On Wednesday 12/22/21, I visited my local San Diego home audio dealer, Stereo Unlimited from 2:48
pm to 3:32 pm. The owner Bruce Heimburg took me into one of their listening rooms and played a Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss vinyl track "I'll Fly Away." The room came alive with the sound of their voices, the mandolin and guitar. I told Bruce that it sounded like the singers were on a stage in between the two speakers. The center image of their voices between the two speakers was so large and so real sounding, I was in shock for awhile. Why would I be blown away by a center image between two speakers? We are talking two channels, guys, a 2.0 system. This is from a guy who has a 4.4.4 system that loves to listen to both movies and music in multichannel stereo mode from my Marantz AV8805 and has thought for the past two years that my system would blow away some of these audiophiles who think 2-channel stereo is all that. Let me tell you that tonight I had the sensation of listening to live music like I never have with my 4 Goldenear Triton Ones, GE Reference center speaker and 4 GE Invisa HTR-7000s. My system sounds great guys. Don't get me wrong. But I've never thought I was listening to live music, or a live singer was in my living room, or an actual actor was on stage in front of me. This was a completely different experience altogether.
When I turned my system on that night and played the same Gillian Welch/Alison Krauss track, the Dave Brubeck Take Five track Bruce also played and the other tracks from my Qobuz playlist, I tried playing them in 2-channel mode by pressing the Pure mode button on my Marantz remote. Previously when I listened in this mode, the soundstage collapsed compared to using Multichannel Stereo mode. But then I realized the reason was that I had to turn up the volume, almost 10 numbers, from the 20s in multichannel mode to the 30s or 40s in 2-channel mode. Only after I turned up the volume did the center image between the front left and right speakers appear and engage. At first I thought maybe I could come close to what I heard tonight. But the more I listened the more I knew I was listening to reproduced music, reproduced very well mind you, but nothing like the real thing type experience I had with the Vandersteens and VTL system.
Stereo Unlimited's System:
Vandersteen Quatro Wood CT
VTL 185 tube monoblock amps
VTL 6.5 tube preamp
Shunyata Everest power conditioner
Shunyata power cords to Everest power conditioner
Nordost Valhalla speaker cables
I didn't get the make or model of the turntable and cartridge used.
Vinyl recordings played back were
1. "I'll Fly Away" from the O'Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack LP.
2. Dave Brubeck Take 5
From the late 1950s