Audiophilepure

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“Lately, to gauge audio components’ reproduction of women’s voices, I’ve been listening to Carpenters albums. Richard Carpenter’s backing vocals irritate me to no end, but Karen Carpenter’s pure-sounding contralto mesmerizes me, and it’s her voice that’s always front and center in the mix. One of their best albums for evaluating gear is With the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (24/48 FLAC unfolded to 24/96 MQA, A&M/Tidal), a new album comprising remasterings of already-recorded Carpenters hits with overdubbed accompaniment by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Richard Carpenter, who oversaw all production. Richard has the reputation of being a perfectionist, and from what I heard he got it right — this is one smooth, clean-sounding recording.

In “For All We Know,” the GoldenEars rendered Karen’s voice so clearly that I was spellbound — she hovered unwaveringly in space between the speakers, sounding clean, clean, clean. Had I not been going back and forth between the One.Rs and the two-way, stand-mounted Focal Kanta No1s ($5999/pair), also in for review, I’d have had trouble dredging up a single complaint about the One.Rs in that area. But the Kantos reproduced the sound of Karen Carpenter’s voice just a little bit more purely and a touch more openly than did the One.Rs. Don’t read that as a knock against the Triton One.Rs — they were surprisingly close to the Kantos even in this regard, and in the bass they cleaned the little Kantos’ clocks, as you’d expect a couple big floorstanders to do against a pair of minimonitors.”

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