System Details
| Pre Amplifier | Air Tight ATC-5s |
|---|---|
| Power Amplifier | Air Tight ATM-1e |
| Speakers | Fischer & Fischer SN270AMT |
| Cables | Audience Au24X |
How does it sound?
After discovering this combination, we set this system up in our second room and had it running on low volume for most of the time that we were working in the showroom. We noticed that every time we stopped for a coffee, we would all congregate around this system. Clients would drop in to say hi or would come for an audition and would eventually park themselves in front of this system. Sometimes people would sit on the floor, sometimes they would be standing around chatting, sometimes you could hear people singing along… but no matter what they were doing, one thing was certain… everyone was ALWAYS in front of this system. We named it the ‘happy system’, a magnet for music-lovers.
The term ‘music lovers’ is the key here. This is not a system for the audiophile who likes to turn off all the lights and listen to the leading-edge definition of the kick drum in the second minute of track 4. This is not a system that dissects the music into its separate threads, points a spotlight on all the micro-details and throws them in your face. This is not a system for the audiophile obsessed with hyper-accuracy and resolution who only listens to carefully selected audiophile recordings. If you are one of those peeps, that’s OK, but this is not the system for you.
This is a system for people who above all, love music and can feel it in their blood, who get excited when their favourite artists release a new record and can’t stop tapping their foot and singing along. This is a system that is simply enjoyable. Reeeeally enjoyable. Think of a child’s colouring book. Imagine all the pages of outlines waiting to be coloured in. This system delivers just enough detail & structure to provide the outline for the sonic pictures, then it colours each one with a rich palette of vibrant, textured sound. It just keeps painting the most beautiful sonic pictures. Instruments have timbre & texture. Three dimensional piano notes hang in the air then decay with a softness that leaves you immediately anticipating the next note. Voices are harmonically rich and have a tonal density which draws you into the story telling. You can play any genre of music on this system and it’s enjoyable.
In some ways, it’s anti-hi-fi, meaning it doesn’t try to be the highest fidelity, most ultimate resolving sound. It serves up music and specialises in beauty and harmony. The resolution and accuracy are all present but those qualities serve as the frame, within which the musical story is conveyed with rare texture, tone and ambiance. There are those words again… beauty and harmony.
Why does it work so well?
Air Tight have a unique approach which has seen the company thrive and evolve for almost 4 decades. When designing a tube amplifier, most designers create a circuit, then try to find a tube that best fits the application. Air Tight choose a tube which has wonderful musical attributes, then design a circuit to best serve that tube. This is one of the reasons that Air Tight amplifiers sound so pure and alive – cohesive design, synergistic selection of components and heirloom quality execution. 38 years ago, Air Tight’s first amplifier was the ATM-1, which used the EL-34 tube in a push-pull configuration. This was followed years later by the legendary ATM-1S which was made right up until 2023. The ATM-1 2024 edition (also known as the ATM-1E) is a brand new design of the ATM-1 concept released in 2024 and draws on the culmination of almost 4 decades of experience.
The ATC-5s is another heirloom quality Japanese masterpiece. It serves music with grace and truth and manages to achieve that rare feat of transparency, sounding like it it’s not adding any colouration of character into the signal path. Again, this is a tube based preamplification circuit that was designed a long time ago and then has gone through many years of refinement, improvement and evolution. This is one of the reasons this system sounds so stress free and effortless. The amplification is mature evolution of a solid design, no fireworks, party tricks or ‘look at me’. Just purity and musicality, not trying to impress anyone but therefore very impressive to the experienced ear. The built in phono stage is a stunner, negating the need for another expensive box and set of cables.
Air Tight have an interesting design philosophy. Rather that try to design a circuit and then try to find the tube that best fits that design, they choose a tube that they consider to be musically satisfying and then build a specific circuit to bring out the potential of that tube. This ‘reverence for the tube’ approach results in a sound quality that has a flow and cohesiveness about it that is uncanny. There are no aspects to the sound that could be described as ‘mechanical’ or ‘artificial’. There’s a wholeness to the sound that your brain simply relaxes into.
So at the heart of this system is this wonderful amplification. Why does it sound so good? Because it takes around 40 years to get 40 years of experience! That’s what you are listening to – an amplifier that has been slowly honed, developed, evolved for 40 years and you can really hear the quality. You can listen for hours with no hint of glare or fatigue. It’s a voluptuous, well-rounded sound, open, free, tonally rich and a little bit on the warm side. This is not true for all Air Tight products but the ATM-1E uses EL34 tubes which have a strong following among enthusiasts around the world for their slightly warm, natural, organic sound. So the combination of these sources with the Air Tight is like the yin mixing with the yan. Lots of detail, information and energy mixing with a tonally rich, beautiful soundscape. The resulting sound is a multi-textured, palpable, flowing river of music with everything there. Rhythm, timing, tone, light and shade…
The Audience Au24 cables are great value (performance vs cost) cables that also share in having a very natural, beautiful sonic presentation. As a cable that can support this type of sound, they are absolutely perfect. They have been an industry favourite for many years (look at their awards & reviews) for very good reason. Au24 SX cables, like all previous Au24 cables, are low mass and low eddy current resistance designs with minimal jacketing materials. They retain natural timing and timbre thus recreating original sound fields like very few other cables. They also have an ability to communicate the natural weight and authority of the musical message.
One of the defining factors of cable performance is the geometry implemented by the manufacturer. In the case of the Audience Au24SX, the geometry has been designed to mitigate the effects of eddy currents (also called Foucault’s current). This phenomenon is a loop of electric current induced within conductors by a changing magnetic field in the conductor according to Faraday’s law of induction or by the relative motion of a conductor in a magnetic field and their presence degrades the sonic performance of the cable. Audience place a lot of importance on the elimination of eddy currents in a cable ecosystem and the result is a smooth, open sound.
All you need now is a speaker to communicate all this goodness. Finding a speaker that has the right qualities so that it does not take anything away from this mix is a challenge. We tried a few, even some that were recommended to us by Air Tight owners, but they seemed to rob the music of something. How did we know? We knew because when we added a Fischer and Fischer speaker to this system… Wow! Sometimes you don’t know that you are missing something until you experience it and then you can’t go back to what you had before, except in this case, it feels like the speaker is simply facilitating this holistic presentation, not trying to pull it apart in any way.
The Fischer & Fischer speakers have slate cabinets, which means that virtually no energy gets absorbed by their cabinet. So instead of losing energy in the cabinet as most speakers do, where does this energy go? Well… back out into the listening room! This translates to a more energised, ‘alive’ feel which combines brilliantly with the Air Tight / Audience cocktail upstream. The SN270AMT is a floor stander with rich bass and that fabulous AMT tweeter creates very extended, open, tension-free high frequencies. They have a great way of presenting an open, unrestricted sound stage with a rich bottom end and fast, extended highs with no aggression or listener fatigue. You simply stop thinking about the sound and start grooving to the music. Put these amps with this speaker together, and BANG!… synergy complete.
What changes could you make to the system?
If you wanted to save money, but maintain the sonic qualities and synergy of this system, you can try:
- Virtually any Fischer & Fischer speaker below the SN270AMT. The key here is the effect of the slate cabinet on the combination. You lose some scale but maintain the synergy.
- The Audience Studio One range of cables.
- Swap to an Air Tight ATC-3 pre-amplifier if you do not need the built in phono stage functionality.
If your budget extended a bit further and you wanted to upscale this system, you can try:
- The Fischer & Fischer SN370AMT or the SN470M. Same sonic signature, greater sense of scale, fuller bass and more expansive soundstage.
Why Kyoto?
To us, this system is all about forgetting the audiophile mindset, it’s about the non-intellectualisation of the music listening experience and just ‘being’ with the music. It’s about letting go of the critique and immersing yourself emotionally in the music. It’s about the ‘culture’ of music and the harmony of the yin & yan.
Kyoto is considered by many to be Japan’s cultural center. With its 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines, as well as palaces, gardens and architecture intact, it is one of the best preserved cities in Japan. The Kiyomizu-dera, a magnificent wooden temple supported by pillars off the slope of a mountain is an unforgettable experience. The Shugaku-in Imperial Villa is one of its best Japanese gardens and combined with Arashiyama geisha quarters, the Philosopher’s Walk and the canals that line some of the older streets, Kyoto is a place that suspends time.
Renowned for its abundance of delicious Japanese foods and cuisine, Kyoto slowly reveals itself to the visitor. The oldest restaurant in Kyoto is Honke Owariya which was founded in 1465! Amongst the delicious tastes and smells you will find Japan’s television and film industry and a vibrant music scene. It’s a place that you can simply get lost in, surrounded by layers of culture, history, spirituality, food and creative arts.
This system gives us a similar nourishing feeling, like we are experiencing the culture of music.
Okoshi-yasu! (welcome)
