Although the trumpet and each piano shared the same recording space, the miking and mixing resulted in a discontinuous stitching-together of two distinct ambient environments. The best example of this I heard was on Clark Terry's One On One (Chesky JD198), where he duets with a Who's Who of jazz pianists. Combined with the absence of any discernible texture, their superb resolution allowed the Classés to paint a startlingly realistic portrait of the recording space. The CAM 350s' resolution of detail was also staggeringly good, as was their retrieval of ambience cues. Where images had run into and over one another before, they now had width, height, and depth, and were distinctly bounded on all sides. In addition to the reduction in texture, there was an equally significant improvement in edge definition. Western Wall hadn't magically become an audiophile disc, but what had before been an amorphous, slightly viscous blend of sounds and images opened up into a distinct, three-dimensional soundstage. With the Classés, I was hearing much farther into the soundstage, and could really get a sense of the space between and behind the images. There was now space between and around the images that added depth to the soundstage and dimensionality to the images themselves.
I was ready to conclude that the 3.6/R reduces the characteristic Magnepan texture to a new low without eliminating it, and move on.īut with the Classés, by 10 seconds into the first cut on the first CD I played-Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris's cover of "For a Dancer," from their Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions (Asylum 62408-2)-it was obvious that that texture was gone. There was a slight softening of transients and a slight obscuring of the finest detail that combined to insert what must have been an ephemeral but still frustratingly tangible barrier between the music and me.
I'd been cycling through a series of amps and could change the system's sound, but never eliminate the last, faint remnant of a slightly liquid, opaque texture. So much so, in fact, that the Classés' installation stopped my Magnepan review dead in its tracks. (Hey-it's my dream, okay?) But now that I'd gotten what I'd wished for-my "really good, big solid-state amp"-did reality match my dreams? Transient edges would become clean and precise, and the Maggies would snap with a quickness and life more akin to a topflight dynamic speaker, or perhaps even an electrostatic panel. Subtle tonal and dynamic shadings would emerge as well, resulting in a rich, complex texture and articulate density. The tiniest details would be revealed, imbuing images with a vibrant life and body.
In my musings, that last little bit of gauze that my Maggies could never seem to shake would simply vaporize. Over the years, in daydreams in which I'd mentally paired Magnepans with my dream amp, the most dramatic effects were significant improvements in transparency, dynamics, and the resolution of low-level detail. The CAM 350s arrived midway through my August 2000 review of the Magnepan MG3.6/R loudspeaker and immediately took up residence in my main system.