I like to admit that lately, because of the various new entries in my digital playback chain, I have been neglecting my record collection a bit. One evening, when I heard Zakir Hussain's great ECM recording Making Music, I was startled by what I recently had been missing. Hariprasad Chaurasias' flutes, John McLaughlin's acoustic guitar, Jan Garbarek's saxophone, and Zakir Hussain's percussion sounded as dynamic and seamless as I previously had experienced only from some audiophile recordings such as old direct-to-disc albums. Tonal colours and transients came very much close to a live performance in a club, like the Neuburger Birdland club where musicians use to play unplugged. The way the sound was detaching from the loudspeakers was so convincing that this highly realistic effect also affected the music's spatial portrayal. Acoustical Systems' cartridge-tonearm combo certainly has its share in all of this, but it is still too early to award them the merits for this magnificent performance. As already said, I haven't been listening to vinyl for quite a long time. However, in the meantime a lot has happened in my listening room. At the present the Kaiser Acoustics Kawero! Classic are substituting the LumenWhites, while some successfully applied tuning devices from Harmonix improve the room acoustics, and the splendid PS Audio BHK Signature provides the necessary power.

But before I compared The Palladian with the equally vivid and sumptuous Transrotor JR Tamino in the Thales Symplicity II tonearm to assess the Acoustical System components' proportion in the overwhelming musical experience just described, I experimented a bit with different impedance loads. The Palladian started its test round with the 85 ohms I had previously run the Lyra Etna with. Thus I interpreted the manufacturer's recommendation – they specify 100 to 200 ohms – a little bit too generous. However, this specification ranged in the upper scope of the usual empirical formula and even beyond, as the load resistance should be 10 to 20 times the generator's internal resistance value: That would resemble 50 to 100 ohms for the specified five ohms. For this purpose I used the plug-in resistors valued 40, 85, 150, and 300 ohms supplied with Einstein's balanced phono stage "The Turntable's Choice." Contrary to Acoustical Systems' recommendation, I tried to use 40 ohms instead of the previous 85 ohms, but this turned out to be a bad idea, because Dick Schory's "Buck Dance" from the album Bang, Baaroom and Harp was rendered comparatively hampered and less airy. The portrayal of depth and room height appeared some way restricted.

So I tried to go with the other extreme, in this case 300 ohms, and this attempt provided results that were significantly better. A huge space opened up, the musicians literally sparkled with the joy of playing. Now performing at its best, it tonally also stepped a little bit to the bright side. Opting for half of the load impedance, the tonal colours became somewhat richer again, the endeavours of the New Perkussion Ensemble reached the same intensity as before and the acoustic image seemed exceptionally credible – albeit not quite as spectacular as with 300 ohms. Since The Palladian had been attracting me so much with the 85 ohms loading, I tried this value again. However, the sound was approaching too much the way it had been performing in a somewhat more extreme way with the loaded 40 ohms. In conjunction with The Palladian, Einstein's phono preamplifier for my taste works best with 150 ohms – of course, the ideal load impedance depends very much on the circuitry of the phono stage's input section. Needless to say, I once again checked how the now chosen load resistance affected the playback of Making Music: The immediacy of the entry of guitar and saxophone impressed a bit more, Jan Garbarek's soprano saxophone became a touch more poignant, and the spatiality appeared to be a little more airy.