When setting up the FIVE SX, I listened to a lot of the usual test tracks together with Jean-Pascal Panchard. And then when testing Melco's S1, the XACT Phantom cable and the Andante Largo Silent Mount SM I just mentioned, they naturally popped up again: None of the familiar test files or LPs showed any abnormalities; no, here the FIVE SX fulfilled all expectations. Let's move on to a record that I occasionally use a track from for testing, but which I still enjoy in its entirety: Zakir Hussain's Making Music: The quartet made up of percussion, acoustic guitar, flute, and saxophone sparkles with joy, thanks to a great extent to the FIVE, performing in a very large – virtual? – space and thrilling with transients that come very, very close to those of real, i.e., unrecorded and unreproduced instruments. Whether in terms of timbre, speed, tonality or focus: the FIVEs make me perfectly happy when I enjoy music with them. As the short list of tests in which I have used them shows, the Stenheims also very much meet all the requirements of a sound transducer for working purposes.

And now for something completely different: a blues/rock album from the mid-70s, namely Alexis Korner's untitled vinyl record produced for Polydor. I readily admit that I found the sound slightly irritating, at least on the first two tracks, “Machine Gun and Julie” and “Lies,” even though the album was one of my favorites over 40 years ago. But extreme high end demands and recordings of popular music from that era rarely go together. However, by the time I got to “Wild Women & Desperate Men,” the album was really enjoyable again, because despite some hissing sibilants, the Stenheim FIVE SX conveyed the drive of the songs in a captivating way. You just have to listen to it a little louder, but that's no problem at all for the FIVE SX: they can handle high volume levels. On the quieter “Geneva,” where Korner is accompanied only by an acoustic guitar and an electric piano, the subtle groove creeps right under your skin. “Hey Good Lookin'” is particularly appealing thanks to Colin Hodgkinson's electric bass and Tony Carr's rich sounding bass drum. On the second side, the brass section on “Captain America” immediately draws you in. You just can't sit still in your listening chair. The Stenheims make you forget all your hi-fi criteria and simply spread good vibes. What a delight! “Casey Jones,” driven forward by a fat bass drum, hisses quite heavily due to the recording, but is still so catchy that I probably won't be able to get the song out of my ears for days. But, let’s quickly go back to something more audiophile.