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Turntable Consonance Isolde/T8 (Part 2)

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5/24/2014 9:53:41 PM

Opera Audio

Opera-Consonance was founded by an engineer, Shihui Liu, in 1994 and its inception resulted from him designing a single, home-grown valve amplifier. He was subsequently asked to make another that could be sold – and the rest, as they say, is history. The company has gradually forged itself a solid reputation for good design and fine build quality and is well known for its wide selection of amplifiers, in particular. These range from simple, low-powered 300B valve designs right up to the mighty Calaf transistor powerhouse; but a complete Consonance system can be assembled, as they also manufacture turntables, tonearms, CD players, loudspeakers and an all-in-one amplifier/CD player/ tuner. They even make interconnect, loudspeaker and mains cables to put it all together! Interestingly, Consonance was also the first manufacturer of turntables in China and Shihui Liu is a committed vinyl fan, demonstrating his equipment using an analogue source at every show the company attends. Even more impressively, he still creates all the company’s new designs himself.

The rear of the Isolde has a mains socket and dial-up speed control. Above, the output RCAs are an integral part of the tonearm cabling; earth lead is hard-wired

The rear of the Isolde has a mains socket and dial-up speed control. Above, the output RCAs are an integral part of the tonearm cabling; earth lead is hard-wired

Call for experimentation

The first track to be cued up was ‘New York Morning’, the recent single from Elbow’s new album, The Take Off And Landing Of Everything [Fiction 3754768] and initial impressions were favourable. Guy Garvey’s vocals were located nicely centre-stage and the lowest backing notes during the introduction were pleasingly deep.

Consonance Isolde Review 1

Consonance Isolde Review 1

However, when things moved up a gear, the Consonance sounded both confused and rather shouty in the midrange and decidedly bloated and wobbly in the bass. Listening further confirmed these initial impressions and so I set to in order to see what could be done.

Firstly, the annoying mat went west, to be replaced by a simple felt item, which tidied up the midband very effectively. I also carried out some experimentation with those spongy feet and came to the conclusion that the deck actually worked best with the underside of the plinth sitting directly onto the four legs, rather than locating them in their intended recesses. Returning to Elbow, now the bass was fulsome but not overblown and the midband was far more controlled but without losing any of the intimacy of the musical performance.

One area which was not of concern at any point throughout this experimentation, however, was the treble. The Isolde is a very smooth performer here but not at the expense of any detail; it never seemed muffled or reined-in at any point. It was, in fact, at the top end that the increase in budget allocation made itself felt. Cheaper decks simply do not offer the level of sophistication exhibited by the Isolde and, it has to be said, neither do one or two of its similarly-priced competitors.

Consonance Isolde Review 2

Consonance Isolde Review 2

With these thoughts fresh in my mind, I broke out the strobe disc and wound the platter back down to 33.3rpm to enjoy the delights of ‘Baby I’m A Fool’ from Melody Gardot’s My One And Only Thrill [Verve 1796787]. Miss Gardot’s vocals were an absolute joy, being husky, breathy and alluring, with the backing track gently underpinning everything.

The Isolde had no trouble in setting up a fine sense of perspective to the performance, with very good central image stability. Depth information was also commendable but the deck did fall short of my reference Michell Gyro SE in terms of soundstage width. The Gyro is an absolute master in this respect, however, so the Consonance deserves great credit for not sounding overly constrained by comparison.

Moving on to the track ‘Your Heart Is As Black As Night’ I was also pleased to hear that the Isolde and T8 were more than capable in terms of instrument rendition. Patrick Hughes’ trumpet work was a delight to behold and the backing double-bass line set up a solid musical foundation without ever intruding.

This type of material suited the Isolde, playing to its strengths in the upper mid and treble regions, and allowing it to show off its abilities in bringing everything together as a cohesive whole.


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