HVT’s John van der Veer, audio journalist and musician, offered our Amsterdam dealer Rick Oldersom of Hifi Solutions a visit and was blown away when listening to the MU1. He wrote a very entertaining review for his magazine about this experience. Please find some translated excerpts below.
“(…) Rick can’t resist the temptation to whisper me some of the technicalities. I would like another delicious cappuccino, so I chat a bit limp. But meanwhile the miracle is unmistakably unfolding in my ears. We start with a live version of Misha Alperin’s Heavy Hour. “Note the percussion.” Rick refers to the timpani, which are played à la Baroque and Mozart with a wooden stick without felt. Compared to the alternative streamer, you hear more speed at the onset, so that all instruments are rendered much clearer in 3D. This not only has consequences for the clarity of the sound image. Both the added reverberation and the space in which “Heavy Hour” is recorded are more prominent. The same goes for a live version of Miles Davis’ “Jean Pierre”, by Marcus Miller plus band. All the attacks of the instruments are suddenly there with a “live” feeling. Another live recording: George Michael performs a brilliant version of Sting’s “Roxane” on his album Symphonica. The same picture here too. An orchestral, spatial performance in which George Michael seems to have returned from his premature death, as if it had all been a mistake.
(…)
We come to another painful point. I have never heard the sound image of a strictly digital affair so naturally. As analog as digital can be. I have the necessary reserves with vinyl, so I am not very sensitive to that, but Rick is a turntable-adept, and also in the happy possession of a strictly analog chain at the highest level. And he also agrees that this really goes one step further.
The conclusion must be that the men from Eindhoven have taken an important step towards optimal digital processing, to put it simply. (…) An important breakthrough, for me especially in a musical sense. I am very happy with this. My great admiration!”
“An important breakthrough, for me especially in a musical sense.”
Johan van der Veer, HVT
