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same instrumental family were hard to
tell apart. The clarinet and the other
woodwinds were gorgeous, with the
bassoon especially delightful. The staccato
passage on the cello was quick and
dynamic, truly a hallmark of these loudspeakers.
The castanets don’t play loud,
but we could hear all the way to the back
of the hall, and we noted how “right”
they seemed. The sound was deep and
spacious, the rhythm impeccable.
“But the top end is a bit too sharp,”
said Albert, who favors a sound that is
more mellow.
There was some grumbling after the
next recording, Amanda McBroom’s
Gossamer from the West of Oz recording.
Reine and Albert found McBroom’s
voice rougher and cooler, with esses that
were much too pronounced. They liked
the percussion effects, but found the
harmonica greatly altered.
Gerard wasn’t so sure. “Her voice
sounds rather ethereal now, but it’s
attractive, and it could even be accurate.”
He found the sibilance acceptable,
except for the leading “S” on “Summer’s
coming and I’m still here.” He praised
the piano and the guitar.
The de Capos did very much better
on what should have been a more challenging
recording, the Requiem Æternam
from John Rutter’s Requiem (Reference
Recordings RR-57). The surprisingly
clear sound communicated the strong
emotional tension at the start of the
section. The plentiful top end was well
balanced by the solid bottom end. The
organ didn’t quite have the sheer weight
rendered with the push-pull woofers of
our older 3a speakers, but it maintained
good amplitude. “When the organ
rose in volume I felt chills,” confessed
Reine.
The male voices were especially
limpid, never running together. The
women sounded clear as well. We could
hear the text clearly, as we struggled to
recall our Latin.
These Reference 3a speakers
sounded superb on our direct-cut
Chopin piano piece (the Scherzo No. 2
on RCA RDCE-7). The microphones
were placed quite close to Edward Auer’s
Steinway, and the leading edges of the
louder notes can give a speaker serious
trouble. They didn’t. The trade-off
between transient response and dynamics
has been well handled in this speaker.
Large woofers can play louder than small
ones, of course, but they also have more
moving mass and therefore more inertia.
The carbon woofers of these speakers
are at once large and light, following
the transients with a surprising lightness
of foot. The detail was awesome in
its richness. The reverberation was easy
to follow at the end of the each phrase.
Indeed, we heard perhaps more
than Auer would have liked us to. “The
chromatics are superb,” said Reine,
herself a pianist, “but when he muffs a
note you really notice that too.” Indeed,
we could hear for the first time that the
piano could have used a session with a
Steinway mechanic.
The de Capos breezed through
Secret of the Andes (from a discontinued
Nautilus recording, also available on
JVC’s Audiophile). The Andean harp at
the start and end was delightful. The
complex percussion came out just as it
should with impact and strong rhythm.
“The instruments have a palpable presence,”
said Albert. “This goes beyond
mere detail.” The piano was gorgeous,
and the kick drum was powerful.
We also noticed what we believe is
a corrugated gourd that is scraped just
once in the opening percussion sequence.
It’s the sort of sound that can make you
jump even if you’re expecting it. Its
impact was another clear indication of
the energy with which the Reference 3a
goes about its work. Of course, a “slow”
speaker could have spoiled the effect.
We ended with a remarkable
recording which made waves when it
was released exactly 30 years ago, Pink
Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (Harvest
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