28 Sep 2014: Apostolos Raptis

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Monthly Meeting ACA at Apostolos Raptis

The second time in a few years we have visited this most interesting ACA member and I can even say that while driving to his home and the meeting I was very happy to be hearing his lovely system. A mix of American amplification and an English speaker of old school musical therapy.

I remembered his heavy and three dimensional piano strings or for that matter any strings played on his system and enjoyed the fact that my ears were not pierced from the highs. Actually for that I am grateful. What was apparently missing though was the piano itself in this equation. The music was there, but the depth of the piano ITSELF was not. I had no idea why.

The fact that there was no saturation from mids to highs with a very well accented boot on the bass drum was reminiscent of the old school amps which I love so dearly.

The Listening...

Louis Armstrong played large, but not as large as other horn systems, such as a Tannoy or Klipsch horn, but I rather liked it this way since it gave a realistic image to the voice rather than making Louis come out with a very large mandible.

The 1957 reproduction was elegant and sweet to the ears although I cannot call it what others call the “future” of high end sound. A three dimensional razor for every given instrument and vocals as heavy as a bottle of Johnny Blue.

Decadence was up next and voice and music was well presented although the recording was exaggerating the song itself. The sweetness and magical in nature lows were caressing my ears as the bongo and the monkeys, and birds were so very much alive and very three dimensional.

Apostolo’s told us of a few upgrades he did on the machines themselves, and although he had virtually changed nothing the upgrades and changing of the bulbs and outputs made a distinct difference here tonight. The fact that the music was outside the speaker and that the rather massive entity of the B&W’s were vanished from the room made it possible to hear and SEE clear differences than before.

Next was a deep seduction, only created by the enormous talent these speakers and system have to employ everyone’s imagination while listening to their soul through the trumpet solo. David Sketches of Spain sounded simply heart-warming indeed. Its tempo light in the air while you fell into a trance of the past being played right in front of you.

Opus 3. 7919 Solera, Flamenco by Clear audio was on next but I felt it was terribly engineered as a recording albeit being a test album on vocals. The overwhelming ting of the castanets were annoying at times and I fear this album sincerely gave the system indigestion. If not to it, it did to me.

Johnny Hodges and his orchestra ‘’ i didn’t know about you” was a trip through heaven through the trombone and trumpet accompaniment. I simply adored it.