Voice, texture and space: Dominique Fils-Aimé’s “Where There Is Smoke”

Smoke, fire and the album around them

Dominique Fils-Aimé wrote and performed “Where There Is Smoke,” released on Stay Tuned! by Ensoul Records in 2019. HFI used the 88.2 kHz/24-bit edition.

Ensoul presents Stay Tuned! as the jazz-centred middle chapter of a trilogy moving from blues through jazz toward soul. “Where There Is Smoke” is followed immediately by “There Is Probably Fire.” The label describes an opening of drone, low bass, faint rattle and a lone voice, setting a darker atmosphere within the album’s larger concern with liberation and progress. The neighbouring titles feel like one thought unfolding across two tracks.¹

Because the recording was shaped in the studio, the lead voice, layered vocals, bass, texture and constructed space all belong to the music itself. The album credits name Jacques Roy as producer and engineer, Daniel Lepage as recording supervisor at Studios OPUS in L’Assomption, Quebec, and Harris Newman as mastering engineer in Montréal.

The familiar platform, a different amplifier path

At SELekt, a Laufer Teknik Memory Player MP-32 fed an MSB Technology Cascade DAC. A darTZeel NHB-18NS preamplifier drove NHB-468 monoblocks into Kharma Enigma Veyron 4D loudspeakers. HighendMann Analog Ethernet cables were also used at the venue.

The MP-32, Cascade and Enigma Veyron 4D also appear in HFI’s “OK Tokyo” session, while this recording changes the amplification to darTZeel and brings different music into the same venue. Together, the sessions make the recurring parts of the system easier to recognise.

darTZeel describes the NHB-18NS as battery powered, with a dedicated 50-ohm BNC darT-to-Zeel output. The NHB-468 accepts that connection alongside RCA and XLR inputs and offers two gain settings. Kharma specifies a 4-ohm nominal impedance and a 1.8-ohm minimum for the EV-4D.²³⁴

Following the voice, layers and space

Begin with the lead voice and ask how its body relates to the surrounding layers. Then move outward: identify which elements feel close, which appear behind the singer and which are defined mainly by ambience. On a second pass, follow the bass line independently of the vocal phrasing.

Words such as “texture” and “space” become useful only when tied to an event. Note whether a quiet vocal layer stays intelligible beneath a louder one, whether the end of a phrase remains separate from the next entrance, and whether bass pitch can still be followed when the arrangement fills in. Then hear the song beside “There Is Probably Fire” on the album: sequence can reveal an intention that a system demo excerpt alone cannot.

Recorded at SELekt

HFI recorded the playback at SELekt in Seoul on 11 November 2025 using DPA-4011 microphones and a Zoom F8n Pro at 192 kHz/32-bit float. Sennheiser HD820 headphones are listed in the production workflow.

Before recording, HFI checked each DPA-4011 microphone’s distance from the loudspeakers with a laser distance meter and set the matched pair precisely for the sweet spot. With headphones, the layered voices, bass and constructed space can be explored from that listening perspective.