All About That Brass
Final music style impression on the NRA. I had a good A/B comparison between GK10, NRA, DQ6, and CCA's C12 this afternoon on Canadian Brass' recording of Brahms. I found some tips that cleaned up my GK10
a lot ... it still isn't quite enough to pull the Geek from a veiled treble presentation to my ears, but it helped immensely and made this pair acceptable without EQ for a lot of pieces, and solved most of the problems with midbass bleed (it's now very minor). My BA10 are currently resting in their box and I couldn't be bothered with wrestling the ZAX away from my spouse. Below impressions are without any EQ using my desktop dac/amp, which is just a big fuller sounding and puts out more juice than my BTR3K.
Background: I am a former low brass player (trombone, mostly, some baritone). When I hear these pieces above I'm listening for tonguing technique (the musical equivalent to articulating words): slurring (no tonguing between note changes), lagato (smooth note transitions - very light tonguing), and staccatos (hard note transitions, hard tongue technique), and their tone control while holding on and sustaining those longer notes. You can hear very accurate and efficient breathing in these pieces as well. I have also seen the Canadian Brass live a few times, as well as Dallas Brass, and more orchestra concerts and chamber music recitals than I dare to count. The listening impressions here are primarily about timbre and overall tonal balance of the ensemble (again, without any EQ). Texture refers to chords and the interaction of the different voices in the piece. My use of the word has nothing to do with transient response within a single voice (instrument).
Main Take-away: to my ears, the NRA has a better combination of tonal balance, timbre, and more coherency in multi-voiced texture in its presentation than any of my other chifi sets. It is better even than my cheapo AKG K52. It is about the same in terms of tonal balance on my 840s, but the timbre on those is a bit "dry" in their presentation.
C12: just a bit thin in tonal balance in the the upper mids, owing to the gentle vee shape of this set. Timbre is
good on all of the voices, but the trombone and french horns are a bit subdued because of those recessed upper mids. Overall presentation more crisp than the NRA, owing to its 5 BAs stuffed into them plus the well behaved 7mm DD. Its fair to say these have a drier and more analytical sound compared to the NRA. As a result, the timbre, while good, is not
great. Transients and micro details are better than any of my other sets, excepting the BA10.
DQ6 has the brilliance (in spades!) that gives timbre of the higher voices that fun, brassy edge, but it is missing some frequencies down in the lower mids affecting its tonal balance. has less a bit less instrument separation and a bit less texture than the NRA. It's sharper high treble also sucks some of the tonal balance out of the baritone, french horn - kind of like the C12, but for completely different reasons. Transients are fine for being a 3-way dynamic. It's not especially fast, but it's adequate. Like the GK10 below, you could say it's more "musical".
vs. NRA: all in all, both the DQ6 and the C12 have great texture across the spectrum and are delightfully resonant when certain notes intersect just-so. The NRA edges both sets out on tonal balance and sounds more coherent even than the DQ6 to my ears. That could very well be due to the fact that the big 10mm triple magnet dynamic of the NRA is doing the vast majority of the work.
The
GK10 rivals NRA in timbre in the lows and the mids, and is maybe
juuuust a bit sweeter from it's budget piezo units. Unfortunately the warmer tuning veils the lead trumpeter, and transitions on lively segments still seem to have some fuzz on them. The GK10 lacks the crispiness in the transients that the NRA has, and there's not as much of the brass sparkle that my ears are expecting on the brilliance side of the frequency response of the highest voiced instruments. NRA delivers on both. Because of the veiled treble, the GK10's texture is also much diminished vis-a-vis the NRA, DQ6, or C12. The individual voices of the instruments tend to blends in together, just starting to slip down the slope of monotony. If "lyrical" or "musical" is a euphemism for being slightly muddy and less analytical, then sure, GK10 is "musical". Slow things down to lounge music pace ... and I'll still probably go for the GK10 as it has an edge on timbre. But, if I'm honest, I wouldn't really miss these too much if they were gone.
Summary: These minor differences on isolated pieces like ensemble and chamber music has a lot to explain with preferences in presentation in pop and rock music, which are compounded and easier to pick out with the insane array of studio and mixing techniques and artificial instruments. Those who like a neutral and more critical listening profile are going to prefer the NRA. Those who like a warm-neutral or U shaped audiophile type tuning are going to gravitate toward the GK10 (assuming it's firing on all cylinders for the listener). The GK10 has a unique presentation and profile that's difficult to explain. Folks who want vee shape fun are going to want the ZAX, BA10, or DQ6.
Honest to deities here, right now I would be fine with boxing up the rest of my chifi pairs and offering to someone as a starter kit and keeping the NRA.
... of course I would never be so
daft as to do such a thing, but if I did, I could live with it.
thanks for reading, keep the reviews coming!
. I hear a few dB less too on the hand off @ 3:18, but if you look closely you can see that the lead sax on the right is mic'd directly on his horn. He's also probably a little hotter at the mixing board. The rest of the lineup are playing into floor mics, so I think the volume change is accurate!
, but the amount has been refunded by them. I'll wait for some Zex impressions, may be thats the train I want to catch.
