My 2 Cents on Salk SongTowers
Yesterday I spent about 2 and a half hours at Swerd’s house in Maryland listening to his Salk SongTower speakers. I brought my Polk bookshelf speakers (RTi 4, which I think is comparable now to the RTiA 1), as well as an assortment of music.
I listened to the first three tracks of Takk… (Takk…, Glosoli, Hoppipolla), by Sigur Ros, The Ecstasy of Gold and Call of the Ktulu on Metallica S&M, Rotten Apple from Jar of Flies by Alice In Chains, and Wish You Were Here and High Hopes from Echoes, by Pink Floyd. Additionally, I listened to Fanfare for the Common Man, which I believe was played by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra… Swerd would have to help me with that.
I don’t have my technical verbiage down so, bear with me, but what follows is my hacksaw version of a review.
Sigur Ros is very complex music that has a lot of different sounds all playing at the same time. Often it is very hard to distinguish the notes of an individual instrument when they move towards their very loud, very busy highs. My speakers totally lose it when this is happening and the best way to describe what is happening is an undirected cacophony of sound. My takeaway has always been that there is just too much going on for a cheap tweeter and one 5 inch driver to handle. After switching speakers, there were a few things I noticed. The cymbals and piano were much more localized, and what I believe to be the imaging of the speakers really had me picturing where the drums and piano were located on a stage. Another very noticeable thing with the Salk speakers was the irregularities of the recording. Swerd noticed this immediately, asking if the sound was supposed to be there, and it is something that I’ve heard in the songs before. In Glosoli, there are very noticeable sounds (maybe deficiencies in the recording, maybe purposeful) which the Salks brought out with impressive (and distracting) clarity. I thought that the Salk’s did a bit better job with the busyness of the highs in the songs, where I was able to pick up on individual instruments better than with my own speakers, but I think that there are times in some of the Sigur Ros songs that there is just way too much going on, and this also came through a bit on the Salks.
The Metallica is another busy selection, with the San Francisco Symphony playing at the same time as the band. This presents a few times where there are dueling sounds, and usually Lars Ulrich wins. The best thing I noticed during these tracks was that while the drums of the band dominated the sound for much of the time, the sounds of the symphony were still well defined, albeit mostly as background to what Lars Ulrich was doing. A very common theme was the ability of the Salks to present the material with a broad soundstage even when the songs reached their peaks. With my speakers, there seems to be a point where it all just sounds loud, and it sounds like everything was just coming at you. With the Salks, the sound seemed spread out, and the details were still present with Lars pounding on the bass drum furiously.
Rotten Apple is a far less complex song which was good because it helped to hear how the individual instruments sounded. More than a lot of rock/alternative songs, I think this is a song that shines because of its ability to be played loud with clarity, and this is something that the Salks did a very good job with. I thought it was great how well defined each instrument was and the mixture of Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell’s voices was neat because you could hear the harmonization, but also pick out the individual vocals of each singer.
They may not have been Swerd’s favorites, but I thought that of the music I brought, the Pink Floyd tracks highlighted his speakers best. Listening to High Hopes, I could have possibly been convinced that the bell was tolling in the next room behind the speaker, and in the intro to Wish you were here, I loved how the slightly distorted (this is on purpose) guitar felt like it was 10 feet in front of me, just to the right which is ultimately joined by a guitar right in the middle. I could hear the drums slightly off center, and the amazing clarity of the song was impressive. The most interesting thing I noticed was David Gilmour’s voice in the song. Usually his accent comes through and he generally sings with a lot of clarity, but in this track, I could hear the gruffness of his voice, almost as if he had been suffering from a sore throat. Swerd discussed that this could be a function of the speaker design, but this was not a characteristic that I noticed in his voice in High Hopes, and I would say that it was actually the speakers bringing out the human flaws in his voice at the time (this is purely conjecture on my part).
Lastly, Fanfare for the Common Man, which is a piece I’d heard, but didn’t know where, was simply incredible. The dynamic range between the highs and lows in that track was something that I would guess many recordings simply don’t have, and the ability of the Salk’s to replicate that sound was fantastic. I can’t imagine how anyone would be left wanting for bass during this piece. Sure this isn’t going to be rattling the windows of the car 12 lanes away on the Beltway at rush hour, but I’d argue that the sound of T-Rex stomping in Jurassic Park wouldn’t even need a sub with these. I’m almost certain that there would have been multiple physical failures with my speakers had we played them at the levels we listened to Fanfare for the Common Man.
I really enjoyed these speakers, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to listen to them. I have a long road ahead in my search for speakers, but these are definitely large on my radar.
