Listening:
 
I knew within the first five minutes why Lamm had garnered quite a reputation in high end audio circles.  This was one of the most beautiful sounding preamplifiers I have heard, and recently, I have heard a few good ones. Specifically, the soundstage was the deepest I have heard from a preamp. There was more than enough low level detail, but presented in a very musical way. And it was very, very quiet. It was quieter than my Audio Research SP16 by a good margin.  Working from recent memory, the Manley 300B preamp actually threw a wider soundstage, but the Lamm went deeper. Depth of soundstage is especially important because it allows for the listener to decipher spacial relationships between instruments and also information about the recording space, whether fabricated or real.

I also have recollections of the Ayre K-5xe solid state Preamplifier (approx $3500) that I had on loan last year. I remember it being hyper detailed, definitely more detailed than the Lamm, but fatiguing, and very analytical sounding. I found it difficult to listen for long periods. The Lamm, by contrast, is a music making machine. My listening periods were long, and late into the evening. What I really noticed was how well the Lamm unraveled complicated musical passages without breaking a sweat. There was plenty of low level detail retrieval, but with an utterly perfect amount of tube magic thrown in.  By tube magic, I don’t mean smoothed over transients or some sort of velvety padding. I mean a harmonic “rightness”. This characteristic comes through when listening to recordings with acoustic instruments, as most music lovers will know when a human voice, an acoustic guitar, or a piano is being reproduced with realistic and accurate timbres.

His voice was throaty and expressive, beautifully recorded by the engineers at the legendary Verve label. In sampling tracks from Hang on to a Dream: The Verve Recordings, I was struck by how much older Hardin sounded than someone in their mid twenties. The Lamm did a superb job of presenting the details of the mixes...the reverbs used, the microphone distortion, and interesting, “buried in the mix” details. But this was not at the expense of musical enjoyment. I also put on Tim Hardin 3: In Concert, an incredibly intimate performance recorded in 1968. For the first time, after having owned this on LP, I heard tape saturation, hall echo, and the proper relationship between the musicians on stage that night.