrate there is a VR-4 SR out there that is FULLY V-capped. The price was in the vicinity of $40,000
. The owner? None other than V-Cap's Chris Venhaus (another Bozanian). While the Hovland SE’s are good and are in fact award winning versions, the RP specials are even better. You might save some money but if you are planning to order a VR-7, 9 or 11 from us we SERIOUSLY recommend the upgrade. We DO NOT mark up on this. This VR-9 SE’s finish is also a one off. It is finished in BMW Sepang Bronze to complement and reflect its Asian destination. Had there been a Manila Grey we would have done that but hey. Malaysia is as close as we could get. When the cabinets arrived from the fabricators in New England, Albert shot me an e-mail that it was simply stunning. I wasn’t as surprised. I stood in the hot humid parking lot of Manila Pen studying a stranger’s BMW 7-series for 30 minutes. So pleased was he that in lieu of a serial number both speakers were personally signed by him.
Ok already. So what do giants like these that actually have the same or greater physical volume than their 6ft tall competitors sound like? To be honest, Keith and I were very worried that the 9’s would overpower the Lair. The VR-9s are rated at 96dB sensitive at full boost and 94dB on factory settings. They go from 16Hz to 100kHz (+/- 3dB), all tweeters are adjustable as in the crossover point from the twin 8.5” Magnesium SEAS woofers to the 15” Diamond subwoofer powered by a 1000wpc IcePower amplifier built by Albert in such a way that the power amplifier in use serves as the input stage in a way that is different from the usual high level input implementation. Its subwoofer technology is the direct heir of Keith’s fabled DB-99 SE.
Surprisingly Sepang slotted into the system in the least fuss free manner as ANY of the gear that ever came before it. Again ,how do they sound?
Please wait for the next installment :lol2: