I usually forego seminars and the like in favor of covering more active demos shows. But when Acora Acoustics announced, “A Very Special Listening Event with Joe Harley at T.H.E. Show,” I decided to indulge in Saturday afternoon’s tour of historic Blue Note reissues.
Tour guide Harley, who seems to have acquired the title “Tone Poet,” has been central to the reissue of countless well-known and lamentably obscure Blue Note titles engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. He picked quite the system: Acora Acoustics VRC speakers in Blue Pearl Granite ($218,000/pair as shown), Boulder 2150 monoblocks ($128,000/pair), Boulder 2110 Line Stage $76,000), Nagra Classic Phono Package w/PSU ($42,950), and TW-Acustic Raven LS-3 turntable ($24,000) and10.5 tonearm ($6,000), with Lyra Etna Lambda SL cartridge ($9995) and Erodian EVO step-up ($6000). I don’t think we heard the Innuos Statement 2TB music server/streamer with Next-Gen PSU ($22,100) or the Nagra HD DAC X ($70,875), but we did enjoy Cardas Clear Beyond, Clear, and Nautilus cabling and a Shunyata Sigma USB cable.
The Acora Acoustics VRC, which was launched at AXPONA, is Acora’s new reference speaker. The drivers are modifications of commercially available ScanSpeak designs, but the granite cabinets are unique. Specified sensitivity is 95dB, which is almost as astounding as the claimed frequency response of flat from 18Hz to 40kHz and the weight of 430lb each. Four different granites are available to match décor.
Harley, who introduced remastering engineer Kevin Gray (above right) at the start of his presentation, began with a capsule history of Blue Note as the creation of two German immigrants who arrived on these shores in 1939, on the last boat out of Germany, and initially sold boogie woogie jazz out of the trunk of their car. The first track he played, “This Time the Dream’s on Me” from Introducing Kenny Burrell, was a 1956 live to one-track mono that Van Gelder mixed on the fly in his parents’ living room in Hackensack, New Jersey. Not only was the sound very warm and lovely, but the percussion sounded astoundingly you-are-there real. The veracity in this regard calls for an adjective favored by John Atkinson—I’ll let you guess which one. Harley reported that when he first heard the master tape of this recording, he was astounded to hear things that he could not hear on the master lacquers.
Then we heard a test pressing of a forthcoming reissue from the Herbie Nichols Trio. Whether the distant, slightly muffled and boomy bass was on the master or a product of room interactions, I do not know. But the music was pretty radical for the time and is sure to open eyes and ears. Again, the sound on this system was something to behold.
My thanks to Acora and Joe Harley for time well-spent.
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