by Peer Gynt » Mon Jul 09, 2018 4:00 pm
I brought my own records for the audition. I’d listened to 16 sides yesterday to have a fresh sense of each, and this morning I narrowed it down to 5 sides, on 5 different disks, for the audition.
They were Nora Jones Come Away with Me side 1. This is a Japanese pressing and very well recorded and reproduced, except on the title cut where you can hear some warbling of piano and stringed instruments. The vocal track is stable. The tracks that warble warble with subtlety. For whatever reason, a drive that isn’t perfectly stable exacerbates this problem.
A 1970 Deutsche Gramophone recording of the the Boston Symphany Chamber Orchestra performing works by Claude Debussy, side 2. Beautiful strings, piano and flute if the reproduction system is up to it. Excellent sound stage.
1975 Pablo recording of Oscar Peterson and Clark Tracy, side 2. Oscar does his usual mumbling in the background. His fingers FLY. And Clark plays that trumpet as though he were chasing Miles out of town. Great imaging. A real tracking test.
1980ish Spyro Gyra Stories without Words, side two. The percussion and sax are exciting and challenging on this and, although if you’ve heard one Spyro Gyra album, you’ve heard them all, this is one of two or three of their very best. Very well miked and very well recorded and pressed.
And last, Sara MacLaughlin’s Wonderland. How better to end an audition than with sugar plums dancing in your head? If you like Christmas music, and female vocals, buy this album. It’s incredibly airy, open, complex. Yet honest and simple.
So .... the 515 did not “blow me away.” Nothing does anymore. But it was clearly a very credible, well working table with some nice features, modest weight, and good looks.
It’s the first TT ever badged as a Levinson. And it’s in honor of their 45th birthday. The Levinson story is sad, but you will be spared from my repeating it. On the bright side, they’re focused on no holds barred luxery products, and my first impression is good. Some of you may have ties to the industry, so you know that Harman (MLs parent) has a reputation for really good margins. That nearly always translates into wiggle room at retail.
It was not hard to decide to buy it. So far, so good.