Great hi-fi can give you goosebumps. And it relates to another source of horripilation: live music, and its recordings. I’ve also always been a live music junkie—ever since I was a kid.
I was fortunate to have grown up attending the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra’s “LolliPops” children’s concerts. I’d seen some tepid live acts as a kid (ie, Donny and Marie). But nothing prepared me for my first rock concert. It, um, rocked my world.
It was The Power Station, at a large, covered, outdoor amphitheater. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) opened. I was a giddy 12-year-old. An older teenager, the elder daughter of friends of my parents, escorted me. I was excited.
The heady night air felt sticky and grimy. Fortunately, our seats were back where the music wasn’t excessively loud. Even so, being a sensitive kid, I stuffed some cotton in my ears.
I was a naïve Duran Duran fan. This supergroup side project involving two of that group’s five members (plus Robert Palmer and former Chic drummer Tony Thompson) sounded much different from Duran Duran. This was soon after the release of their first, eponymous studio album (widely known as Power Station 331 /3) and their only one until the band’s 1996 reunion.
Why am I rambling about a distant concert memory? Because it was a formative experience, hearing how musicians transform a familiar album when they play it live, and because, when I was reviewing the Chario Aviator Amelia loudspeaker, I kept wanting to play live recordings. I wasn’t exactly sure why. Somehow, these speakers seemed to bring naturalism, humanity, and a sense of aliveness—or liveness—to that music.
When it comes to recreating the feeling of live
Somehow, these speakers seemed to bring naturalism, humanity, and a sense of aliveness—or liveness—to that music.
Origins and principles
Carlo “Charlie” Vicenzetto and Mario Marcello Murace, engineers at the University of Milan, founded Chario in 1975. (“Chario” is a portmanteau of Charlie and Mario.) The two engineers were, and remain, interested in how speakers energize the air in real spaces and how human bodies—head, ears, chest, shoulders—receive and perceive sound.
These are not mere sound-producing appliances. As with so many Italian cars, suits, and shoes, Italian speakers offer style, too. The Chario’s rich wood cabinets curve gracefully—no right angles, which has advantages in the diffraction of standing waves, inside and out. It’s tempting to compare them with another Italian marque known for its woodcraft:
