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
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
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
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.
