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RE: The Passing of the JMR Offrandes

Posted by Bob Neill (D) on October 24, 2017 at 15:36:16

In Reply to: The Passing of the JMR Offrandes posted by Frihed89 on October 24, 2017 at 15:29:01:

Yes, they're gone. Reynaud sold the last five pairs this week, one pair to me as insurance should mine ever get taken out by lightening, a burglar, or global climate change. The passing of these speakers (very expensive to build, only builder who can build them right is retiring, sales are way down: "everybody loves them but they've stopped buying them.") feels significant to me. They have been my favorites for years, despite (because of?) being subtilely, artfully colored, giving them a rare ability to persuade us we are having an intimate experience with music. Jean Marie's goal from the beginning for his 'offering,' the Offrande, was to show us what chamber musicians sound like in his living room, where he was accustomed to having them perform.

I say this passing feels significant because the Offrande's priorities seem to be those of an age that is just about over. Reynaud customers are now choosing Abscissas, Orfeos, and some even Concordes over Offrandes (and Euterpes over Blisses, which have also passed) because they want a sonically more complete experience: apparently more and more listeners miss what the Offies give up in order to do what they do: in a word, they want foundational bass, Leica-like clarity in the mids, and the ability to play complex music LOUD. Offrandes get all of the notes of a symphony orchestra but they don't quite get its mass and weight. They can get the lowest notes of the double bass sensationally -- they go to 30 Hertz. But a large massed sound not so much. They can put a string quartet in your room but not quite a full orchestra. A goodly number of my generation's musical priorities were those of Jean Marie. We don't need an orchestra in our living rooms, a clear but scaled down image of one will do IF we are compensated with a near perfect rendering of individual instruments. I often talk about 'magic' when I'm describing audio components, knowing full well that this quality has as much to do with our desires as it does with verisimilitude. We sense magic in a concert hall, sometimes, and so we want it in our living rooms, all of the time, which is unrealistic. I try to remember this in describing gear, asking my readers (and myself) to remain as realistic as possible about these matters. Designing magic into gear always costs something, usually in a degree of truthfulness. (I'm very fond of the little Audio Note K/SPx SE's too.)

To wit: Jean Claude told me last week in Paris at the Son et Image audio show that he is not his father and he needs to move on. His musical tastes and sonic goals, while rooted in those of his father's, are different, mainly broader. Also he has been, as some of you know, a recording engineer (in San Francisco): as such, he believes in the integrity of the recorded sound, believes that if you can get THAT near perfect, all the other things we want will follow. In a sense, we should be grateful he has allowed the Offrande to remain in production as long as he has, I guess. He concedes that doing so has been essentially a tribute to his father. He and his father tweaked the Offie several times to get it closer to a sound they both liked: the Supreme V2 sounds more like a Jean Claude speaker than early Offies. But sentiment only goes so far when you have a business to run, mouthes to feed. So those of you with Offrandes that you love, take care of 'em.

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