Reader’s System: Michel From Montreal
In this instalment of Reader’s System, we visit the home of Michel, an electrical contractor and producer for Fidelio’s vinyl releases. I met Michel at this year’s Salon Son & Image show, where he invited me over for a listening session and chat.
What’s your background? Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m an electrical contractor. I did my studies in finance, administration, and computer systems at McGill. So basically, that’s where I come from.
Where did you get your love of hi-fi and music?
Hi-fi came later on! It was mostly the love of having the biggest stereo system on the street when I was a kid. To get the bigger system, I had to figure out a way to do it with the money I had at the time, which was a summer job. Basically, I got into trying to do things myself, so I got into those kits and I think I built probably close to ten or eleven of them. So I started like that, one system after the other. My mother thought I was nuts! Every six months something was moving in and out, and sometimes the rhythm was even faster than that. I always had to have more than my friends. And the biggest speakers, so I got into building speakers. I got quite good, I think, because I built a lot of pairs for a lot of people. I had basic designs, they were all based on Philips speakers, which in those days made a lot of OEM speakers. I went along with that, and they usually send you spec sheets. I looked at them and thought “OK, there’s the centre and I have to align the motors of the speakers to make sure the sound comes out nice”. Actually, they were pretty good. They weren’t bad: I had a big demand for them. I built about a dozen pairs or so.
One of my cousins still has a pair, the 8” model—I go by the woofer size. There was an 8” model, a 4”, and a dome tweeter. He still has them today, and he still prefers them to the speakers that he bought a long time ago which were the HPM 100 from Pioneer. I have another cousin who called me last week. He said, “You know those speakers?”.
“Yeah, you still have them?” He’s 57 now and he was probably 20 when I built them for him. He looked at me and said, “I have to have the 12” woofer re-coned!”. He still has them, still uses them.
So that’s how I got into all that. And then along came music, and honestly, music came afterwards. Then I started liking music and I was mostly into prog rock at that time. I wasn’t the type to listen to... basic things. The Rolling Stones were never my bag, I was more of a Pink Floyd type of guy, or Genesis. I started listening to those guys and I said, “They’re making something different from Black Sabbath, just having two or three chords and going at it, they came out with something.” And it got me into listening to classical music. So it started with the gear and music came in later.
You obviously have quite a collection, so roughly how many records do you have?
Records? Well, I have some more elsewhere that are in boxes, but I probably have a couple of thousand records. As for CDs, all I have are those. [Points]
Well, you have to put your drinks on something!
[Laughs] Actually, I do use CDs, when I sit down and read or do something else.
What’s your favourite genre of music and what are some of your favourite records?
I have many. Prog rock would be one of them, mostly the old ones like Genesis, Pink Floyd, or Peter Gabriel. That I love. Then, into classical, I’m more into the symphonic type. I love symphonic but I’m getting more into instrumentals like violins, piano. Actually, the more I’m enlarging my collection, my wife is really into voices. It’s her favourite instrument.
What sort of composers do you like?
I definitely like Beethoven, the guy’s a total genius. You can’t beat his symphonies! I like Mozart who can compose a symphony overnight and you listen to it and you’re “My God”. I love Rimsky-Korsakov. Like everyone else, it’s also a question of mood. I can be four or five nights without listening to classical, listening to rock and jazz.
I love voices, also, like Diana Krall. I listen to a lot of Oscar [Peterson], Dave Brubeck, that’s more my style of jazz.
Talking of voices, are you familiar with Ladysmith Black Mambazo?
No, you got me there!
They’re a black a cappella group. If you’re familiar with Paul Simon’s Graceland, they’re the guys that accompanied him on tracks like Homeless.
Ah! I like voices. Actually, last weekend we went to three girls. Beautiful voices but they sang old songs like Mr. Sandman, but they sing a cappella, with one piano and beautiful voices. So Fidelio is looking into doing a recording, and vinyl will probably be included right from the start. We might not do the vinyl the same way we did for Buzz [Brass], in the sense that we’re really aiming at the audiophile market with a very specific product. Something more accessible to more people.
It would be interesting if you could do an analogue recording in parallel with the digital one, so that the vinyl is untarnished by digital stuff.
If you want, we can talk about that later, analogue vs digital recording. Yeah, analogue recording is beautiful but it’s very complicated to do these days, and the end result—not to be mean to analogue—is not that superior to the digital. Digital sometimes gives us more possibilities.
Provided it’s done right.
Either way has to be done right! If you do it with two microphones, Sharps, Neumanns, whatever, then we put it into a vacuum tube amp and tube preamp, then it is converted into PCM and stored on an SSD drive. From there, we can go any which way we want. We did the test. You heard Buzz, Holst’s The Planets, on the table over there. Buzz is done from the SSD file. It was recorded with two Sharps, only two Sharp microphones, in a church. Actually, the church was selected for what was to be played. That’s one of the qualities of Rene [Laflamme]. Before he does something, he asks where am I going to do it for what you want to play?
I think we’ll have a surprise with the new OSM; they’re building a new concert hall in Montreal and there will be an organ in there and we’re planning on recording it. But to come back to analogue vs digital, Buzz comes from a digital recording. It was transferred to DSD which is the SACD format, but from there we brought it back to a multi-bit state, and the result we got out of that is like, “OK, we sort of brought the analogue into it”, and we’re getting something that is really beautiful. So I figure, you can’t throw away one technology because you’re stuck into it. I think combining them both is the best way to do it.
Roughly how often do you listen to vinyl as opposed to other sources?
Well, vinyl is about 90% of my listening, sometimes it’s 100%! CD is very rare. So it’s mostly vinyl.
We touched on this earlier, but what was your first system, and how has it evolved over the years?
My first system? I paid $110 for it, at a pawn shop downtown! [Laughs] From there on it just kept rolling, up to all the Dynacos that went through. Finally, I sort of settled at one point, I had a Dynaco ST400, I had speakers with 12’ woofers, two mids and two tweeters. The woofer was completely sealed off. At that point, I sort of slowed down and I kept that system for quite a long time, probably 12 to 15 years. Then one day I couldn’t resist any more so I bought the Mirage that you see there. I bought the Bryston, my wife bought me a Linn Sondek for Christmas, that replaced my Rabco ST7. It was a long time before I started buying CDs. I started buying CDs because I was stuck. I kept that for a while, almost 20 years. Then the kids left so I got back into it. That was the first time I walked into Filtronique. I had a budget; the guy said “What’s your budget?”. I was looking for an amp and a preamp, so I said $10,000. It started there; I got back into it. In the last five or six years things went pretty fast. I came home with a very nice system, but the voice didn’t quite do it. I got the Audio Research LS17 with the VS110. I also had the LP12 which we had upgraded as we went along. After that I got the Reference 3, the Reference 110, then the ’110 got traded for two 210s. The speakers didn’t make it, so we got the Sonus Fabers. These are the best I’ve ever heard.
Neat! So, what’s next on your equipment list? A Reference 5, maybe?
Well, no! I tried my luck this weekend. I have something going on, and there’s a deal that was made to me, I can’t tell you the numbers, for a Reference Anniversary.
Oh!
I’ve never heard the thing, nobody I know has heard them. The ones that Filtronique sold—three or four, I think—were sold by Rene, but they came in directly to the customers. No store buys them as a demo! So I read the article in The Absolute Sound, but I met one of Rene’s customers, Doug, yesterday. He lives in Niagara Falls but buys his stuff in Montreal. He had the Reference 3, then he went to the Reference 5, and he bought the Reference 40. He was at the show this weekend and I met him yesterday. I said to him, “If you see my wife, tell her how great it is!”. So yeah, the Reference 40 is on my list, but I only have four weeks to think about it.
And then maybe a Reference 2 Phono?
Nope! I’m sticking with my Nagra VPS.
Just out of curiosity, have you compared the two? What’s the difference?
Honestly, no. For that I’m relying on Rene. He told me it is probably the best, but at some point if the difference is small for this much money... You have to be logical at some point in something emotional. The Reference 40 is part emotional, but from what I’ve heard form people that have it, from Doug, and from what Rene tells me after installing it, it’s day and night. Even from the Reference 5!
Equipment List
Analogue source SME Model 10 turntable with SME Series V tonearm.
Cartridge Lyra Titan i.
Phono stage Nagara VPS, with the VFS vibration plate under it.
Digital sources DCD 1 CD player and DCS Elgar DAC.
Preamp Audio Research Reference 3.
Power amplifiers Audio Research Reference 210.
Speakers Sonus Faber Amati Anniversario.
Cables Crystal, Shunyata, and Siltech; AC: Shunyata.