proportional and not excessive. I found myself with a growing respect for both the star—whether despite or because of his frosty reserve, I’m not sure—and the delicacy of the mix.

Munich, despite its heightened moral complexity, came with an extravagantly ultraviolent procession of explosions and gunshots that tested the mettle of every driver in the system. Right from

the opening frames, the Cascades

grabbed me with the soundtrack’s mourning female vocal and string orchestra, and they never let go.

The sub did well with minor details, like the low ambient hum of trains and buses, but also stood up to the stiffer demands of the

hotel explosion—not a single det-

onation but an extended ballet of destruction. It was convincing enough to be unnerving, as a movie on this subject should be.

The next thing I played after Munich was the stereo SACD of Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It includes excerpts from six of the sound- tracks Herrmann wrote for Alfred Hitchcock, including a suite from Psycho, a string-orchestra masterpiece that could outgun any heavy metal band. Going from angst- ridden terrorism and assassination to a soundtrack that evokes someone being stabbed in the shower was a soft landing of sorts—I could almost hear Sir Alfred saying, “Don’t worry, dear. It’s just a moooovie.” Even with no surround mix and just two speakers operat-

ing, the Cascades could throw

out a convincing soundstage that dominated every seat in the room.

I could sit directly in front of the left speaker and still hear continuous imaging with no hole in the

middle. The voluptuously dissonant string-and-brass textures that open the Vertigo suite billowed like the sails of a clipper ship caressed by the wind, the ostinatos evoking the opening credits’ unforgettable spiraling graphics.

An SACD surround mix of Beethoven’s ninth symphony didn’t fare as well. The 1977 analog recording by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic was mastered in 96/24 PCM before its transfer to SACD. In my opinion, the string sound is less refined than that of a native or straight-from- analog SACD, and the Cascades didn’t hesitate to tell me how they felt about that. Despite the skillful performance, what should have been a rich assortment of vocal and instrumental tone color came out monochromatic and lacking in spa- tiality. I wouldn’t call these speakers “ruthlessly revealing”—code language for products that make a large percentage of recordings sound unpleasant—nor did they add any sweetening of their own. They were just finicky and truth- ful, as an audiophile should be. In this case I think they were actually disappointed in the recording.

They cheered up when I got to Sinatra at the Sands on DVD-Audio. I could hear the effect of cigarettes on Sinatra’s lungs and throat, the precision of the consonants that flowed delicately and precisely through his teeth and lips, the way all of this interacted with the microphone and the acoustics of the club, and individual voices in the audience laughing at his awful

jokes. The focus couldn’t have been
tighter or the spotlight brighter. Of the dozens of CDs I played,

the most memorable was 10,000

Clowns on a Rainy Day by Jan

Akkerman. The former guitarist of

[H I G H L I G H T S

￿ Innovative flat woofer diaphragm ￿ Ceramic/metal driver materials
￿ Best-looking Infinity speakers ever

Focus has lived down his former band’s 1971 yodeling hit “Hocus Pocus” to pursue a lengthy solo career. His trusty Les Paul is the focal (sorry) point of this mainly instrumental live double-CD set. The Cascades brought it to the front of the mix, slightly in front of the speakers in Dolby Pro Logic II, while the band lingered slightly behind. It was like looking at

arichly colored object against a black-and-white background. Akkerman’s supple intonation was a living, breathing, dancing sonic creature. Although visual responses to sounds are routine for me, in this case, I also tasted the guitar: It tasted like dark chocolate.

Like waves breaking on a beach, reviewing these speakers was a long and steady succession of favorable impressions. They looked great. They were easy to set up. There was no screeching, no distancing, and no sweetening. The equalized subwoofer nimbly sidestepped my room’s bass hump. Broad off-axis response from the flat woofers and waveguide-enhanced tweeters lib- erated me from the sweet spot. The Cascades gave me an unparalleled freedom to listen from any spot in the room and with any kind of material, and, for that, I am both surprised and grateful.

*Audio editor Mark Fleischmann is also the author of the annually updated book Practical Home Theater (www.quietriverpress.com).

Posted with permission from the September 2006 issue of Home Theater ® www.hometheatermag.com. Copyright 2006, PRIMEDIA Inc. All rights reserved.