TW Acustic Raven AC-3 Turntable

Musicality Incarnate

Put simply, notes played back through the Raven AC-3 (with the Graham arm and Clearaudio or Air Tight cartridge) sound as if they last longer—there is simply no other way to describe it. It’s as if they are being presented more completely, as if they start, sustain, and decay over a longer period of time, making the tiny, constantly fluctuating harmonic and dynamic details of which each is comprised—details that are either unresolved or seemingly “condensed” by other (very fine) tables—fully audible. What’s fascinating, and a bit inexplicable, is that the Raven AC-3 seems to do this without any instability of pitch or diminution of tempo. Where a slow-running turntable can produce something like this “prolongation” effect, it does so at the unacceptable cost of audible wow and flutter; here speed, pitch, and pace are perfect.

What does the Raven AC-3’s more complete presentation of the duration of notes buy you? Well, with Heifetz’s violin in the Kreutzer Sonata [Cisco/RCA], something very close to magic.

On his RCA recordings, Heifetz usually played the “David” (now called the “Heifetz”) Guarneri del Gesu violin, although you wouldn’t necessarily know this from the sound he got (actually, from the sound he demanded) on many Shaded Dog LPs. Heifetz, being Heifetz, wanted his fiddle to be spotlighted. This may have been great for his ego, but it was a mixed blessing for his listeners. Because it was so closely miked and so prominently mixed, on LP Heifetz’s gorgeous David was, indeed, highly present and detailed, but it was also outsized, forward, and usually a bit cool, bright, and whitish in timbre. This is certainly the way his violin sounds on the original Shaded Dog of the Kreutzer. The Raven (and, to be fair, the Cisco remastering, which is EQ’d in the 3-6kHz range to take out some of the excess brightness) utterly changes this.

I’m not sure exactly how Woschnick’s combination of carefully balanced ingredients effects this miracle, but, though no less big and forward than it has always been, Heifetz’s David suddenly sounds like an altogether warmer, richer, more voluptuous instrument. Part of the reason for the difference in timbre is clearly the Raven/Graham’s fullness in the upper bass and midrange. Although the ’table/arm trades off a bit of neutrality for this added color (for which, see below), making its overall balance a little darker than that of, say, the dead-neutral Walker Black Diamond, it is a trade-off that is hard to argue with, given the incredibly attractive sonic results. With the slight added emphasis on its lower registers, Heifetz’s David is far less bright and grainy than usual, and not at all “whitish”—less like Heifetz’s violin typically sounds on stereo LPs and more, if you will, like Heifetz’s violin reputedly sounded in life (and on select mono LPs). The Raven AC-3’s upper-bass/lower-midrange foundation is so solid that it adds to the solidity of the instrument’s stereo image, almost as if it is perched on a black-granite pedestal. And then there is the chocolate icing on the cake—the incredibly luscious fine detail, born of the Raven’s more complete reproduction of durations.

Through the AC-3, when Heifetz bows two strings at the start of the first movement Presto, you hear the whiskery bite and silken rush of the bow on each string; you hear the strings themselves tossing off itty-bitty transient colors as they begin to vibrate into a perfectly intoned pitch; you hear the body of the violin, this gorgeous plum-colored instrument, amplifying those vibrating strings, turning pitch into timbre; you hear the full utterance of the chord, and then you hear it gradually die off, with its own little firework-display of stopping transients, just in advance of the next double-stop. In other words, you hear everything that made Heifetz’s David Heifetz’s David, and, by means of the enormous increase in the resolution of delicate details of bowing and intonation, everything that made Heifetz Heifetz. Indeed, timbre is so voluptuously dark and rich in color and nuance through the Raven AC-3 that you almost hear Heifetz made Elman.

Again, at the start of the last movement of Lutoslawski’s great Concerto for Orchestra [EMI], you not only hear the plucked doublebasses sounding their fifths, thirds, and seconds in the Passacaglia, you also hear—like a glistening drop of added color, richness, and decay—the timbre of the plucked harps that are doubling the basses. In other words, you hear a tiny bit of what made Lutoslawski, arguably the greatest orchestrator of the late twentieth century, Lutoslawski.

In amplifier reviews I’ve talked many times before about the variable reproduction of the harmonic/dynamic envelope— of starting transient, steady-state tone, and decay—but frankly it isn’t a subject I’ve thought much about when it comes to ’tables and arms. The Raven AC-3/Graham Phantom forces you to think about it. Here is a classic example—perhaps the classic analog example, in my experience—of a transducer that reproduces more information of a certain kind than anything else I’ve previously heard, and does so—unlike, say, the Kuzma Stabi XL—without ever sounding the slightest bit analytical, the slightest bit “hi-fi.” The reason is that, like a kid sorting through a box of candy to find just the right pieces, the Raven AC-3 is selecting out those fine details, and only those details, that add to the beautiful color and dynamic nuance of the instrument and, in so doing, clarifying the way it’s being played. I have seen other hi-fi gear called “musical”—I have even used the word myself—but I’ve never heard a component that deserves the compliment more than the Raven.