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I had the good pleasure of listening to Pearl Django in a small venue a couple of nights ago when they stopped into town. Michael Gray on violin, Neil Andersson on guitar, Rick Leppanen on double bass and Ryan Hoffman on guitar represented Pearl Django that night and they were playing at an astonishingly high level of musicianship that was truly inspiring. They were repeatedly interrupted by wild applause from an enthusiastic audience all night long. I sat in the back third of the small hall where the sound was utterly natural and enjoyable and the musical numbers they chose to play were superb.

After getting home from the concert, I dropped the Pearl Django Swing 48 CD [Modern Hot Records] into my little Sony PS1 SCPH-1001 and sat down to keep the musical glow going, and to see how close my HiFi rig could come to that same sense of music reverie I experienced live in concert. My system did a very nice job of capturing the same sense of musical excitement and pleasure I felt at the concert and I was able slip back into a musical reverie immediately.


With the Pass XA30.5 instead of the Leben in the system, it was apparent that the XA30.5 too did an excellent job of capturing a large portion of the band-level and instrumental timbre that made the Pearl Django concert so wonderful. On Django Reinhardt's "Swing 48" from the album, there was a distinct portrayal of a tight band playing together flawlessly with beautiful tone and a large dose of musical expressiveness. The overall character of the XA30.5 is a touch warmer and a bit darker than the Leben and with a somewhat more distant perspective, but the Pass is still more to the up-close-and-personal side of life than being a 'rear-hall' wallflower. On "Swing 48", the Pass was a touch less immediate than the Leben and there was less transparency into the recording venue. All in all though, the Pass had a very artful and enjoyable balance of musical and sonic attributes that are easy to like and, I imagine, will make the XA30.5 a big hit with many listeners.

The soundstaging of the Pass is particularly good in width though not quite as deep and layered as the Leben. There is a nice sense of air and space with the XA30.5. It's not at the Leben's magnitude but very respectable. The Pass XA30.5 gives less of a 'they are here' perspective and more of a 'you are there' sense to the music because of the slightly more distant and less immediate feel compared to the Leben. The Pass XA30.5 is a little less continuous -- a little larger grained -- than the Leben but still very liquid and flowing and still making the music come across as connected from moment to moment to be musically compelling.


The Pass XA30.5 is more dynamic at the macro level than the Leben and about the same as you scale down to the micro level. Imaging is similar to the Leben in density and edge definition (i.e. very good) but with a little less layering. Still, a nice sense of natural flesh and blood solidity comes through in the Pass's imaging that I find very satisfying. The acoustic around the images is less charged by the music than with the Leben and it sounds a bit less natural, reminding me more that I am listening to a very fine recording of music rather than music itself. The texture (grain size of noise) with the Pass is a bit larger and more noticeable and in the plane of the music but only rarely intrusive. The decay of musical notes is not quite as natural, liquid and extended as I would like, but still very good by any measure. The Pass XA30.5 has tighter and more resolved bass than the rather classic tube balance of the Leben.

On "Swing 48", the Patek came across as enjoyable and fun, albeit with just a bit too much liveliness compared to the real thing - a caffeinated version. Live music was more smoothly flowing and harmonious than either the Pass or Patek -- more like the Leben -- but I definitely got the feeling of Pearl Django's incredible musicianship through them all. There was an underlying bit of grittiness to the Patek's presentation at volumes other than the very softest that kept me subtly on edge. I didn't hear this with the Patek on Stephæn's sensitive speaker, so it may be that this grittiness is more obvious when the Patek is pressed harder on the less sensitive Harbeths. The Pass XA30.5 in contrast was smoother and more liquid -- more like the real thing -- and allowed me to relax into the music with abandon.


The Patek had a nice wide and moderately deep soundstage on "Swing 48", with good image focus and body and a natural presentation of the soundspace. The Pass bests the Patek in sense of space and soundstage depth but soundstage width is comparable. The Patek didn't have quite the level of continuousness I would have liked and the notes did not flow quite as liquidly as the Pass or the real thing in the concert hall. The Pass does a better job on this front by being more liquid, more continuous and having more of a 'living presence' to the way notes decay and melody develops. Aside from the slight grittiness of the Patek mentioned earlier, the timbres of the instruments were rendered accurately, with the Patek being well balanced from top to bottom. Highs were extended and detailed (more extended than the Pass), midrange had a lot of clarity and the bass was refined and taut. The Pass XA30.5 is smooth and liquid with lots of clarity, with the bass deep, refined and musical. The Patek does a good job of portraying the emotional expressiveness of the music, giving you a good dose of what the music feels like in real life but can't really match the Pass in this regard. The XA30.5 takes musical expressiveness to another level.

Joe Pass's Unforgettable [Pablo] is fantastic solo jazz guitar music that I couldn't live without and through the Pass XA30.5, it was presented as beautifully expressive and artistic. The overall character of the Pass is sweet, warm, a bit dark and with a luxuriously rich tonal palette. In my system, the overall character of the Audiosector Patek was one click to the warm side of neutral, with a dynamic, transparent, detailed and articulate voicing. The overtones of the strings decay nicely in time but lack the last bit of the continuous and liquidity you hear in life and with the Pass XA30.5. There isn't a lot of soundstage or soundspace information in this solo recording but the imaging is solid with the Patek and there's a lot of body and immediacy. The Pass also presents solid imaging with lots of body but has a more natural overall balance than the Patek. The Leben gives you the sense of a real living and breathing Joe Pass playing in front of you that neither the Pass nor Patek can approach.