Kora TB200 integrated amplifier – encore une fois!

Detailed listening notes

Talk Talk’s CD “The Colour of Spring” is constructed music in the sense that fragments from recordings have been put together to create a song around Mark Hollis’ vocals.

It is sampling, but with a mixing desk instead of a sampler or computer. You can hear this through the detailed reproduction, but nowhere is it distracting. It remains music where you are drawn into the melody and the story.

As if you were at the recording session

The opposite of constructed is Joe Jackson’s CD “Body & Soul”. This was recorded while the band was playing together, with the sound of the Vanguard recording room deliberately included in the recording.

The soundstage is stunning with the Kora TB200. You can almost “see” the stage and, as a listener, you feel the musicians. Especially the horns stand out, with air surrounding the brass and without everything else being pushed away in the soundstage by the brass.

Tension arc

The CD ‘Arc’ is a sonic masterpiece recorded by TRPTK. I could devote words to how precise the sound of the instruments is, how everything is exactly right in relation to each other, how the space around and between the instruments allows the music to breathe, how effortlessly every impulse is rendered, how it never clogs up anywhere, and how all this is glued together by the acoustics of the Westvestkerk in Schiedam, where this was recorded.

But I won’t.

I want to talk about how the tension in ‘Collage van een Achtvlak’ by composer Bianca Bongers becomes palpable. About how ‘Emotional Diversity’ by Arena Martirosan ends with bated breath and how this breath is blown out and relaxed with ‘September 1’ by Sarah Neutkens.

The Intercontinental Ensemble showcases a thoughtful programme on this CD, and that programme is presented with great conviction by the Kora TB200.

Mastered to the extreme

With ‘The Spirit of Eden’, Talk Talk has taken the recording technique of ‘The Colour of Spring’ even further. An album with extreme dynamics and subtle, soft-sounding recordings of acoustic instruments hidden in the mix.

A difficult album for any amp. Playback through the Kora TB200 is a strange mix of civility in presentation and tremendous tension in the music. ‘Desire’ sounds like the rollercoaster it should be, but nowhere do you, as a listener, get blown away in a sound hurricane. Amplifiers with more emphasis on rhythm and punch are often producing uncontrolled sonic explosions in this track. The Kora remains controlled and tasteful. It is the character of the amp.