TRI-ART OPEN 5

Itravelled a short distance to a friend’s home mid last year to talk, listen to music, and compare notes. And as his system was quite fully fleshed out—the top DACs, amplification, wires/ cables, and speakers—all of which I was very familiar with, I held a growing sense of anticipation.

This, for me, was my first time back into the two-channel realm, where I have spent approximately 97.8% of my listening life. So it was decidedly good to be back. In the interim, headphones had become my raison d’être —my reason for being— and, I must say, they have been quite spectacular, while electrostatics, get outta here, they’re the bomb— extraordinary!

What I had learned from headphones was the intimacy that they not only invoked, but also cultivated. With an electrostatic headphone system there would be scarce few if any details hiding amongst the shadows, whether at some far flung corner of a performance stage or in the deep recesses of an orchestral soundstage – all would see the light of day.

As I have spoken about in my many reviews of electrostatic headphones and their required amplification, the experience with them was something new to me. The electrostatic brought forth profound resolution, transparency, detail, with an abiding musicality that was capable of jaw dropping, rapid-onsetmomentary catatonia, figuratively speaking. And its musical kin had not, at that time, been discovered.

I sat centerstage in my friend’s chair of honor, or the ‘sweet spot’, as we of this ‘calling’ refer to it. The music began with me at the dashboard—equipped with the remote control. It was a familiar moment for me, known across countless decades. But it was different, not quite how I had recently experienced it. I goosed the volume up. I repeated. And I repeated the volume increase again until the piece was once again familiar. The look on my friend’s face showed something resembling astonishment and stupefaction and concern.

That fact of the matter was, I was simply not used to stereo listening anymore as so much goes missing with the speakers several feet away. However, when the transducers— headphones—are literally sitting on your ears everything is right there.

Well, as I would soon discover, there exists sort of a twilight zone of transducers— loudspeakers and headphones—where the loudspeakers are several feet away and at the