Bound for Sound (USA) 9/98

Last year I met two very entertaining Australians who happen to build audio gear: Ian Robinson from Redgum and Tony Moore from Ambience. At the time they were light-heartedly abusing each other, rather like "The Odd Couple" done in a Crocodile Dundee dialect. No tension about flying halfway around the world, no concern about trying to break into the North American market. They did not claim to have repealed, set aside, or received exemption from the laws of physics as some visitors from Western Europe asserted. After they got the gear set up, they played -- no, not stale jazz classics --Waltzing Matilda on banjo. Again, an amusing change of pace. Then I realized that the banjo sounded as though it were in the room. Realistic reproduction of a stringed instruments attack and overtones can defeat a lot of equipment. In the Redgum/Ambience display I forgot that I was listening to equipment, and concentrated on the music. This year, their gear did justice to The Goldberg Variations.

For 1999, Ambience has done its part in making high fidelity less of an eyesore by making its cabinets narrower. (Wider in the living room is not better.) I expect to have one of these dynamic/ribbon hybrids in my listening room within a week, and will tell you more soon.

I don't know about you, but I've had enough metal in my listening room, be it black matte, champagne finish, or machine turned. Redgum products are finished in a wood indigenous to Australia: a color something like maple. I'm sure there's an electrical justification for wrapping components in wood, but there's also a strong aesthetic argument to be made: this is handsome stuff. Redgum has a new CD player/DAC, which sounded relaxed, articulate and musical. One of those is on the way, too. This job can be a strain at times.

Once again, the Ambience/Redgum prices are right I asked how the fellows could manage to ship stuff across the Pacific, allow the dealers to make money, and still stay in business. They explained that this was the result of the Asian economic crisis, which was pretty plausible until I remembered that their prices were attractive in January 1998, six months before several currencies collapsed. My own feeling is somewhat less geopolitical; these guys, like Australian Greg Osborn, are very serious about engineering in the service of music, but not obsessed with making a fortune.

Does such a philosophy translate into good equipment? Put another way: Do other high end manufacturers obsessions with exotic materials and proprietary technology distort their perception, or skew their priorities? I can tell you that there were whole wings of the hotel full of people far more serious than Tony and lan, but there were only a few where I had as much fun with the music.