6moons audioreviews: Cembalo Audio Laboratories Spring 1
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Reviewer: Hadi Özyaşar
Financial interests: click here
Transport: Auraliti PK90
USB bridge: SOtM dX-USB with mBPS-d2s
DAC: Aqua HiFi La Scala MKII, Chord Hugo
Integrated amp: Ayon Spirit 3
Speakers: Harbeth Super HL5 Plus, Quad 9L
Headphones: Sennheiser HD800, Audeze LCD-2
IEMs: Lear LCM BD4.2, CustomArt Harmony 8 Pro, Hidition NT6
DAP: Lotoo Paw Gold
Headphone amps: Sennheiser HDVA600, Ear Stream Sonic Pearl 2 [on review], Cembalolab Spring 1 [on review], Burson HA-160DS
Cables: Acoustic Revive loom, Skogrand Beethoven interconnects [on review], Skogrand Wagner power cable [on review], Ear Stream SunSet interconnect [on review], Ear Stream Digix3
S/PDIF cable [on review], Ear Stream Optimal v.2 USB cable [on review]
Review component retail: $1'980
When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches or apricots but just paint spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches or
apricots. It is not yet painting Spring. - Dōgen Zenji
In his Pulitzer prized fiction Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides said: "Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness', 'joy' or 'regret'. Maybe the best proof that
the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends
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6moons audioreviews: Cembalo Audio Laboratories Spring 1
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disaster'. Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy'. I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins
in middle age'. I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a mini bar'."
In the last week of May I received my e-mail from Caroline Cembalo of Cembalolab. I was reading about La Mettrie who claimed that emotions are the result of physical changes in the body. I
was thinking on our feelings and emotions as a human being. Apparently, emotions are not only covered by single words, the actual meaning of emotion has differed from Adorno to Kierkegaard.
But, Caroline was on the same page with me. She wrote: "When I received Srajan’s emails, I was very glad to learn that you are interested in our new Hi-End headphone amplifier Spring 1. I
know that you are the editor of Turkey's first and only hifi magazine and that you love music and the art of reproduction. I want to say that in our music reproduction pursuits, we are the same. I
like what you wrote of music and art touching the soul and making life meaningful. It is Cembalo's pursuit that music reproduction have 'Real Emotion'."
What is real emotion? For Cembalolab, the answer lies in their design philosophy: "We often ask ourselves, what really is the best playback device? According to Cembalo, the emotions at the
heart of a musical performance are where the real charm and beauty are to be found. This has also been approved at the highest standard amongst playback devices. Cembalo, in its music
playback pursuits, want to retain the true nature of the composition whilst transmitting the raw emotional intensity and passion of the music. It's just like being at a performance of Mozart's
"Serenade in G major". With the resounding, bright and lively melodies of the major chords, our hearts become stirred and we are unable to resist singing and dancing along to the music. But if it
suddenly changes to Chopin's "Nocturne in b Flat Minor", with the gentle restrained even melancholic and plaintive ambiance created by the minor chords, we can feel the grief and desolation of
the composer.
"But, in fact, a lot of expensive equipment makers are unable to fully grasp this simple concept. Some emphasize the resolution and soundstage but with the sound itself lacking emotion and
feeling. Several others sound warm and sweet but lack vitality to produce a singular emotion which lacks authenticity. In Cembalo's way, audio reproduction is the art of music playback,
expressing the emotion of the music and conveying the passion of the composition. Many compare the playback with live sound."
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"We have only one goal: real emotion. Cembalo pursue excellence with no cost constraint and without rigidly adhering to the measured index. Listening comes first. We seek the real nature of
the music and the expression of its true feeling—guided by the auditory sense and impressions of those artists with whom we cooperate—and thus we deeply involve ourselves in the choice of
the basic structure of the circuit which is not limited by traditional structures. Design comes next. A precise mathematical model is constructed for the whole system and is repeatedly optimized
so the whole circuit system is at the optimum theoretical point. The product's entire design and technology have the sole objective of making music vivid, lifelike, rich and vibrant. Now we listen
again and fine-tune. With repeated listening, we fine-tune again and again to most fully express the truly rich emotion of the music and the unprecedented real-life quality. This process is just like
the manufacture of jewels handed down for generations. First of all, an area containing minerals must be found in the boundless land; the gemstone of the best quality will then be selected
among those extracted; then finally, through the craftsman’s exquisite carving, a precious jewel emerges which lasts through the ages."
I liked the idea of 'listen, design, listen again'. For me that’s at the core of the creative audio industry. But it has its own risks. Like Karajan’s thoughts on Mahler, the greatest danger is that if it is
not well performed, the music can seem banal. Here we had risk takers! I couldn’t wait. Cembalolab of course are a new actor on the audio industry stage. I wanted to learn more about them
whilst awaiting my first audition of their first-production Spring 1, a headphone amp.
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"Cembalo Audio Laboratories are a new high-end audio design lab located in Vancouver, Canada. We design the best hi-end devices in the world with our philosophy 'Real Emotion'. We
cooperate with several artists and follow the 'listen, design, listen again' design process." But who exactly was behind all of this process? I asked Caroline. "Cembalo Audio Laboratories was
founded by Mr. Philip Mitchell, who has been working as a designer in the professional audio industry for more than 10 years. He used to be in design teams of professional D/A converter and
amplifiers mainly for the BBC and Hollywood. What is worth mentioning is that Philip is an enthusiastic audiophile with much passion for pursuing the best sound reproduction, our philosophy
'Real Emotion', the love of music and a heart fully devoted to the art of playback. Philip founded our company and designed our first product Spring 1. Later this year or early next year we will
add our Spring System including the Spring DAC and the Spring stream player.”
Micrograph of circuit trace on an amplifier PCB | polycrystalline copper surface at 50'000 x zoom
Their 'Real Emotion' philosophy doesn’t rely on just the 'Listen & Design' process. It gets its power also from 'Signal Express Technology'. "Cembalo Audio Laboratory have meticulously designed
and optimized all processes that can influence sound quality such as the complex circuit layout, parts quality, timbre differences, the anti-vibration performance, RF interference etc. As
explorative researchers in the art of playback, we constantly ponder in what way we might make the music sound closer to our ideal of real emotion? Cembalo's response is Signal-Express
technology to reduce signal loss during the transmission process and to enable the music-bearing signal to be transmitted perfectly by the equipment."
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"The transmission of the audio signal is, essentially, the bearing signal’s electron flow through short or long wires between components.
But in fact, even in the case of very expensive equipment, the interior connecting wires and the traces on the circuit board are not at all
‘expensive’. They often contain impurities and are insufficiently smooth, meanwhile the impedance as a working transmission line is barely
matched. The impurities and rough surfaces seriously impede the transmission of weak signal. The sound signal will be reflected at all the
impedance mismatch points. To illustrate this further, the audio signal input into the equipment can be viewed as a long string of electron balls
which jump along with the music. They must go through a small maze-like path where these impurities become stumbling blocks, the rough
uneven patches valleys and the impedance-mismatch sites energy-sapping hurdles blocking the way. Now imagine what happens when these
tiny audio signals go through such a maze? What is worse is that due to the skin effect, high-frequency signal transmits along the rough
surface filled with impurities and is also absorbed by the insulating medium covering the wires and the material of the circuit boards (common
material: FR4 εr of 4.2-4.7).
"We won't tolerate the loss of any detail and our Signal-Express technology reduces transmission loss to a minimum, allowing the
playback of music to be richer in detail.
1．The layout of all the parts along the signal path has been calculated and optimized for the shortest path with a precision of
0.001mm to ensure that the wiring length on the printed circuit board is strictly the shortest possible.
2．Construct a perfect impedance-matched trace/wire network. The impedance matching line of the wire is principally used in the
pioneering technology field for reducing transmission loss. [The image at right shows a two-port network with incident waves and
reflected waves. Return loss=S11=b1/a1 where return loss is the loss of power in the signal reflected by an impedance mismatch in
a transmission line.]"
"Leaving theory to one side, can we hear the benefits of a proper transmission line? When we put it to the test, comparing the sound quality of a standard 50Ω transmission line 50RG142B/U
with several much higher-priced audio cables, it was possible to hear more detail, more dynamics and a more authentic sound with the impedance-matched structure. During the original design
stage, we believed that using high-purity copper could help us achieve better sound quality but back then it was impossible for ultra-high purity copper to be used in the audio field. Thanks to
advances in technology, we can now use expensive high-purity OCC (Ohno Continuous Cast) copper or silver for our signal lines which has an extremely smooth surface and comes with the
world's best insulation of Teflon. In the playback field, Signal-Express is a real improvement which led us on a journey that would re-examine all current playback devices and work with our
designers to explore our ideal of 'Real Emotion'. The Spring 1 was designed to be a 4-stage discrete BJT amplifier with an input buffer stage, two gain stages and an output buffer which operates
in pure Class A without negative feedback. Frequency response is from 10Hz to 250KHz, input impedance is about 10K."
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This discourse reminded me of Hemingway’s thoughts on Faulkner: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know
the ten-dollar words. I know them alright. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." Seemingly, Cembalolab want to keep out
of the signal’s way without using 'big words' which in this case would mean unnecessary components and too long a signal path to create their big emotions. What
would the final effect of their addresses be on their sound reproduction? Let’s find out. Fabio Biondi and his Baroque ensemble L'Europa Galante's Vivaldi's Four
Seasons is one of my references of this work. In this performance, his sensational violin glowed and L'Europa Galante didn't fall far behind. For me, this is the
version to have if you’re only having one. As soon as "Concerto N°1 in E major La Primavera" aka Spring's first movement started, there was subtle treble emphasis
on Paola Poncet’s cembalo. Biondi's violin too had excess energy in its upper frequencies; perhaps too much for my Sennheiser HD800. It made me change to the
Audeze LCD-2. This darker headphone was better suited to the amp's treble enthusiasm.
Spohr followed Vivaldi. Louis Spohr was not only a prolific composer of the 19th century, he was a talented violin virtuoso as well. He composed around 300 works,
which include eighteen violin concerti. After I had heard Hilary Hahn's Violin Concerto N°8 play, I rummaged for more of Spohr's violin pieces. My hunt settled down
with Ulf Hölscher's reading of Complete Violin Concertos. His Spohr is still the apple of my classical music collection's eye. In his Violin Concerto N°6, the Spirit 1
rendered the texture of Hölscher's violin with subtle definition. In the first "Allegro", from the upper registers to the lower mid register, Hölscher's sound was quite
detailed. Nothing fancy here but warm violin timbre.
Moving on to some Jazz, last year proved heartrending to its lovers. We've lost Charlie Haden, Horace Silver, Ornette Coleman and Clark Terry. Haden's studio
album Nocturne is still my go-to for nocturnal sessions. Here we have beautiful Latin Jazz ballads with contributions from Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Ignacio Berroa and
Jazz cats like Joe Lovano and Pat Metheny. The Cembalolab reproduced Haden's bass cleanly and articulated, without unnecessary bass reach or earth-shaking
pressure. Likewise, there were enjoyable moments with Pat Metheny on "Noche de Ronda". His guitar strings were smooth and not lush but exhibited a hint of
sweetness.
These midrange textures made me wonder about the Cembalolab's vocal performance. Some vocal Jazz might have suited well but I was in a mood for Bryn Terfel's
Bad Boys. With his bad-ass bully face on the cover, the Welshman's Bad Boys isn't just another powerful bass/baritone album. It has more than just brute force.
These songs were picked carefully and elegantly covered. Weill's "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" is followed by Gershwin's "It ain't necessarily so" or, shortly after
Sullivan's "When the night wind howls", one encounters Sondheim's "Epiphany from Sweeney Todd". What pleasures for the discriminating listener. The Spring 1
provided a natural and articulated midrange without exaggeration. Terfel's voice vibrated undisturbed, clean, clear and not in your face.
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My next selection, Grant Green's Idle Moments, needs no introduction. Not only the soloist but the entire album beggar description. I won't lay it on too thick if I call
this the best hard bop Jazz guitar recordings ever. Listen to Green in the quarter-hour "Idle Moments". Or give your ear to Duke Pearson, Joe Henderson or Bobby
Hutcherson's performances. Even though this song was planned to just go on for seven minutes, fortunes gave us a full fifteen. I couldn't say that the Cembalolab
was as musical as tube amps are with the HD800 but for a solid-state device, it had its own moments whilst Green was playing his solos. Mainly when dark
headphones like the LCD-2 plugged into the Spring 1, it was easier to forget that I had a pair of headphones over my ears.
By now I wondered what the Cembalolab's performance might be on big orchestral like Tchaikovsky's Symphony N°6 in B Minor, the so-called "Pathétique." Even if
there are better interpretations of this work in the classical music canon, Charles Mackerras' live recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra has my vote for clarity
and detail, transparency and dynamics. Mackerras didn't approach this war horse as a show pony. His approach to Tchaikovsky was almost naive in fact. With the
Cembalolab, macrodynamics were uncompressed when the strings played full force in the waltz-like "Allegro con grazia" over underlying pianissimo percussion. In
the first movement, the amp handled with ease the shimmering brass section even over the HD800. Furthermore, this album adds Mendelssohn's Overture to A
Midsummer Night's Dream where the Cembalolab showed off its ability to reproduce both macro and micro dynamics correctly.
After Tchaikovsky's N°6, I found myself listening to Strauss' Last Four Songs. There are many notable performances of this from Schwarzkopf to Janowitz, Fleming,
Norman or Della Casa. However, I have always admired Isokoski's singing. Ondine's last gift to us was preserving her voice for a better production. Her bright tone is
captured splendidly on this disc. With the Cembalolab, Isokoski's beautiful timbre was placed in the center and front of the orchestra. All instruments located
correctly on the deep and wide soundstage. I frankly enjoyed the holographic imagination of the amp. But again, Isokoski's upper mids were too bright over the
HD800.
Enough of classical and Jazz now. Let's lose our consciousness in some ethnic music from Africa. Babatunde Olatunji's Circle of Drums had been playing on my
stereo for a while. Chesky produced his magnificent music with very nice stereo imaging. Three drummers, Babatunde Olatunji, Muruga Booker and Sikiru, perform
their polyrhythmic exploits very elegantly. When the LCD-2 connected, it was hard to stop my feet from tapping or my body from moving. Pace, rhythm, and timing
were impeccable here. This fare was well controlled, musical and fast without being muddy in the bass, too explicit in the treble or too opulent on midrange energy.
How about power? I wanted to learn how the Cembalolab would handle power-hungry tunes like electronica. I picked Danish electronic wizard Trentemøller's The
Trentemøller Chronicles. Even though this album is more minimal and downtempo, it still has cuts which demand energy and control. I have listened to amps that
lost their lunch or could not deal with the bass on songs like "You & I". With the Cembalolab, power was no issue. It handled fast bass-heavy electronic pieces with
aplomb and never bloated or stunted the low frequencies. Just perfect.
Since the Cembalolab has three headphone ports, I questioned whether there would be any differences between the balanced and single-ended options. I had plusSound's Exo Series balanced
cable for the HD800. Under $200, this is a fantastic wire I've reviewed elsewhere. With the Cembalolab, the HD800 in balanced mode had the wider and deeper soundstage as expected.
Otherwise, their sound signature was almost unchanged. Since I hosted the Spring 1 for 3 months, I compared it to EarStream's Sonic Pearl 2 and Burson's HA-160DS headphone amplifiers.
The Burson was weaker than the Cembalolab whereas the Spring 1 had plenty of power and no trouble driving the HD800 or LCD-2. The HA-160DS was also more forgiving when it came to old
recordings. When I compared the Spring 1 to the Sonic Pearl 2, both were more similar but the latter had the more forward presentation with more energy in the midrange. The Cembalolab was
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more laid back, more powerful, less forgiving and brighter on top than the EarStream.
Conclusion. Our newcomer from Cembalolab had perfect synergy with my LCD-2. When the trademark Audeze darkness met Cembalolab's bright tone, the result was a match made in heaven.
But it can be an issue with more vivid or detailed cans like the Sennheiser HD800. Overall, the Spirit 1's sonic signature was very welcome for a Johnny-come-lately and if the number signifies a
first version, I am curious what their second one will be like when the first was this accomplished already.
Cembalo Audio Laboratory website
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