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Male voices came across somewhat less sonorous. Leonard Cohen’s gravely talksong of I’m Your Man thus gained in brokenness while Robbie Williams with Swing When You’re Winning shrunk some in the chest but perhaps won a bit in articulation. The longer I listened to the Magnum Dynalab, the truer I found its vocal work to wonder whether other amps don’t apply just a bit of makeup. This somewhat sober but microdynamically well balanced and very resolved character continued unbroken upward.

This had clear implications for the vocal band where intelligibility of the spoken word was concerned. Before I’d always had a hard time following how the six killers of Chicago’s "Cell Block Tango" explain the reasons for their imprisonment. Granted, some voices lost a bit of magic in turn. Holy Cole’s Romantically Helpless gave up a bit of romantic fervor but made up for it with articulation. Dee Dee Bridgewater’s J’ai deux amours lost more than she gained—she no longer seemed as confident about her two loves—whereas Lucinda Williams had rarely intoned World Without Tears this intensely. No tears, just a sober contrast of the desolate condition of this world, i.e. America’s. This album really got under my skin with the MD-301A.


Against the fact that Magnum Dynalab builds the world’s best tuner I of course took it for granted that an amp from the same company should exhibit a high degree of speech articulation. That’s what radio announcers are all about. But the MD-301A established other benchmarks too. Rarely did I notice as many nuances with piano attacks as with the Canadian. Yet this precision didn’t seem to diminish anything else. On both jazz piano (Hiromi’s Place to Be) and classical (Clifford Curzon with the London Symphony playing Brahms‘ 1st Concerto under George Szell, a brilliant 1962 Decca LP) the instrument appeared concisely and fully embodied in the room – perhaps not as massively as I’m used to but somehow more concrete.

The shift from modern CD to older vinyl reminded me of the studio monitor genes of my Geithain ME150. Rarely have I noticed the implications this clearly. Of course there always are changes in recording venue and sound engineer choices from album to album, even between different cuts. And music on LP sounds different than CD, network player or radio. These technical aspects are part and parcel of listening to recorded music. But they can remain more or less in the background. Extremely dry systems run the danger of even having the music veer into the same background. Systems with more pronounced personalities meanwhile may dominate over such differences to render them less than distinct and homogenized. For me B.M.C.’s Amp C1 represents the former kind, T.A.C.’s V-88 the latter. It sauces up each and every recording with added energy and dynamics. Here the MD-301A clearly belonged to the ruthless camp. Poor recordings had nowhere to hide but good ones revealed deep insights into not just the music but technical aspects of their productions. Yet I never got the sense that those became their own rationale. The focus remained on the musical content. Its container in its completeness is made up of both artistic and engineering aspects after all.

The treble reflected the same character. Rather than forward it seemed a bit mellow yet still managed fabulous detail recovery. The differences between various cymbals and hi-hats and how and with what they were struck came across clearly. I was surprised by how this subjectively gentle temperament coexisted with highly nuanced attack gradations on Cihirio Yamanaka’s Abyss. Soundstaging was much contingent on recording. Here too the amp revealed more about what was captured than its own personality. On "Interlude" from the Lisa Bassenge Trio’s A Sigh A Song there is much stillness interrupted by individual sounds and noises. And this pervasive stillness has one somehow hear the tension in the recording studio. Specific sonic events then appeared so suddenly and focused in my room that I could point fingers. This reminded me of fireworks which have you stare into the sky never knowing what’ll happen next – until the sky lights up again. That was superb!