| It's strange that for about five years after my son turned one, I was forced to turn away from music. The house, which was normally so quiet became so noisy that in simple self defense I turned off the stereo in an effort to minimize the cacophony. This last year my son has become quiet and contemplative and plaintive in the hours he spends making art and reading. He's not a classical or jazz junkie the way I am, but he does somehow soak it in. He uses music as background to his thoughts - which is not true musical involvement but it is a start - I think a good one for an otherwise occupied seven year old.
Probably like you, I have these wild musical memories - In 1959, Disney's Sleeping Beauty came out. I was six, and I remember my mother putting on Tschaichovsky'sSleeping Beauty and waltzing around the house - I was ballet music hooked from that point on - I wanted to wear elegant clothes like the prince and fall in love with my own sleeping beauty. My parents took me to Birdland when I was eleven or so and I heard live jazz music in a smoky bar (Maynard Furgeson playing cool trumpet) and I was hooked on all things cool and intellectual. I wanted iconoclastic music that flies in the face of the masses. Later my bud and I in high school snuck into the Village Vanguard at night to hear guys like Herbie Hancock and Charles Mingus. We were obviously underaged but the wait staff kept pumping us to buy more drinks which I didn't want and could barely get down without throwing it back up.
Almost all of the ballet companies I later danced with at least occasionally performed to live music. The live sound is so startling, soul satisfying and exciting when compared to even the nicest canned music played through opera house sound systems. The sound of a live orchestra is almost un-duplicatable no matter what electronics you're lucky enough to afford. It's the intimacy of real live music. You hear the stuff the violinist doesn't want you to hear - you can't miss it - there are the uneven tremolos because the violinist can not possibly produce the same exact movement with his finger on the finger board many times a second. You can hear his bow bounce off the strings when he didn't or even when he did intend it. There's the slight fizzle of spit on the clarinetest's reed and the flash of hurried page turning when an entire section attempts it at the same moment. The pianist's foot on the pedal, the burble in brass section which I think is really the sound of their lips bouncing against the inside of the mouthpiece - the outrageous sound of the tympani coming at your ears like a fast pitched baseball straight for your head. I want the luxury of that in my home - anytime I can fit it into my schedule and anytime it feels right. So far even with the most carefully selected equipment I haven't got that real sound. Believe me, I've done my homework - a highly modified cd player from the Netherlands - A Japanese minimalist hybrid amplifier with military tubes in the pre-amp section and tank like construction in the output - highly rated British speakers sitting on heavy sand filled stands spiked to the floor and fed with handmade speaker wires. Everything a recognized bargain in the audiophile world - everything set up the best that attractive livingroom standards will allow. It's all pretty good on a good day - when my mood is just right, the stars align and the humidity or whatever other strange variables influence electronic sound production allow. But ........ I have a new toy .... my Chinese made tiny tubed headphone amp. It looks special and it is. Its four delicate exposed glowing tubes remind me that an emotional musical performance reproduced in one's home is a tenuous balance of science and art. I listen to my Little Dot Mark IV amp through my German made Beyerdynamic DT 880 250 ohm headphones, and I listen any time I want. It's great when everyone else is sleeping and I wake up early before they do, or when I go to sleep after they do, and I have an hour of absolute quiet time which I might have previously used to watch mindless TV.
The sound is so personal and so captivating. It's a real treat for a budget conscious music lover who knows that it's hard to get to that special place of musical involvement in your car or even in your livingroom if a sound engineer hasn't approved every detail of furniture selection, window treatments, positioning and room dimensions. The price of admission to a beautiful musical experience with quality headphones and a well designed amp is small by some standards. In my case my headphone rig is well under a grand with everything included. The headphone set-up is in my bedroom and I can listen to music while in bed - what unashamed luxury! As much fun as it is to dress up in a suit and sit with others in an opera house with my wife, a good headphone rig is irreplaceable.
I am especially sensitive to any overemphasis or fat-bloatiness in the bass and with the Beyer/Little Dot MK 4 combination I get very little of this indeed. The tubes give a general smoothness that is unmistakably tube based but the amp never seems weak or slow or undetailed. As many have noted the mids are the most charming quality with tubes in general and the MK 4 is just like that but not overly so. The upper range is good up to a point, but I'm somehow convinced that any problem lies more in the source (my consumer level cd player that I have in the bedroom). I have not yet tried my Ah Njoe Tjoeb cdp with the Little Dot and from the experiments I have performed in my livingroom set-up, the Njoe Tjoeb eliminates much but not all of that digital shrillness. This is an characteristic problem with all CD's, so the Njoe Tjoeb can hardly be completely to blame. The Little Dot's dynamics are astounding - ranging from soft and underfoot to crashing or shocking in a milisecond - Astounding! The human voice becomes - sensual - naked. The orchestral instruments are laid bare for my examination and deep appreciation. The overall effect is wonderful ... what more can one expect from a bargain priced tool like the MK4?
Garth Libre in Miami Florida
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