There are very few live recordings that I like, especially those that are from the past handful of decades, and worse, those that are in the rock or contemporary jazz genres.

Why is that?  I find that the majority I’ve listened to fall into four categories:  1) a reproduction of the album versions; 2) the same album versions but sped up; 3) endless noodling (jazz groups take note, please); 4) embarrassing self-indulgence, and 5) reliving the past.  What’s sad is that this epiphany of mine took hold the day I got Supertramp’s Paris.  At the time I was a fan of the group, and this was the anxiously awaited new album.  After about two sides, I was shaking my head at the over-indulgent rushed takes on many of my favorite songs.  I played it twice and haven’t touched it since.  Likewise, I have been told for years of how Herbie Mann’s Village Gate album was some classic live performance.  After 10 minutes of noodling flute, I nearly flung the useless 180 gram pressing across the room in frustration; $28, wasted.

Since then, I’ve tried to listen to and like some other live recordings, but rarely have found any to be worth a repeat listen.  In the following weeks, I will be spotlighting the handful of live recordings which I do find to be of merit.  And I will kick that off with one of the good ones.  And the first in a series of lessons: what makes a good live recording.

Lesson One: use a live recording to debut new songs.

After Yellowjackets recorded their final album for Warner Brothers, Club Nocturne, they had taken a bit of a breather with recording.  They came back in a big way with Mint Jam, which featured only a couple of re-recordings of tunes they had done on previous albums–in this case, they featured new arrangements.  The rest were all new compositions, and the enthusiastic crowd fuels their energy level.  This two-CD set was no haphazard affair either: the Jackets had just come off the road from a tour, and had spent the previous two weeks preparing for the set of gigs at The Mint where these tracks were recorded.

Other recordings I like that debut new material are the Herb Alpert/Hugh Masekela Main Event Live album, and Joe Jackson’s sort-of-live album Big World, which was successfully recorded in front of an audience for spontaneity but with the audience given instructions not to applaud until the last note had died out.  And who can overlook Bill Evans and his sublime classic recordings At The Village Vanguard and Waltz For Debby.

For the past dozen years or so, I have been using a Hafler DH-110 preamp in my system.  Functionally it does not offer much that my older DH-101 doesn’t, other than an extra set of outputs.

Along with my other upgrades, I decided to swap the DH-101 back into my system.  Having read some accounts online, many audiophiles still remain impressed at how good of a preamp the DH-101 is.  I built this DH-101 back in  1982, and the leap forward in sound was amazing at the time.  Having swapped it back into my main system, I am pleased to say it sounds as good as ever.

One comment about the DH-101 is that the background is very “black”.  This means that the music comes out of virtually total silence, adding no noise to the music at all.  Granted, I can crank the volume all the way up and hear some sort of hiss or hum, but my power amp would turn itself off at half the volume setting.  Even after years of non-use, the “blackness” is still there, even though the capacitors are over 30 years old now.  Upgrading the caps might be an option in the near future, to freshen up the preamp to original specs.  But until then, it is sounding awfully good.

In comparison, I now feel that the DH-110 sounded different–perhaps a bit softer or even duller.  The DH-101 seems more precise, more immediate, but not exactly brighter per se.  A buddy of mine way back then commented about my then-new DH-101:  “Damn, that bass is tight!”  We were spinning the Earth Wind & Fire Raise album at the time, and the bass was just totally on cue, whereas the hacked integrated amp I previously used just sort of slurred the sound all together.  The DH-101 gives me more inner detail and to me, seems to breathe a bit better through the midrange than the DH-110.

One annoyance of the DH-110 is the detented volume control.  This is not a stepped attenuator, but just an extra wiper on the potentiometer that makes the control operate in steps as opposed to a smooth transition.  The problem, though, comes with newer components that have such a high output that it is nearly impossible to get a low volume that you are comfortable with since the correct volume is between steps on the volume control.

The rotary switches were also becoming more corroded in the DH-110.  I had done a full strip-down a couple of years ago and sprayed all of the switches with deoxidizer, but the frequent channel dropouts in recent months drove me to finally retire it for the time being.  I would probably press it into service in a second system at some future point, perhaps even replace the capacitors and see if the sound improved.

The DH-101 has been a nice fit with the tube buffer and the change in speakers. It is much like having a familiar old friend back in the system.  I have toyed with building a tube buffer stage into the preamp, as it would just fit the space provided.  That would really take it over the top!  I would, of course, offer an option to bypass the buffer if needed.

One thing that disturbs me is the poor condition of the RCA jacks on the back.  But, I have a cure for that, and it may be something I can market via this website: an upgrade that many have hoped for, but few (if any) have attempted.

There is one more system upgrade coming…stay tuned!

Shortly after receiving the Musical Fidelity X10-D tube buffer, I felt I needed to upgrade the other components.

When the tube buffer arrived, I took the opportunity to also swap out my speakers.  In an earlier post, I extolled the virtues of the Grafyx SP-10 loudspeakers I own.  I had previously swapped out, then sold, the Boston Acoustics A-150 speakers I had paid only $30 for.  I enjoyed them, but felt the bass was a bit constricted due to having refoamed the woofers.  The mids were also not as smooth as I would have liked.

The Grafyx SP-10W pair of speakers I bought circa 1982 have identical componentry to the SP-10 pair I bought back in 1978.  The cabinets differ: the older pair uses vinyl veneer, whereas the “W” designation put nicer moldings on the front and covered the whole thing in genuine walnut veneer.  The emblems were upgraded to cast bronze, and the grille cloth was black as opposed to what I’d call a dark chocolate brown.  I had rewired them with far better OFC wiring.  They look nice!

Yet, I always felt they were not as good sounding as the original pair I bought.  It was time to swap the pair, and see if I really noticed a difference again…and indeed, I have.

The tube buffer has its own charm (the full write-up is in Part 1 of this series), but this pair of speakers is, to me, much more musical.  It is like the tube buffer: the change is subtle, but noticeable.

I still feel the mylar dome tweeters could use some minor improvement.  In fact, there are some cloth dome versions still out there in the wild.  Since the voice coil unit can be removed and swapped between magnets, I may locate a pair of the cloth dome tweeters and try them in this system.

The bass might be a little smoother in this older pair, yet it still extends quite deeply.  That is the charm of the SP-10 when I first heard it against the Polk Audio Monitor 7: the bass just extended much deeper.  In the right room, you can get clean response down to 32Hz (a low “C” on the scale).

So, what are the differences that make me still prefer this older pair?

First of all, the midrange.  It always seemed as though the newer SP-10W set was a little brighter and had a little more boom to the bass; turns out that what I’m really hearing is a fuller midrange in this older pair.  And it really hits a nice sweet spot!  These are the pair that the old $ensible $ound magazine raved about.  What I notice is a nice, full sound to the system–it just seems to meld together nicely.  In the newer pair, it now seems like the sound was disjointed–highs, lows, but no full midrange that really glued the whole spectrum together.

In addition to that midrange, it seems as though this pair images the soundstage better.  Perhaps the enhanced midrange helps pinpoint the locations of the individual instruments.  Or, it could be the cabinet construction.  The speakers likely have the same or very similar internal dimensions, but the SP-10W is about 1-1/2″ wider across the front, while the cabinet depth may be about 1 inch less at the most.  Both pairs have the baffle board on which the tweeter is mounted, which places it flush with the speaker grille and eliminates diffraction.  The edges of the older pair are slightly beveled, where the SP-10W were squared off.  The tweeters are identical.

And speaking of the imaging, I still do notice some of the “vertical blind” effect if moving from side to side.  I blame this on the tweeter’s plastic enclosure–it is concave, with a disc and six supports over the top of it.  While I do not want to remove the protection this provides, I often wonder what a similar dome tweeter would do for the sound, or even a ring radiator.  Yet, changing the tweeter unit would alter the sound of the whole system, and would require crossover modifications.  More on that shortly.

The sound, in tandem with the tube buffer, really blooms.  I hear a fullness beyond the range of the left and right speakers, yet the focus of centered voices and instruments appear dead center–the proverbial “phantom center channel” sounds more solid than I ever remember hearing it.  Voices, especially those of alto-range female vocalists, sound superb, as do acoustic instruments like the piano, which seem to hover in space now.

I have often wondered why these two sets of speakers could sound so different.  Yes it’s subtle, but over time I start being fatigued by the newer SP-10W pair than I do the originals.  One issue I had with my older pair is that the tweeters gave out.  These shipped from Grafyx with the Philips AD-0162T8 tweeters.  Madisound Speaker Components used to stock these replacements for about $12 each, and I ended up purchasing the AD-1624T8, which was the identical tweeter but with ferrofluid cooling in the voice coil gap.  I wish now I had purchased the AD-0163T8 soft domes instead, or in addition, so I could experiment.

But why should the tweeters matter?  I have two theories regarding the change in sonics.  First, I thought that Grafyx may have wanted to add a little more “sizzle” to the line by goosing the lower and upper ranges by reducing the midrange slightly.  However, one other idea came to mind much earlier: the tweeter crosses over at a somewhat lower frequency, and I suspected that Grafyx may have changed the crossover point to reduce warranty claims or give the tweeters a longer life.  It’s a moot point at this stage, 30 years later, but those are the only two reasons I can think of for re-voicing the system.  I may at some point rebuild the crossovers with fresh capacitors, but I will also take note between the two systems to see if any of the values were changed on the crossover boards.

Until I get the Sequel IIs in the listening room, though, these older SP-10s are doing nicely.  I can’t help but recommend them highly, especially for the money.  You end up with a cabinet about the size of the Large Advent, but without the many downfalls of that speaker (including the Advents’ finicky “fried egg” tweeter, and the woofers with the fragile voice coils that are pretty much goners if they even think about bottoming out).  And these image far better than my Small Advents ever could.

I was getting a bit impatient with the sound of my main audio rig: it’s bright, it’s not much fun to listen to, it just wears on me. Digital in particular: excruciating.  Even the best mastered CDs out there just left me gritting my teeth.

For what it’s worth, the components of my system include the Pioneer DV-45A as a digital source, the Hafler DH-110 preamp fed into a Carver M-500t power amp, a pair of Grafyx SP-10W speakers, and a good vinyl rig.  There are other components, but these play an important role in the system tweaking I have done.

Seeing that each piece seemed to play a small but important part, I am going to list them separately in future posts.  So far, four changes have made an improvement that is noteworthy, even on subtle levels.