This page is in part supported by the sponsors whose banners are displayed below

Pure listening was the object of the live version of the Doelen Session CD. The quartet of Frits Landesbergen on vibes, Frans van Geest on bass, Martijn van Iterson on guitar and Dré Pallemaerts on drums played mostly Frits compositions focused on the vibraphone. Frits is the co-designer of the VanderplasBaileo 4-octave instrument whose range spans C3 to C7. While the CD at home proved to be a real test record, the live performance was no less for the venue. With the very wide frequency range of the vibes -- C3 is middle C, C7 the highest note of a piano -- and powerful mallets energizing the metal bars, a vibraphone can be torturous for an audio system.


High-impact transients are followed by a sustained pure note with vibrato added by means of fans spinning over the resonator tubes before they decay or are deliberately dampened. A premium system won't devolve the highest notes as sounding like a boom box. Listening to a vibraphone is one thing of course but actually seeing a gifted musician handling four mallets at once is downright wonderful. The songs all leaned heavily into the Blues and live performers added even more grunge to the sound. Joining us, many show attendees enjoyed a welcome distraction from the hifi hardware and bathed in the warmth of some real music.

In the presentation room meanwhile, it had become time for Franck Tchang. Again it was filled to capacity and then some [below]. With the still controversial subject of Franck's resonators on everyone's mind, some 15% of the initial attendees expectedly left within the first few minutes but the bulk remained to hang on Franck's lips trying to grasp the Why and How of his theories and solutions. As with many things, seeing -- or hearing here -- is believing.

Inviting attendees of his presentation to his own room afterwards for a listening demonstration, Franck moved like a monkey through the room as he put it, taking off a mini sugar cube in one corner or lowering a resonator elsewhere after climbing a chair, his demonstration lasted for more than an hour. In the end quite a few prior skeptics had been incapacitated to deny the workings of the devices while the more open-minded listeners had big smiles on their faces. [It's too bad Ted Denney couldn't attend. Many of our readers have expressed curiosity about how his resonator system differs from the originals we've reviewed extensively. This show would have presented the ideal circumstance, with the creator of either system handling, then explaining his own installation. The number of showgoers interested in the subject is obvious from the photos. Perhaps next year - Ed.]

Next up was a sound demonstration of the Crystal Cable Arabesque. Edwin and Gabi van der Kley presented their third loudspeaker which benefited from the heavy use of Comsol software. This advanced N.A.S.A. level program can simulate the sonic outcomes of the complex interactions between materials, dimensions, geometries and other variables which became a prerequisite to building the glass speakers Gabi had envisioned as an extension of her established Crystal Cable aesthetic. Production proved more challenging than expected. In the end the fluidly curved arabesque form -- one half of a Yin Yang sign -- had to be built up from 11 glass facets cut and assembled by the German glass masters of Finiglass. The plinth is a massive block that houses the network electronics of this 2-way 4-driver system. In the glass enclosure proper, only two pieces of damping material are needed, a bigger one at the bottom and one small strip at the tip of the teardrop shape. The Comsol software determined that a tiny slit was necessary to vent the enclosure but that slit required a special geometry to prevent noise.

The ScanSpeak Illuminator mid/woofers are extremely fast. Edwin cited 1ms start/stop cycles to match the lighter-than-air aluminum foil in the Raal ribbon tweeters. The Siltech/Crystal speaker project used Bryston from Canada to supply their electronics.

During our listening session -- with tracks from Renaud García Fons to Vivaldi to numbers from Gabi's sampler -- Edwin let his (and more of our) hair down with David Crosby's "Almost cut my hair" played back at live levels. In the big room, the Arabesque really performed amazingly. Coherence and speed galore proved that a scientific approach can produce a musical product. And this ends our picks of the Doelen Lente spring show for this year. The amount of enthusiast attendees clearly warrants a continuation of this cozy and diverse musical event. Cheers to that!