Granted that it was impossible to distinguish the effect of the tonearms in this comparison. But one thing was clear to me - the Talea setup outperformed the Schroder setup by a significant margin. Joel Durand played a piece by Ravel that floored me. He played it at concert volumes, which is to say, much less loud than what you normally hear out of a stereo reproduction. This is a huge challenge to stereo playback because we often compensate for lost detail by raising the volume.
The Ravel piece had three crescendos of very short duration. The rest of the piece ranged from rather quiet to extreme pianissimo. In this range I have never heard such dynamic nuance and tonal color coming from a stereo system. I have only heard that in a concert hall. Without these nuances the music is generic and dull. My perception was that the listeners in the room fidgeted quite a bit when the piece was played on the Schroder system - and for good reason. It could not deliver that level of detail. So the musical interest was lost.
Fascinating to hear the Talea setup in absolute terms, not just in comparison to the Schroder setup.
The Ravel piece had three crescendos of very short duration. The rest of the piece ranged from rather quiet to extreme pianissimo. In this range I have never heard such dynamic nuance and tonal color coming from a stereo system. I have only heard that in a concert hall. Without these nuances the music is generic and dull. My perception was that the listeners in the room fidgeted quite a bit when the piece was played on the Schroder system - and for good reason. It could not deliver that level of detail. So the musical interest was lost.
Fascinating to hear the Talea setup in absolute terms, not just in comparison to the Schroder setup.