TW Acustic Raven AC-3 Turntable

Musicality Incarnate

For all its virtues, the Raven AC-3 is not without personality. As I’ve already noted, in combination with the Graham Phantom arm and Clearaudio Goldfinger v2 or Air Tight PC- 1 cartridge it has a somewhat darker balance than the more even-handed Walker Black Diamond record player (equipped with these same cartridges). Indeed, one of the first things you’ll notice if you compare the Raven to the Walker on the same recordings is the greater density of tone color and dynamic weight of the German ’table in the mid-to-low bass (and everywhere else). The effect is remarkably similar to the differences you hear in the bottom end with really good ported speakers and really good acoustic-suspension ones. Like the ported speaker, the Raven sounds somewhat bigger, rounder, fuller, darker, more forward, and more realistically powerful on, say, the throbbing bass guitar of Chris Isaak’s “Dangerous Game” [Reprise]. However, when you listen to the same cut through the Walker you realize that that throbbing Fender is actually playing a series of notes—an ostinato that repeatedly descends in a bit of a diminuendo and then ascends in a bit of a crescendo. It’s not that you don’t hear this ostinato with the Raven, which is anything but a one-note bass-transducer; the lower notes of the series, just don’t stand out quite as distinctly as they do with the Walker, which, like the acousticsuspension speaker, is a tad flatter and more neutral in the bottom (and everywhere else).

Which presentation in the bass is more like real music? Well, that’s a damn good question. Ideally, you’d like to get an amalgamation of both—the color and power of the Raven/ Graham, the flatness and neutrality of the Walker. Both sound realistic in their own fashion, but I suppose, as with ported and acoustic-suspension loudspeakers, I would ultimately come down (very delicately) on the side of the Walker, with the clear understanding that neither ’table is perfect and that I could live, without complaint, with both (and intend to).

In the midrange, the call might go the other way. Even if the Walker is more “transparent to sources” (and it is, making LPs sound lovely and lifelike, but no better or worse than the way they were recorded), the plethora of additional dynamic and harmonic details that the Raven/Graham conjures up is simply too attractive—and too addictive and too much like the real thing—to dismiss as a mere “euphonic coloration.” As I understand the word, a coloration is something external that is added to the sound or something internal that is subtracted from it. The Raven/Graham is doing neither. It isn’t “inventing” added harmonic/dynamic details; it is pulling this low-level information from the grooves in a way that other turntables and tonearms simply don’t. The fact that this information generally makes instruments “sound good”— make that “sound great”—should not, I think, be held against it. If there’s no room for gorgeous (and, please note, very lifelike) tonality in this hobby, then the heck with it.

As for the treble, you might think from what I’ve written thus far about the slight “darkness” of the Raven/Graham’s overall balance that the treble would be a bit “closed down” in comparison to the ’table’s magical midrange and voluptuous bass. But, no, it is not. The Raven is every bit as beautiful (and beautifully articulate) here as it is elsewhere—with simply ravishing density of tone color and very fine harmonic/ dynamic detail. The Walker, once again, is more transparent and, being less dark, considerably airier up top (and, as you will see, everywhere else). But on the fleet top-octave runs of Brooks Smith’s piano in the Kreutzer, I would be hard put to say that the Walker sounds more like a real Steinway than the Raven. The air-bearing ’table has the edge in neutrality, bloom, and air; but the dense color of those notes through the Raven, like the gold of golden apples (and with some of the same roundedness and crispness), is haunting.

There is another difference between the two ’tables—and it’s probably the most significant advantage that the Walker holds over the Raven. If you listen to, say, Joan Baez and the Greenbriar Boys singing “Banks of the Ohio” on Joan Baez Vol. 2 [Vanguard], you will hear the richer, darker presentation of the Raven in Baez’s voice, which seems to have just the slightest bit of added color, detail, dimensionality, and presence, and in the timbres of John Herald’s guitar and of Ralph Rinzler’s mandolin. But what you won’t hear with the Raven—or won’t hear to the same extent—is the “air” between these players. The Walker puts huge space between instruments and instrumentalists; the Raven, though quite spacious, does not match its standardsetting breadth. Nor will instruments and instrumentalists be spread apart as widely or set back as deeply on the soundstage through the Raven/Graham as they are through the Walker. All the musicians will be a bit more forward and more tightly grouped (albeit somewhat more incisively defined).