TONEAudio MAGAZINE The Concierge of High End Audio

In case you haven’t heard the news, we lost one of the industry’s finest writers today.

Unfortunately, Stereophile’s Art Dudley is no more. When I heard the news just a few days ago that he was having problems with cancer that had returned, I had hoped he was going to be ok and had no idea that he was having issues with cancer in the first place. But that was Art, never one to trouble you with that kind of thing. No Go Fund Me page, no posts on social media, looking for sympathy – he just carried on.

While I would love to wax poetic about what great friends Art and I were, we weren’t. We always chatted at the various shows he attended – which wasn’t many because Art hated to fly. A few years ago, I was shocked to see him at the Munich show, but he just laughed and said he had mustered up the courage to go.

That really sums up Art Dudley on one level. He was always understated and always a perfect gentleman. Along with Jonathan Halpern (of TONE Imports, no relation to us), Art and I had put on a seminar about the “Virtues of Vintage Audio” at the New York show eight or nine years ago and had a blast doing it. The room was standing room only, with attendees spilling out into the hall. If you are a Stereophile reader, you know how much Art loved Quads, SET amps, tubes, and his beloved Thorens TD-124 turntables.

After that, we had even chatted about doing a book together, but alas, we were both too damn busy. I sincerely regret not following up on that, because I’m sure I would have learned so much from him. But we always joked about it in the halls.

What made Art such a great writer – one of the best, if not the best in the world of audio reporting, was that his motivation was pure. He lived and breathed this stuff. It was in his soul. And this is what made his articles so enjoyable, whether you agreed with him or not. It always felt like you were right there in the room living it with him – a goal that all of us that write about audio should aspire to. His articles were always a near perfect balance of reporting and telling a story without making it all about him. A good friend of mine compared him to another favorite journalist from the automotive world – Peter Egan. An excellent and worthy comparison.

Even though we were never great friends, I will miss Art tremendously, and always remember him fondly. My sincere regret is that we never did get to be good friends. I think we would have had a lot of laughs together.

Power conditioning products can be deceptive. With most, you hear a modest to dramatic reduction in background noise initially and the excitement builds.

More often than not, when the initial purchase excitement subsides and you listen to a wider range of music something sounds amiss and it’s usually dynamics and musical nuance. Those “inky, black backgrounds” that everyone is buzzing about usually comes at a cost. Different, not better. Pretty soon, you plug your system back into the wall and notice that those lost dynamics are back.

With the Duet, Clarus has eliminated the main problem surrounding many of the power conditioning products out there, building a conditioner with sufficient dynamic range. The massive 30 amp, C-Core inductor at the heart of the Duet offers enough reserve to keep up with large, monoblock power amplifiers and high powered subwoofers. Fortunately, I’ve always got a number of these around, so this was an easy test.

Spoiler alert: The Duet does a fantastic job and exceeds expectation. And it does so at the very reasonable cost of $1,250 each.

These somewhat small power conditioners are deceptive, as soon as you pick them up, they feel a lot heavier than you might think this box would weigh. The layout is simple, with a high quality duplex outlet on the top panel and a 15A IEC socket on the rear face. Aimed at the monoblock power amplifier customer because of its high-current capability, it’s also the perfect choice for anyone using a system built around a single source and high powered integrated amplifier. If you’re just running a DAC and integrated amp, or phono stage and integrated, the Duet is perfect, having more than enough capacity.

You’re gonna want the cables too

Dynamics and musical nuance rely heavily on current capability and delivery. Anything getting in the way of that process, stifles transients and slows things down. The more dynamic ability your system has, the more you will notice this effect. To that end, Clarus offers their Crimson High-Current power cables, at $1,720 each. (6 foot length) Those that can keep their Duet(s) closer to the wall outlet can opt for the 3 foot version, which drops the price substantially to $1,020 each.

You either subscribe to the theory that power has come all this way to your house, and the last few feet of cable doesn’t matter, or the theory that power is a gigantic well, that you tap into to power your system – and everything matters. If you are in the former camp, you’re probably not even reading this review. I’ve always chosen the latter view, which is why I’ve always embraced having clean power for my system. However, it’s always been the fight of eliminating distortion and artifacts from the power line, versus dynamics. Forced to choose, I’ll take the dynamic freedom, which is why so many power products have fallen by the wayside in the 16 years we’ve been around. The reason you’ve seen so few reviews on power products in TONE hasn’t been for lack of investigation, we just haven’t heard many great ones.

The Duet/Crimson combination does a fantastic job, and at reasonable cost. If it makes budgetary sense, I suggest thinking of the Duet conditioner and Crimson High Current power cord as a system onto itself. The Duet works well solo, offering a substantial improvement over having nothing in the system, but when you add the cord to the mix, the window on your music is open all the way.

Breaking them out, the Duet still offers a substantial improvement in all the musical attributes mentioned, but the Crimson cord takes it all the way. If you can only move on the Duet for now, adding the cord later makes a clear upgrade path.

The test subjects

Putting this quartet of Clarus products to the test, we installed them in one system with the PrimaLuna EVO 400 vacuum tube monoblocks, the Audio Research REF160M vacuum tube monoblocks, the Nagra Classic solid-state monoblocks and a vintage pair of Pass Labs Aleph monoblocks. Each combination yielded similar improvements in low level clarity, lower noise floor and lack of dynamic restriction. However, like nearly every other tube powered amplifier tested, both of the tube amplifiers seemed to have a greater delta in noise floor reduction than the solid state alternatives. This has been very consistent with all of the good power conditioners we’ve tried when connected to tube electronics.

Playing to the dynamic range of all the mono amplifiers tried, the Duets were each plugged into dedicated 20 amp circuits, so they would not be compromised by the power available to them, and connected via the Crimson power cords, with Cardas receptacles. I take this stuff seriously!

More often than not, if a power conditioner passes all the other tests, when pushed hard, in a high power situation, it brings a compression effect not unlike a solid-state amplifier featuring a soft clipping feature. Dynamic peaks when played at high volume merely lose their impact, and the sound field starts to collapse in all three directions, much like a digital recording that’s been normalized. I’m happy to report the Duet scores a perfect ten here, exhibiting none of these problems. A true test of dynamics.

The other

Fortunately, we still had the REL 212SE subwoofers on hand, as well as a pair of their newest S/510s in the living room system, so this offered an additional confirmation on Clarus’ claims. Plugging your subwoofer into a Duet (or Duets, if you have multiple subs) offers a different, yet equally exciting improvement. Called upon to usually work from about 60hz on down, it’s tough to hear a reduction in noise floor.

The improvement here, is strictly in speed and texture. Every single one of the subs we tried, even down to entry level REL and Paradigm subs (both under $1000) offered the same qualitatitve improvement. You’ve probably got your favorite bass heavy tracks, and the funkier the bass line, the more you’ll hear what the Duet brings to the presentation. It’s easier to hear fingers plucking and slamming bass strings, and it becomes easier to hear the different cabinets that bass players use, instead of just hearing one-note bass.

Wait for it

Like so many other products of this ilk, you will notice a lower noise floor immediately. Using the Duet/Crimson combination provides an effect much like listening to a favorite musical selection in 16/44 resolution, and then immediately hearing it again in 24/96, and going right back. There’s a sense of space in the high resolution, with an accompanying ease that the standard resolution track simply does not have. And, then it’s tough to go back.

Playing a long list of drum and percussion heavy tracks, selections that really tax a power amplifier make it a lot easier to hear what the Duet/Crimson bring to the presentation. The leading and trailing edges of transients are now reproduced with far less effort. From a psychoacoustic sense, there’s much less fatigue, and having the Duet/Crimson in the loop makes it that much easier to relax, engage the music, and forget you are listening to components. That’s what makes this product worth the asking price. This level of clarity is something you can’t get another way.

For all the audiophiles carrying on about the importance of source components, I submit that starting with clean, distortion free power is the ultimate attention to the source. No matter how massive the filter capacitors in your power amplifier are, they aren’t cleaning it all up.

Cost/benefit analysis

It’s always hard to make a value judgement for you. However, in the context of a $10k – $30k system, a pair of Duets moves the scale more than far enough to feel like a great value. The Duet probably offers 75% of the improvement, with the cords adding the rest. Considering how much power these are capable of passing through, it’s not the worst idea to install a couple of premium power outlets to go with your Duets, just so you are getting everything they are capable of delivering.

The Clarus Duet power conditioner(s) are one of the best performing I’ve heard at any price, doing no harm to the musical content and revealing more music than your system is capable of without them in place. Deceptively simple, this is no easy feat. That they do this for $1,250 each, makes them highly worthy of one of our Exceptional Value Awards for 2020. I’m keeping this pair, so you’ll be seeing them as associated components going forward, permanently attached to our PrimaLuna EVO400 monoblocks.

www.clarus.com

Features

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The Audiophile Apartment:

Shanon Says:

Mine: It Should Be Yours

Music

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Future Tense

Gear in our immediate future

Cover Feature:

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Nagra products. I can’t hide that from you and keep a straight face. But the admiration is for a good reason – they make fantastic products. Having been to their factory several times now, the team at Nagra is a group dedicated to excellence in every aspect, from design through final build. And their heritage is second to none.

Some American customers bristle at the classic form factor of Nagra Classic components, but I love the simple, compact elegance they offer. Not everyone wants a massive rack of audio gear in their environment, but they still crave high sonic achievement – precisely who the Classic series is for. Those wanting even more performance and a more full-size chassis can step up to the HD series of components – considered some of the world’s absolute finest by recording engineers and audio reviewers the world over.

Just as I would rather have a 1988 Porsche Carerra instead of the new 991 model, I prefer the Classic Line. I like the more straightforward presentation. I love the way a small group of Nagra Classic components disappear in a room, instead of drawing attention to themselves. Yet when you do notice them, and move closer to inspect, the careful attention to every detail that makes a Nagra a Nagra becomes apparent. The smoothness of the controls, the perfection in the details of the casework, and of course, the famous Nagra Modulometer – homage to their decades of building pro gear and recorders lights up the quality center in your brain.

It gets even better when you play music.

Pairing the Classic Preamplifier initially with a Nagra Classic DAC, power supply, and a pair of Classic power amplifiers, operating in bridged mode, is a prodigious combination. Even though the HD series reveals still more music. The Classic line should not be mistaken as “entry-level.” This group of components in place of my standard reference stack of Pass and dCS gear is incredibly musical and does a fantastic job in every sense of the imagination. But for now, we are merely talking about the preamplifier.

The Classic Preamplifier tips the price scale at $17,900. You can add the Nagra VFS base ($2,000) and the Classic PSU power supply ($11,000) to take the performance of the Classic Preamplifier to an even higher level. The PSU power supply does add a greater degree of musicality, with more dynamics, increased bass slam, and definition. It also generates a larger, more three-dimensional soundfield, but it is costly if you own only one Nagra Classic component. This upgrade may not be for everyone. Should you have the tube DAC the power supply is required, and there is an additional output for a Classic Preamplifier and a Nagra VPS two-input phono stage as well.

Powering a single component may be tough to justify, but the power supply is a bargain if you have all three components or plan on adding them soon. For the rest of this review, we will concentrate on the Classic Preamplifier as a standalone component -with the VFS (but without the power supply.) I feel the VFS base makes enough of an improvement in noise floor and focus that it is essential to getting the most out of your Classic. As with nearly every vacuum tube component we’ve reviewed, vibration control platforms/devices usually show more effect with tube gear. Should you already possess a world-class rack, the VFS [ADS1] is not necessary, but it still looks fantastic and complements Nagra’s design ethos perfectly.

Road-tested functionality

For those not familiar with Nagra’s 70 years of experience in designing audio gear, primarily for the pro sound environment, this is where the form factor originates. Their recorders, like the Nagra III pictured here, feature a compact shape and the large, perfectly calibrated Modulometer – a Nagra trademark to keep levels accurate.

When Nagra began to design audio gear for the home environment, it made perfect sense to their engineers to keep things compact. The meter continues to be produced, and Nagras assembly team pays careful attention to their construction and calibration. Illustrated is the test bench where every piece of Nagra gear goes before heading out to you, with multiple, sophisticated checks along the assembly process.

The term “Swiss made” is often associated with the Swiss watchmaking industry. Still, every bit of meticulous detail that you would apply to any top Swiss watchmaker takes place inside the Nagra factory. It is clean, quiet, and highly organized. Walking through the factory as I have done a few times now, the vibe is calm, and the people building your Nagra are friendly but highly focused. This level of focused excellence is what gives Nagra components such a high level of mechanical and electrical quality. I’m sure that somewhere a Nagra component has failed, but in my 15 years of using Nagra components as reference pieces here at TONE, and among my friends that own them, no one I know has had a Nagra component fail.

This is a must if you are recording on location out on the edge of civilization, or capturing a legendary performance at the world-renowned Montreux Jazz Festival (where Nagra gear is used exclusively to record every performance.). The Nagra SN was used by NASA on later Apollo to capture those legendary events.  [ADS2] It is still a big bonus knowing that your home audio system will always be there to fulfill your musical desires.

New yet familiar

While the casework, layout and form factor will be familiar to those using the Nagra Jazz preamplifier, and if you happen to be stepping up from the earlier PL-L or PL-P preamplifier, you’ll note the inputs and outputs are now all on the rear panel. Again, the side inputs of the PL series are an homage to the pro side of Nagra, but the rear inputs certainly make it easier to integrate the Classic into a home system. Let it not be said that the Swiss are inflexible.

The rest of the inputs are also similar to Nagra’s past, as well as the other components in the Classic lineup. There is a switch for volume, an input selector and to the far right, a large dial that powers up the Classic Preamp, allowing it to be fully on, in standby, or by using the selection marked “R,” controlled by the handy (and equally compact) remote control. Somehow as easy to use as the remote is, I always find myself getting up to manually adjust volume just because I like the feel of Nagra gear. It is unique and like no other.

The Classic preamplifier has four sets of RCA inputs and a single set of XLRs, while the output has two sets of XLRs and one set of RCA. Either way, it should be more than enough for any system.

Around front, there is a small switch for XLR, RCA, or headphones. That’s right, headphones. Part of the increase in price from the Jazz is the built-in headphone amplifier, which is excellent in its own right. Spending a fair amount of time using the headphone jack with phones ranging from a pair of Grado SR60s all the way to the Focal Utopias, the verdict is top-notch. Some of the world’s finest (and most expensive) dedicated headphone amplifiers offer a little bit more resolution and dynamics, as they should. Still, the headphone amplifier in the Classic is outstanding.

Neutral in more ways than one

The overall sound of the Classic builds upon the evolution of the Jazz and the PL-L/P before it. This is still a three-tube design, with a pair of 12AU7s and a 12AX7, but the newest preamplifier is quieter, more dynamic, and more refined at both ends of the frequency spectrum. As we happen to have a Jazz here to make a comparison, the first thing that comes to mind is if you have a Jazz, you will definitely be able to experience more music with the Classic, but the flavor and voicing of your Jazz is nothing to hang your head over.

Listening to the opening track on St. Vincent’s Love This Giant, the big bass drum is more robust, more locked down with the Classic. Rolling through a long playlist of bass-heavy tracks, it’s easy to hear that there is more texture, life, and definition, along with a little more speed to the bass line. Nagra has done a lot to update the power supply in the Classic, so this makes perfect sense.

Switching to vocal tracks and music showing off the other end of the frequency scale, the same observations are made. Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Elish both come further out of the speakers, feeling more convincing and natural. Cymbals have more sheen, and the soundfield created by the Classic is larger in all dimensions. The Jazz feels a little small when you go back to it, but still very listenable. However, those asking the familiar “should I upgrade to the new box” question, I’d say that if it doesn’t cause any undue financial strain, it’s definitely a worthwhile upgrade. Sell your Jazz to a friend that isn’t versed in the way of Nagra yet!

Another aspect of the Classics performance that shouldn’t be overlooked is its compatibility with other amplifiers, tube, or solid-state. I made it a point to use about ten different amplifiers with the Classic, and there were no issues, and it’s neutral tonal balance carried through to reveal the signature of the power amplifier used. Even the RCA outputs had no problem driving a 25-foot pair of Cardas Clear cable between amp and pre.

I’m sure that Nagra people would love you to have an all-Nagra system, but we all start our journey somewhere. The Nagra Classic preamplifier works well with whatever components you choose to mate with it. Very Swiss Indeed.

The Nagra Classic Preamplifier

MSRP: $17,500

www.nagraaudio.com

Peripherals

Amplifier Nagra Classic

Digital Source Nagra Tube DAC

Analog Source GrandPrixAudio Parabolica Turntable/TriPlanar Arm Koetsu Jade Platinum

Speakers Focal Stella Utopia EM

Cable Cardas Clear, Tellurium Q Reference

We’ve always been bonkers about Rega’s (almost flagship, they also make the $50k Naiad) turntable, the P10. Building on what they started with the P9 over a decade ago, with it’s machined subplatjer and ceramic composite platter, the P10 is a piece of visual as well as analog fine art.

The refinement provided by every aspect of the table, from the power supply to the new white felt mat shows Rega has left nothing unexamined.

Our review sample is here, and equipped with the new Apheta 3 MC cartridge as well.

At $6,695 with cartridge installed, and the latest RB3000 tonearm, this promises to be exciting.

FACTORY SITE: http://www.rega.co.uk/planar-10.html

US Importer: http://www.soundorg.com

As somewhat of a self-imposed hermit anyway, I’m keeping my head down, staying out of the traffic pattern, and staying busy.

There’s plenty of work to do here, and we will continue to produce content at TONE as if things were back to what we used to consider normal. Our hope is to produce a bit more, in the hope that we can at least provide a minute of distraction here and there.

For those that are interested, we’ll be posting weekly to let you know what’s up and what we’re working on. I truly hope that you are all safe, sound, and out of harms way. Here’s to all the strength that you can muster right now. If we provide a little bit of distraction, that’s great. If you need to be alone and not think of music or hifi right now, we understand.

The new APL-10 preamplifier and AFM-25 monoblocks from Rivera Audio Labs continue to amaze. The ultimate in simplicity, this all tube preamp and hybrid (tube input stage, solid state, Class-A output stage) monoblocks are an excellent match with the 94db/1 watt Focal Stella Utopia Ems. Rounding out the system is the PSAudio Perfect Wave DAC, a Torus TOT line conditioner, and all cable from Cardas Audio.

The overall sound is very natural and open. As a big fan of Class-A amplifiers from Pass, Luxman (along with vintage Krell and Levinson) the Rivera amps have all of that in spades, yet the tube/hybrid design offers a bit more magic. 25 watts per channel won’t be enough for everyone, the other two Rivera amplifiers offer 50 wpc and 100, effectively. We’ll have a full review soon, but these are a true joy.

You can find out a little more here at Rivera Audio Labs…

And, their North American importer, TONE Imports (not affiliated with us, but it has a nice ring to it, eh?)

PS:  I understand that most of you probably have way bigger fish to fry right now, than worry about what your next hifi purchase is going to be, and that to just tell you to “Just take it easy and listen to music for the next few weeks” may not be much solace. So you won’t be getting that one from me.

So, take good care, and stay safe my friends.

Even though there is a wealth of streaming options available to music lovers, the CD is quietly making a bit of a comeback. Not everyone wants to be an IT person, and some really enjoy the simplicity of putting a disc in and pushing play. Not to mention, there are some great deals to be had in the used CD bins.

Over the last several years, vinyl’s comeback reinvigorated the love for turntables. Following on the footsteps of this old-school resurgence CDs are experiencing a surprise comeback too. Embracing this trend, Italy’s Gold Note seeks to bring together the best of CD playback and streaming into a single package with the CD-1000 player and DAC. Indeed, the CD-1000 performs admirably in extracting the most from CDs. However, it also features a USB input so the internal DAC can deliver double-duty in decoding high-resolution PCM files. While Gold Note player cannot decode SACD or DVD-A disks, DSD, or MQA files, listeners will enjoy its prowess with a vast majority of their music collection.

Behold gold

After unpacking the CD1000, it’s evident that Italy’s Gold Note puts a lot of effort into the aesthetics of their products to complement the equally-beautiful sound.

The player comes in a variety of finishes. In addition to the gold anodizing reflecting the company’s namesake, Gold Note offers black and silver options to match other downstream components. While some manufacturers anodize only the thick aluminum faceplate to save production cost, the CD-1000 surfaces all reflect the owner’s color choice. Atop the CD-1000, even the ventilation slits prove attractive. It also features a custom-made aluminum CD drawer rather than the cheap plastic ones used in most players. The unit’s heft also reflects serious build quality. The player weighs in at 33 pounds (15kg) with external dimensions of 17 inches wide, 14.75 inches deep, and 5.3 inches tall (430mm X 375mm X 135mm).

The front panel controls offer the expected options for a CD player. Eject, play/pause, track skipping or scanning, stop, and standby buttons integrate gracefully into the faceplate. A digital display showcases the CD track number and elapsed time. There is no button to choose the input selections, however. For that, one needs to use the included plastic remote control.

Owners have a choice of RCA or AES/EBU (XLR) analog outputs. They can also use the S/PDIF coax output to use the CD-1000 as a transport to an external DAC. However, it would take an exceptional DAC to expect an improvement over the one built into the Gold Note.

Input wise, those using the player as a standalone DAC can connect to it from other sources via Toslink, S/PDIF, or USB. Regardless of input choice, the player’s excellent Burr-Brown PCM1796 dual-mono chip takes the reins for decoding digital information.

Designed for upgrades

Gold Note employs a modular design for the CD player. While the internal dual-mono power supply does a marvelous job on its own, an owner can upgrade the player with a choice of two external Class A tube Output Stage Buffers, the TUBE-1012 taps the aid of twelve 6N1P triode tubes, while the smaller TUBE-1006 sibling uses six. Besides are also available two external inductive power supply the 9 transformers PSU-1250 and the 5 transformers PSU-1000.  According to Gold Note, either power supply bests the internal version. These upgrades don’t come cheap, retailing around $7,000 or $4,000, respectively for both TUBE and PSU. Adding that to the $5,000 cost of the player itself represents a substantial investment.

We’ll need to take Gold Note’s word for the sound improvements these power supplies offer since we did not have either on hand from which to base a comparison. For those CD-1000 owners who seek to unveil every sonic nuance from their CD-1000, the upgrade may prove worthwhile. CD-1000 owners who choose to go that route can acquire new-production Sovtek 6N1P tubes for about $12 each. Necessary re-tubing down the road won’t break the bank.

Listening

The Gold Note features a similar sonic voice, whether enjoying a CD or using the DAC for streamed content. However, CD playback is where it truly excels. The sound is exceptionally immersive and it’s easy to get swept up in the music rather than scrutinizing it.

The CD-1000 MkII digs out bass notes in a tight, defined, and concise way. Those who crave heavy bass emphasis may find the player’s voicing a touch polite for their taste. Low frequency, dub-steppy elements heard in Billie Eilish’s “you should see me in a crown” renders with ample punch, though. Listeners pairing the CD-1000 with preamps and amps that excel at low-frequency delivery may find the Gold Note an excellent match.

The Gold Note offers a beautiful midrange portrayal. Vocals seem to take a step toward the listener, exceeding the physical speaker placement. Similarly-impressive is the player’s broad and deep soundstage. Instruments sometimes offer a surprise by appearing to wrap around the edges of the listening space.

On the top end, high-frequency information translates with oodles of detail. The player retrieves nuances that help frame the ambiance around vocalists and various instruments. It layers them in the soundstage deftly. However, that marvelous capability is a double-edged sword at times. When mated with similarly-voiced downstream components, the DAC can introduce a touch of stridency. For example, “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones comes with a bit of hard edge during her vocal crescendos. For sonic comparison between the DAC and CD functionality, we played the same track using the CD-1000MkII’s DAC only, and then the CD player. The Redbook CD playback sounded a little more rounded, even in comparison with a streamed 24-bit/192KHz native file.

I expect the power supply upgrades for the CD-1000 would enhance all the player’s strengths and diminish the few quibbles. Even without the upgrades though, the Gold Note’s voice is lovely and it’s easy to get immersed in rummaging through old CDs to see what the CD-1000 can extract from them. Those seeking more detail and “life” in their stereo system’s digital playback prowess may find the CD-1000 a great option.

Summing up

The Gold Note CD-100 MkII is an exceptional performer and a marvelous choice for those with an extensive CD collection. However, keep in mind that the player decodes streamed music too. Dividing that cost among the player and DAC capabilities justifies the future-proofed investment. Plus, Gold Note’s various power supplies give a prospective owner an upgrade path. If this review whets your appetite for a new CD player, be sure to audition a CD-1000 MkII and see if it’s the solution you’ve been seeking to complement your other system components.

Gold Note CD1000 MkII CD Player and DAC

MSRP:  $5,000

www.goldnote.it

PERIPHERALS

Digital Sources Roon Nucleus, Simaudio MOON 780D DAC, Oppo BDP-103, Synology DiskStation 415 Play, Tidal and Qobuz streaming services.

Amplification Conrad-Johnson ART150

Preamplification Coffman Labs G1-B

Speakers GamuT RS3i

Cables Jena Labs

Power Torus AVR 15 Plus, RSA Mongoose, and Cardas power cords

Accessories ASC tube traps, Cathedral Sound Room Dampening Panels, Mapleshade Samson audio racks, Coffman Labs Equipment Footers

In today’s world, and its accelerated pace, so few things are constant anymore. For this audio enthusiast, there is something soothing, about the big, blue meters that adorn nearly every component from McIntosh Laboratory, Inc.

They are an assurance of a number of things: quality – made in America quality, by a group of great people that have been doing this for decades. If you’re 40 or older, chances are some of these people made your parents McIntosh. If you’re my age, chances are some of these people made your Grandparent’s McIntosh. That’s longevity.

This generational thing with McIntosh also perpetuates a consistency in sound and aesthetic. The Mac you buy today will fit right in with the Mac gear you already own and work well, whether just recently purchased, or decades old. Finally, the sound. McIntosh has always stood for great sound, and over the years, their engineering team continues to refine their products for better sound and even better reliability. Other than a few exceptional legacy products (the MC30s immediately come to mind) today’s Mac sounds better than ever.

Our younger readers may remember their parents having a receiver. That ubiquitous audio box that did everything, handling all the formats back then; a turntable, a tape deck (or two) and a glorious FM tuning dial. Keeping with ongoing march of progress, McIntosh has replaced the tuning dial on their receivers of years past with a pair of those big, blue, awesome meters, adding a digital to analog converter that handles everything up to DSD 256.

They’ve also added a moving coil phono section to the phono stage, with its own separate input, so that you can actually run two turntables with your MAC7200 if you’re so inclined, along with an FM tuner for those of you that still have decent radio stations. And the MAC7200s built in tuner sounds lovely, just like vintage tuners from Mac’s past.

Is there anything the MAC7200 doesn’t do?

Not really, and now, it’s even a Roon tested device, so you can use it in the Roon streaming environment.

Where the MAC7200 shines, is it’s engaging, but ever so slightly relaxed tonal rendition. The MAC7200 has more than enough audiophile cred, yet those craving the last molecules of fine detail will probably go elsewhere. That’s not the point, and that’s never been the McIntosh ethos. What really makes the MAC7200 standout is the magic it brings to every recording you own. And for the other 99.99% of us that aren’t fussy audiophiles, this is what it’s all about.

Plenty of power

200 watts per channel assures you can drive anything with the MAC7200. This was the stuff of dreams back in the 70s when the war of the massive receivers reached its peak. Just to make sure I wasn’t just an old guy reminiscing, I managed to borrow a perfect vintage Pioneer SX-1980 (rated at 270 watts per channel) from a collector for an impromptu shootout. While the Mac did not have the tuning dial and tuning meters, it blew the vintage receiver out of the water in every way imaginable.

For those wondering why we might make this comparison, vintage Japanese receivers like the SX-1980 and the Marantz 2325 are starting to pass the $5,000 – $10,000 mark these days and they are 40 years old. Unless you absolutely have to have that cool 70s receiver, the $7,500 MAC7200 is a killer value and has a five-year warranty. Considering McIntosh’s reputation for build quality, and the fact that they still repair 40 – year old components at the factory, this is a major bargain. Not to mention, you’ll be able to hand the MAC7200 down to your kids in a couple of decades.

Utilizing the Autoformer technology that McIntosh has hung their hat on forever, the MAC7200 can drive even two-ohm speaker loads with ease. The output transformer keeps a constant load on the output stage, and the amplifier within comfortable parameters at all times. The result – consistent sound and better durability long term.

Most speakers will work well with the 4 or 8 ohm tap. We found the recent Sonus faber Guareris achieved optimum power transfer with the 4-ohm tap, while the Focal Sopra no.3s and Graham LS5/9s gave their best performance with the 8-ohm tap. Magnepan fans are going to appreciate that 2-ohm tap, making these speakers a lot easier to drive. Again, the MAC7200 offers crazy versatility.

Digital diversity, and no static at all

In addition to the plethora of digital inputs, the MAC7200 also features their proprietary MCT input, so those owning one of their current transports can hear their SACDs in full glory. Rather than converting to PCM, the direct DSD bitstream comes through. We didn’t have one of these for our review, but a few readers that own both pieces have reported it’s a pretty sweet combination.

Here in Portland we still have a few radio stations with decent programming and sound quality. If you are equally blessed, you’re going to appreciate the FM tuner section. Moving through the stations brings back great memories. Taking into account what a vintage Mac tuner hails these days, again you can have an entire system, that won’t need a refurb.

Should you need it, the MAC7200 even receives AM signals. Curiosity got the best of me, since I haven’t listened to AM in decades, going back to WOKY in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a kid. The pickings are sparse these days (at least in Portland) but again, the fidelity is exceptional, considering the limited bandwidth and frequency response the AM band allows.

Lacking the multiple band graphic equalizer of a few of the McIntosh preamplifiers, the bass and treble controls offered on the MAC7200 are still more than welcome, with recordings new and old. Some recordings just sound flat, and if you can get out of the audiophile box, it’s amazing what goosing the bass or treble a touch does for your listening session. Again, McIntosh is the master of flexibility.

Satisfies your inner DJ

Whether you have a turntable with two tonearms, or are rocking a pair of Technics 1200s, the ability to connect more than one table is a major bonus for hard core vinyl lovers. Having the new Technics SL1200G (with Ortofon Cadenza Bronze MC mounted) and a 1200GR sporting a classic Shure M44, I was able to put the MAC7200s phonostage through all of its paces.

The phono section in the MAC7200 is top notch, which led to stepping up the phono game somewhat. Sticking with a known American classic just felt right, so A VPI Prime with with Kieseki Purple Heart cartridge proves the MAC7200’s phonostage is of serious quality. It possesses more than enough resolution to discern a major difference between budget and serious cartridges, so you can grow with it as your vinyl enthusiasm increases. Its super quiet output along with 50, 100, 200, 400, and 1k Ohm loading on the MC side, with 60db of gain puts all but the lowest output cartridges at your disposal.

If you want a single box solution that does nearly everything, the McIntosh MAC7200 is certainly one of our favorite choices. Whether this is your first Mac, or one in a line of many, you’re going to dig this one. McIntosh has produced a new classic.

The McIntosh MAC7200 Reciever

$7,500

www.mcintoshlabs.com

Not wanting to waste the first half of the review with a history lesson, we’ll keep it short and to the point. It’s important to tell you why a product is worth the asking price, rather than leaving it to an unanswered question at the end of the review. So just a little bit about Bryston for those of you that aren’t familiar is an important part of their back story.

Bryston components are hand made in Canada to pro audio standards, and that’s not a bad thing. They are one of the few companies that sell in both arenas, and both camps benefit. The pro-audio customer gets additional value from Bryston’s audiophile side, making for fantastic sound, used in studios around the world, while the audiophile users benefit from rock-solid reliability.

Ever had a friend with a Bryston amp complain about it being broken? Me neither, and I’ve been buying hifi gear for a long time. Bryston offers the best warranty in the business because they make incredibly dependable products, and that’s a huge part of the value proposition here, especially when you’re thinking about buying a $25,000 pair of monoblocks. You can look at them as a lifetime investment, or if you’re a fickle audiophile, they will work flawlessly for the next three owners. But once you get to 1000 watt per channel monoblocks, where do you go?

Let’s get the clichés out of the way

All of the well-worn audiophile clichés apply to the 28B Cubed monoblocks. So, we’ll skip that, eh? In addition to the high reliability/build quality of these fairly dense amplifiers (they weigh 90 lbs. each, but feel heavier, thanks to their compact form), it’s all about the power.

Many audio enthusiasts subscribe to the first watt theory, that if the first watt of power doesn’t sound great, the next 999 don’t matter. To a certain point, that is true, but once that goal is achieved, to really feel like you are living the music instead of just listening to it, a vast power reserve is vital to feeling there.

While you may listen at low volumes, even when doing so, and with small speakers, I might add (in this case the excellent Falcon LS3/5as) the added level of control and dynamics offered by this amplifier rule the day. All too often, we think of dynamics as the ability to handle large, quick musical transients. I maintain that the ebb is just as important as the flow, and the 28B Cubed amplifiers have a fantastic ability to fade back to zero just as quickly as they can accelerate to 100%. This ability to breathe, if you will, is what allows you to hear fingers slide across a guitar fretboard and feel the textural difference when you listen to Stanley Clarke (or whoever your favorite bass players are) go from acoustic bass to an electric. Small amplifiers just can’t do this as easily.

The colossal power supply in each one of the 28B Cubed chassis offers up a level of dynamics and control that very few amplifiers can match. This level of effortlessness brings yet another level of clarity to your system’s presentation. For the internet pundits claiming that the source is everything and that power doesn’t matter, I think a day with the big Bryston monos will make them believers.

Power is good

In the course of this review, I made it a point to use the 28Bs with about a dozen different pairs of speakers. The Falcons, a pair of ProAc Tablettes, the ever-popular KEF LS-50, and even my old Spica TC-50s got pressed into service. Every one of them delivered better performances than they ever have, with more bass offered up than I ever dreamed any of these tiny contenders were able to provide. If you’ve ever noticed, clever speaker manufacturers with the “best sound at shows” often use massive amplifiers in their rooms, even with small speakers and low volume levels.

Moving up the range, a couple of torturous, tough to drive speakers were brought into play: the Quad 2812s, some vintage Acoustats, and some Magnepans all were driven with ease. Extreme ease, actually. It might seem to go past what you know, but more often than not, I’ve achieved much bigger, broader sound with ESLs usually thought of as just needing a polite, little tube amp with a giant solid-state amplifier. It’s that devil control again because ESLs are pretty much like hooking your amp up to a big capacitor and calling it a day. That bottomless power supply inside the Bryston amplifiers is rock solid and unaffected by any of this. I must admit, though, that because the 28Bs were so clean in their presentation, I was a little scared I might just melt the Quads into a puddle. Fortunately, no speakers were harmed in the production of this review.

Finally, pairing the Bryston monos with the Focal Sopra 3s, the Focal Stella Utopia EM, and my Sonus faber Stradivaris proves these amplifiers are worthy in the highest of high-end systems too. A couple of status-oriented audio buddies were shocked to know that these amplifiers were “only” 25 thousand dollars a pair, so it’s all relative. Seriously, putting the 28Bs into a system with some top-shelf gear proves they are more than worthy.

Down to the sound

Everyone likes a different sound or tuning on their system. If your taste falls more to the overly warm, ultra-romantic sound of certain tube amplifiers, the Brystons will probably not be your cup of awesomeness. Those liking a neutral/natural tonal balance to one only a few clicks to the warm/romantic/tonally saturated side can quickly achieve that. Bryston’s flagship preamplifier or any number of others offering that voice will work wonders. Again, if you’d like a bit of warmth combined with the massive power and low-frequency control, this too is easy to accomplish with the 28Bs.

These are fully balanced amplifiers, yet they offer single-ended RCA inputs as well. I had an ample slice of heaven using a vintage (yet updated) Conrad-Johnson PV12 preamplifier, an equal helping of loveliness with my reference Pass XS Pre (slightly warm), and just as nice, but different rendering with the new Boulder 1166 preamplifier. (spot-on neutral, much like the Bryston gear).

Thanks to their natural character, they will be an excellent match with a wide range of tastes. And, you’ll never be hunting tubes down on a weekend when you want to get some serious listening done. Turn your 28Bs on and just enjoy.

Whatever music you enjoy will be reproduced faithfully with the 28Bs. Their vast power reserves make them equally adept at capturing the full-scale dynamics of the heaviest metal band, or the biggest orchestra at your fingertips. Their sheer nimble speed will appeal to those that enjoy acoustic instruments, and vocal performances. There was nothing we found lacking, or less than enjoyable, though again I must admit playing some of my favorite rock, hip – hop, and EDM tracks are so much fun with these amplifiers. Their massive power reserves bring this music more to life than modestly powered amplifiers can.

You don’t realize just how awesome these amplifiers are until you go back to your favorite 60 watt per channel amp. It just feels small. For everyone that’s said you need big speakers to play music on a big scale, you need big amps too. And these are some pretty damn cool amps.

I haven’t mentioned it up till now, but for my music-loving friends that enjoy achieving concert hall sound pressure levels, you will not be disappointed with these amplifiers in the least. Because they can produce so much power, with such tremendous ease, I highly suggest getting a sound pressure meter or app for your phone. Unlike those distorted amps you hear in a live concert performance, the Brystons are so clean you might finding yourself inching that volume control up, up, up to the point of hurting yourself. You’ve been warned.

Even when listening to my favorite live rock recordings, I couldn’t make these amplifiers clip, and if you have even modestly sensitive speakers, your hearing will give out before they do. One final warning, with this much power at your disposal, be sure that if you aren’t using a Bryston preamplifier, that yours does not make any kind of transient pops, etc., should you turn it off first. This much power will harm your speakers. Always be sure to shut the 28Bs off first if you are using a tube preamplifier to avoid problems.

Setup, break-in and such

Other than lifting your 28Bs into place, they are incredibly easy to use and operate. With 15A AC inputs, you should be able to plug them in anywhere. The rear panel claims that they draw 1790 watts at full power, so those who like to really rock should think about dedicated lines. To that effect, while we could never make these amplifiers clip, when they were both plugged into a single 15A AC line, we were able to take the circuit breaker out at the wall.

We suggest having dedicated 15A lines for your 28Bs, and if you’re starting from scratch, a pair of 20A lines isn’t a bad idea. All of our testing, aside from the initial investigation was done with dedicated 20A power lines for each monoblock. While not a huge difference, the dedicated lines to offer that last bit of ease that these amplifiers are capable of delivering.

The 28Bs come out of the box sounding great, and after a couple of days fare even better. I suspect this is just as much due to thermal stabilization as it is “component break-in.” I am a true believer in this phenomenon; however, it seems to be a more profound thing with tube amplifiers possessing a large number of giant Teflon capacitors. None of that is going on here to impede your progress, so you can enjoy your 28Bs straight away. Because they are class AB amplifiers, they do not get terribly warm either, another plus.

Finally, the 28Bs are available with 17 inch or 19-inch front panels, in silver or black. I love the silver, and it’s worth calling attention to the fantastic job Bryston has done in the machine work on these cubed amplifiers. It’s a tremendous aesthetic combination – paying homage to the massive power contained within, yet not overdone in the least. The only decision is whether to get the front handles or not. They look great without, yet are so much easier to handle with, and both models have the rear mounted handles.

Honestly, that’s the biggest decision you face. When we did our initial look at the 28B Cubed monoblocks last year, we gave them one of our Exceptional Value Awards for 2019. Yes, $25k is not an idle purchase, but you won’t find a $100k pair of amplifiers that best these. Considering the build quality, Bryston’s dedication to their customers and dealer network, and the top-level performance, if that doesn’t say exceptional value, I don’t know what does. These amplifiers were an absolute pleasure to use.

The Bryston 28B Cubed Monoblocks
$25,000/pair

www.bryston.com

Peripherals

Preamplifier Pass Labs XSPre

Digital Source dCS Vivaldi One

Analog Source GrandPrixAudio Parabolica Turntable/TriPlanar Arm Koetsu Jade Platinum

Speakers Sonus faber Stradivari (35th anniv. edition), six pack REL no. 25 subwoofers

Cable Cardas Clear, Tellurium Q Reference

Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson have worked together for over 40 years, consistently producing products which represent a high level of sonic performance for the dollar.

At the same time, they’ve pushed the boundaries in tube audio design, investing countless hours of engineering experiments, testing, and tweaking before releasing new components. Their amplifiers and preamplifiers have won numerous awards over the years and the company has a very loyal following.

TONEAudio has reviewed many C-J amps over the years, including both of their recent solid-state designs, the MF2275SE and the MF2550SE; fantastic amplifiers in their own right. Our publisher has owned numerous C-J products and makes no bones about being a fan of the marque. Among their latest tube amplifier iterations is the Classic Sixty Two Special Edition (CL62SE), an evolution of the previous Classic Sixty SE (CL60SE) released nearly a decade ago. And like the CL60, there is a standard and SE version, with the latter featuring upgraded components and in particular a full compliment of CJD Teflon capacitors in critical circuit areas.

The Classic series is aimed solidly at those wanting to experience the magic of vacuum tubes at a more accessible price point than their top of the line ART components. While C-J considers the Classic line entry level, for me it reflects an important benchmark for great sonics. Still rated at 60 watts per channel as the CL60, lessons learned from the ART power amplifiers have trickled down to the Classic series.

Rated at 60 watts per channel as the name implies, the CL62SE reviewed here represents an evolution of the circuitry found in its older brother the CL60SE. Despite the numerical designation, I dare say it is more than two better. Conrad-Johnson went through the amp design with a fine-toothed comb, seeking out anything which could benefit from an upgrade. Some trickle-down technology from their latest flagship ART amplifier encouraged a few key differences in the new CL62SE. Among other changes like the use of metal foil resistors, the tube complement shifted slightly. The CL60SE utilizes four KT120 output tubes, along with a pair of 6922 variants, and a single 6189. In the newer CL62SE design, the 6189 is replaced with another 6922.

Appearance

As with many C-J products, the amp retains the classic gold color and a humble, boxy form factor. The hefty transformers rise from the rear of the base, with the tubes residing up front. A vented, black powder coated cage surrounds the tubes to avoid inadvertent skin contact. Those tubes get hot indeed! However, if you do not have children or pets who may be drawn to the tantalizing tubes while you are not there to supervise, it is fun to remove the cage and watch the subtle glow unobstructed. The CL62SE front offers a toggle switch for power, and a small red LED to indicate power up. It is rather apropos, though, since something called the Classic Sixty Two should take on a classic, minimalist form factor, right?

Similar to the front-facing appearance of the amp, the rear panel layout remains equally spartan. Two single-ended inputs accept the connection from a preamp, and a single pair of metal 5-way binding posts get a tight grip on speaker cables. As a tube amp, there is no “standby” power mode as seen in many solid-state designs. Controlled by the switch on the front, the 62 is either on or off. Saving tube life is a good thing, however. With power applied, the amp needs about 30 minutes of warm-up time to sound its best. If you listen to morning music like I do, make the amp your first stop after getting out of bed. Two cups of coffee later, you are ready to rock.

Setup and tube bias

Unlike a solid-state amp prepared for use right out of the box, the CL62SE takes a bit of extra setup due to the tube complement. First off, you will need a long, standard screwdriver to remove the protective grille and gain access to the tube sockets. With the cage removed, the second order of business is unpacking all the valves and loading them firmly into the correct sockets.

The final step is biasing the tubes using the included plastic screwdriver. Biasing serves two purposes: First, it ensures the tubes are adjusted to deliver equal power into the left and right channels. Secondly, it helps increase the life of the tubesby setting them at the point where they are accomplishing their role in kicking all the needed electrons to the internalplates, but not going beyond that required call of duty. Each tube has a finite number of electrons to move, so conserving the stream encourages valve longevity. According to the CL62SE manual, a tube complement should last at least two years if used as directed, but as the saying goes, “your mileage may vary”.  Often the tubes last longer, especially when the owner takes care to shut down the amp when not in use.

C-J makes the biasing process surprisingly simple. After power up, four small red LEDs next to the four KT120s indicate each valve’s bias status. If the light is on, the biasing screw next to it needs to be twisted counter-clockwise a bit – just barely enough to turn off the LED. Conversely, if the LED next to each tube is off already, an owner will want to double-check them. Twist the biasing screw clockwise until the LED turns on, then reverse direction very slowly until the LED turns off.  C-J recommends this process be repeated after about 30 minutes of use, and maybe every six months after that. Down the road, when new valves join the amp, the process must be completed again. C-J notes that after biasing is complete, LEDs may flicker just a bit when the amp is in heavy use driving speakers. I did not notice that during my time with the CL62SE, but don’t worry if you encounter it.

After the 62’s requisite warm-up period, with volume all the way down, I put an ear to each speaker to get a sense of background noise and tube hiss. As it turns out, it is hard to distinguish any. One can hear the pings and ticks of the tubesduring warm up, but after that process, the C-J is nearly silent – even more so than most solid-state designs I have experienced.

Listening

Admittedly, I have never owned a tube amp and always appreciated the simple nature and bass heft of a great solid-state amp coupled with a tube preamp. Unfortunately for my wallet, I may now be a convert.

Listening to music interpreted by the CL62SE, there are two characteristics which stand out immediately. First, the soundstage of this amp not only extends to the far left and right of the speakers. It also widens well above and behind the speakers – and accomplishes a trick I have heard with few amps – extends the sound stage well in front of the speakers toward the listening seat.

The CL62SE regularly pushed musical elements so far to the left and right of the soundstage, my ears perked from the unexpected, but very welcome, experience. Yes, there are plenty of amps out there that have a wide soundstage, but this C-J generated one of the most expansive and immersive ones experienced in my listening space.

The second surprise in sonics is the way the 62 portrays instruments and vocals. There is not only a very transparent and organic ease to the music, each musical element is exceptionally well defined, even in a very crowded soundstage which overlaps instruments and vocals. Indeed, vocal performances have a level of detail and palpability making them eerily real. Ambient cues, “air”, and sparkle around various musical instruments compounds the miraculous illusion, floating around the room with ease and grace. I had not expected the magnitude of these characteristics and found myself listening for hours to favorite albums. Sometimes, the subtleties make all the difference.

Despite the extreme level of detail, revelation, and a very energetic presentation, there is no stridency to the sound. Soprano vocals, horns, cymbals and other musical elements can have the potential to spark the eardrums. The C-J pours forth all the detail, but without nasty artifacts that sometimes accompany it. This beguiling nature will glue you to the listening seat longer than you might realize.

My concerns about limited, mushy bass quelled quickly as well. The 62 offers quite a bit of muscle despite its modest power rating. Deep bass notes rendered with taught accuracy pour out in a very natural way. Solid state amps can truly excel in the delivery of tight, weighty, and low bass reproduction. Moreover, there is something highly satisfying about punchy bass when one just wants to rock! After re-adjusting my ears to the tubed 62, I did not miss it though. Forget ideas of old-school tube designs with mushy bass and overly-romanticized sound. The 62SE is proof to the contrary. Those listeners who enjoy power over nuance may still prefer a solid-state design, but they are likely to be surprised at what the CL62SE is capable. Despite the “Classic” name, this tube amp is a clear result of modern engineering.

Conclusions

If it is not apparent by now, let me say it plainly. The Classic Sixty Two SE is a stellar amp. Conrad-Johnson’s “entry level” tube amp represents a pinnacle of value at its $5,750 MSRP. If you need more power, C-J offers the CL120SE monoblock version. For those with a tight budget, the standard version of the CL62 sells for $4,250, offering much of the SE sonic prowess.

If this amplifier investment is within your budget, those audio fans who love tube gear – and even those who prefer solid state – should make a point of visiting their local Conrad-Johnson dealer to hear the Classic Sixty Two for themselves. Yes, tube amps do take a little more nurturing over their lifetime, and new valves are needed periodically. C-J offers a full set of replacement tubes for about $500. However, a CL62SE owner will be rewarded in spades for that minimal level of maintenance.

Conrad-Johnson Classic Sixty Two SE Amplifier

MSRP: $ 5,750 (SE version)  $4,250 (Standard version)

www.conradjohnson.com

Breezing through George Benson’s “This Masquerade,” via the Focal Utopia, Audeze LCD-2, and Abyss Diana Phi phones, (thanks to three headphone outlets on the front panel of the Luxman P-750u) it’s easy to make quick comparisons.

It’s even easier to get lost in the clarity that these premium phones produce via this incredible headphone amplifier. A lot of talk goes on when setting speakers up in a room, with one of the main goals being to make them disappear in the room. Achieving a VTA setting that is close to perfection with a tonearm and cartridge makes the turntable get out of the way of the reproduction chain and let the music flow. A great audio system, set up to the best of its potential goes a long way to help you concentrate on the music and forget about the gear. At least if that is the experience you are predisposed to.

If you are a music lover that enjoys not thinking about your gear, I hope you will agree that a great headphone system is the same way. Even the finest headphones played through a mediocre or overly colored headphone amplifier still feel like you do have cans on your head. A high quality headphone amplifier makes it easy to forget you are wearing headphones, and the Luxman P-750u is one of the best.

Sans cans (and tubes)

We’ve had the good fortune to listen to a lot of great headphone amplifiers from a number of manufacturers over the last year or two. Many high-performance audio enthusiasts are enthralled with vinyl, but the upper end of personal listening has grown as much, if not more. Five years ago we had precious few four figure (and even five figure) headphones or amplifiers – today it’s commonplace.

Luxman’s P-750u goes out the door for $4,995. By no means inexpensive, but nothing like some of the examples we’ve seen. Much like their class-A integrated amplifiers, the overall sound is slightly saturated tonally, very dynamic and extremely quiet. The P-750u is all solid-state, so in addition to being silent, you will never have to chase or roll tubes. Considering that a number of the world’s finest headphone amplifiers feature tubes, factoring never having to replace tubes makes the P-750u an even better long-term value proposition. If you listen to your headphones a lot during the day, this can get costly in a hurry.

Thanks in part to the massive power supply and resulting current reserve, the sheer dynamic ability of the P-750u not only goes a long way to make your favorite phones disappear, it does so with a wider range of phones than anything we’ve yet taken for a test drive.

If you’ve ever been at a hifi dealer or show, where they’ve used a massive power amplifier to drive relatively inexpensive speakers (with tremendous result) the P-750u performs the same miracle. Connecting my vintage Grado SR60s is a revelation through the P-750u – they sound like $1,500 phones now, and the big Grados have lost their harshness. This adds a degree of versatility to your headphone choices that few amplifiers offer.

Powerful feature set

You can get all the fine details and specs from the Luxman site here:

http://luxman.com/product/detail.php?id=7

However, the P-750us ability to drive any headphones you can connect really makes this headphone amplifier a pleasure to use. With your choice of a standard ¼-inch output jack, a stereo balanced output, and individual L/R balanced outputs and three sensitivity settings, it’s a breeze to completely tailor the amp to your phones. Much like trying multiple output taps on a tube power amplifier, if you have the cables, give balanced a try to your standard phones, you might be surprised.

Around back, there are two sets of balanced XLR inputs and one set of RCA inputs too, so you can easily connect a DAC, phono stage and maybe a tape deck. This leads to the only complaint with the P-750u – at this price, a set of variable level outputs would be incredibly nice so that it could be used as a two-channel linestage too. That might make it easier to justify the cost to some buyers, and is becoming more and more popular in higher end headphone amplifiers.

Especially considering how much of the standard design and build features that go into Luxman’s top components are all present here, from the huge power supplies, premium individual components and the fine casework. And it begs being mentioned again to those unfamiliar with Luxman components – even the packaging is fantastic. This amplifier is built and boxed with extreme care.

Casework is typical Luxman, with the best front panel screen printing in the industry, combined with a level of machining that would be right at home on a fine wristwatch. Even the cast iron feet on the bottom of the chassis are produced with the same level of excellence, as is the inside of the chassis. This is industrial art at its finest.

More listening please

The P-750u is almost hallucinogenic in its delivery of musical information, yet not overdone. Whether sitting at a desk working, or lounging, the soundfield generated is large in all three dimensions and comes the closest to sounding like a pair of great monitors somewhat nearfield as anything I’ve yet used. A few of the top (i.e. 5-figure) headphone amplifiers have painted larger pictures, but it’s always felt unrealistic. If you’ve ever had the chance to experience a pair of the 9 foot tall Sound Labs electrostatic speakers, it’s incredible, but the sense of scale is overblown. The Luxman amp gets it just right, and the wider range of other headphone amps you’ve heard, the more you’ll appreciate this one.

A similar experience is had with vocal heavy tracks. Often, even with the finest headphone amplifiers, certain vocal tracks can sound as if the singer is performing right inside the middle of your head, instead of sounding in the middle of your speakers. This was another area that the P-750u really excelled at: preserving the sense of scale and placement of vocalists within the soundfield.

The beauty of this amplifier is in the details, the fine details to be exact. Listening to whatever your favorite bass heavy tracks are, the extension offered, combined with a level of LF texture that you won’t notice until you go back to what you were listening to, is uncannily good. And the top end presentation is detailed, refined, and controlled. The Grado P2000s and the Utopia phones both can get strident with the wrong amplifier, yet the lack of harshness through the P-750u is the best I’ve heard on these phones.

Best of the best

Much as I despise that word, especially in the context of reviewing gear, the Luxman P-750u is one of the finest headphone amplifiers I’ve had the pleasure to experience. It reveals as much music as any of the five figure amplifiers we’ve auditioned here, and for most that would be more than enough. When you add the versatility and level of sheer craftsmanship to the mix, it’s easy to see why this one is such a favorite.

www.luxmanamerica.com

A well-integrated subwoofer is genuinely a thing of sonic beauty and functionality.

Because subwoofers tend to be somewhat imposing, the toughest part of having one (or more) is where to put them. To complicate the issue, a subwoofer often must fit in a less than optimal place, which can make getting excellent bass response more difficult.

JL Audio has always used subwoofers powered by massive amplifiers along with a highly effective DSP system (D.A.R.O. – Digital Automatic Room Optimization) that goes a long way at eliminating the peaks and valleys in low-frequency response. I’ve used JL subwoofers in a variety of systems over the years, all with excellent results, and often find them the magic bullet when placement options are limited.

One of my favorite JL products has been their Fathom IWS (In-wall subwoofer) because it lets you hide a high-quality subwoofer completely. Whether in the context of a two-channel or multichannel theater system, this can be the difference between having a full-range system and not.

The ICS only uses an 8-inch driver, but it is every bit a Fathom product. The spec sheet says it is down 3dB at 24.6 Hz, but for the intended audience and those listening to main speakers that will probably struggle to go to 40hz, you’ll be amazed at just how capable the ICS is.

One step beyond

Their latest product, the ICS – you guessed it, “in-ceiling subwoofer,” can now hide in your ceiling, between 2 x 6-inch ceiling joists (from 16 to 25 ½ inch centers) and with its tiny grille, hide anywhere. Just like JL Audio’s IWS, the ICS hides perfectly. Using a smaller 8-inch driver and accompanying 300-watt amplifier, you can purchase a single or double pair of ICS woofer enclosures to hide in your ceiling. Where the larger IWS is fairly expensive, the ICS has a modest price of $2,300. Remember, this is the woofer, enclosure, amplifier, crossover, and DSP.

If by chance, you are doing new construction, this couldn’t be any easier. Tell the framers where you want the enclosure(s) to go. Otherwise, you’re going to have to do a bit of surgery, so access to your listening room’s ceiling will determine how difficult this will be. I live in a small mid-century house with a plank ceiling, so for this review, I built a temporary enclosure for living room evaluation, that was fit to the ceiling, yet removable. Both bathrooms in my house have lowered, wallboard ceilings, but I got a hard “no” for installing a bathroom system. Sometimes, the best of plans, eh?

Unless your walls utilize 2 x 6 construction, you must mount the ICS in the ceiling, as the enclosure is 5.13 inches thick. Ironically the final resting place for the ICS here has been in my garage, which does have 2 x 6 wall studs, and my vintage pair of JBL L-100s powered by a stack of Nakamichi 600 components was begging for more bass. Changing a timing belt goes a lot faster when you have great sound. However, JL informs us during the fact check of this review that they also offer an In-Wall version, the IWS-108 for standard 2×4 wall construction. Great news for those of you that can’t fit the Fathom IWS into your room or budget.

Quick setup

Unlike a standard enclosure based JL subwoofer, where you spend a fair amount with static room placement and then attend to the DSP, the majority of the work is installing and finishing the ICS. Once complete, a speaker cable runs from the amplifier to the speaker enclosure, and in this case, I purchased some bulk speaker cable from Cardas Audio. It seemed a shame to use a component of this quality and connect it with lamp cord quality wire. In order to take the measurements you need to fully fine-tune the ICS to your room, you will need to purchase one of JL Audio’s calibrated mics to plug in the front panel. One of these will set you back about $100.

Getting audio to your ICS can be done via single-ended RCA line-level connections from your preamplifier, or high-level inputs from your main speakers. Both work well, and it’s nice that JL has included high-level inputs to offer more system flexibility and integration.

Once connected, running the DSP through its paces with a calibrated microphone (available separately) goes pretty quickly. Be sure to optimize for where you will do the majority of your listening, and you’re ready. It was a little tougher to pick a spot in the garage, because of the concrete floor, but the DSP came through with flying colors. I even did an optimization for hood up listening! And I wouldn’t mind a second one for listening with the garage door open…

Bring on the bass

There’s just no going back once you’ve heard a properly implemented subwoofer, and one that physically disappears along with great integration is fantastic. I never had the feeling bass was coming from a “hole in the ceiling,” so that aspect of the ICS is a major success.

In the house, the ICS was used as part of 2.1 system in our living room with a pair of Dynaudio Special 40s and the new JBL L-100 Classics as the main speakers. Giving it a go in our bedroom system in a 5.1 system with a full complement of Dali Fazon speakers also worked brilliantly.

Starting with the fast, plucky guitar style of Michael Hedges, from his Aerial Boundaries album, the ICS immediately impresses, with its ability to keep up with the main speakers effortlessly. On to a long playlist of hip hop, and electronica tracks confirm the audiophile pedigree that is part of every JL product. A barrage of heavy rock tracks reminds me that JL has also been a dominating force in car/boat audio as well. This sub definitely delivers the goods.

Giving it an easy run through with the recent Jakob Dylan piece on life in Laurel Canyon, the ICS performs as well with movies as it does with music and has the necessary range to capture explosions and such that permeate today’s modern action movies as well.

Quite the limit

The overall performance of the JL ICS is impressive on every level. It provides powerful bass response, great musicality, and can rock the house when necessary. And for those with smaller living quarters, that can’t make the space for a larger JL product; the ICS is the perfect solution.

With this in mind, we gave the JL ICS subwoofer system one of the Audiophile Apartment’s Product of the Year awards for 2019. It wins on multiple levels: value, sound quality, and concept. It doesn’t get any better than that.

www.jlaudio.com

Just say yes to streaming music at your favorite hifi show. Seriously.

Sitting in the airport waiting for the flight home, I’ve just spent the most fun time ever at an audio show. The Florida Audio Expo was an absolute pleasure to attend. But you can read me gush about that tomorrow or Tuesday. For now, I have an issue, I’d like to see solved – pronto.

While it’s been fantastic that the folks at Qobuz have been “the official streaming partner” of all the year’s past audio shows, it’s worthless. You can’t stream audio at an audio show – ever. How messed up is that?

Though everyone is proudly playing vinyl and even reel to reel tape at the show, with excellent result, that isn’t helping those that know nothing about our world. I love analog in every delivery method possible – but I’m obsessed with audio. It’s all intriguing. But I’m not your customer at an audio show.

After 17 years now of listening to a lot of the same people ask the same question, “how do we bring new people into our world?” We have the answer with Tidal, Qobuz and ROON. But no one fucking uses it. I’ve only been to one room in the past year that could answer yes to the “Hey, are you streaming Tidal and Qobuz here, so I can pick some music I want to hear?” question. PS Audio at last year’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest was the only one doing it, and it’s no coincidence that they were packed to the gills. Everyone in that room was having a great time. Listening to their music.

I attend shows to interact with our readers and colleagues in the industry. I’m not terribly interested in sitting down to listen to gear at shows, because A: it’s probably in the review queue anyway and B: I don’t want to take the seat from the paying customers that want to get a listen and ask questions. It’s your show not mine.

Which brings us full circle. I think the most important way to bring people into the world of high end/high performance audio, whether you are selling a $2,500 system or a $250,000 system is to give the participants an “ah-ha” moment. To deliver an experience that is immersive enough to get them tapping their toes, digging the vibe, and asking questions. I think you’ll all agree with me that music is personal, so there’s no quicker way to get the “boring” light on my dashboard to illuminate, than to play music I’m not interested in. Again, forget about me, think about your potential customer. I guarantee they are thinking the same thing.

I strongly suggest ALL of my industry colleagues to consider this. People who have never really experienced great sound, who are listening to budget buds, phones, or powered speakers are going to be so blown away by streaming music on even a modest DAC that you’ll hook them. The key ingredient? Play THEIR music. I don’t care how much you don’t like hip hop, or whatever, get over it for five minutes. I’ve had to listen to “Keith Don’t Go” and all the other tracks we’ve all suffered through for years now. Wanna sell more hifi? Buck up. Play their music.

The only thing worse than waiting for someone in a demo room fumbling through their collection of 100 LPs to play a track I’m totally uninterested in, is the track I’m totally uninterested in. Again, I don’t care because I’m already drinking the Kool-Aid. It’s ok if you don’t have music to make me happy.

But your potential customers, that’s another story. I’ve been hearing the same thing exiting rooms now for 17 years:

“That guy’s music suuuuucked”
“I hate classical music”
“Jazz is boring”
“I think it sounded good, but it wasn’t music I like”

Not much has changed. I still heard way too much of that at this show, and this was the friendliest hifi show I’ve ever attended.

So, going forward, I’m begging you all to reconsider your position and make a streaming option available in your room for the uninitiated, so when you get the wide-eyed “wow, I’ve never seen/heard anything like this,” you can hand them the tablet and pick out a track or two that they know like the back of their hand.

I challenge every manufacturer and show presenter to find a way to make this happen. I guarantee this will bring more people into our world.

If you grew up in the hifi era of the 60s and 70s, magazines featured the latest stereo equipment in their ads and editorial pages, and the reel to reel tape deck was the pinnacle. You may have owned one, yourself.

Most were bought to record radio broadcasts or to record music to have continuous play of music for several hours – a long playing tape at 3 ¾ i.p.s. was the original party playlist. The convenience of the compact cassette began the end of open reel tape and the introduction of the compact disc accelerated the decline. The advent of home digital recording in the nineties finished the market for reel to reel decks.

Yet over the last five years or so, reel to reel has been making a quiet comeback. If you’ve attended any audio shows recently, you’ve probably noticed open reel tape decks playing in more and more rooms. Approximately, ten years ago a company arrived on the audio horizon that offered the ultimate in-home music playback, copies of original master tapes. The Tape Project was a brave endeavor, licensing master tapes, with 1:1 copies available to the few. Squarely aimed at the well-heeled audiophile, priced at $450 per album it was a labor of love. Several other startup’s followed suit along with some of the established names such as Analogue Productions and Groove Note.

These new, professional grade tapes bore no resemblance to the pre-recorded reel tapes from earlier days, mass duplicated on 7 ½-inch reels. Most of today’s open reel tapes are produced on 10 ½-inch reels, in 15i.p.s., half-track configuration. Perhaps the biggest difference of all is todays tapes using IEC equalization instead of the NAB EQ used in past consumer tapes. Today’s tapes are a studio effort from start to finish.

Fast forward to 2019

Since the manufacture of new reel to reel decks is non-existent, a cottage industry has developed, supporting the renewed interest in the reel format. In addition to several companies doing ground up restoration of vintage decks, a new tape manufacture came aboard to offer tape stock along with the revitalization of the last original tape manufacturer.

This brings us to the point of this review, a tape head preamp. If you are new to the format, you may wonder why you need an external tape head preamp, because tape decks all came with line level outputs. Like a phono cartridge, the tape head is a low output device that requires boosting and equalization to be used as a line level source.

In the heyday of hifi, it would have been unthinkable that a preamp, receiver or integrated amp would not have a built-in phono stage. However just as we have discovered over the last couple of decades with the onslaught of phono preamps, a dedicated well-designed phono preamplifier reveals more music in the playback of vinyl.  The same applies to tape playback: simply put most of the built-in circuitry while acceptable can be improved upon. To take full advantage of what todays tapes have to offer, it’s a necessity.

Unlike your turntable, you cannot simply insert the Tape preamp between the deck and your preamp.  All decks regardless if they are consumer, prosumer or even professional require some modification to use an external tape preamplifier.  Without going into specifics, you need to be able to take the signal directly from the playback head. The good news is that if you are not technically inclined most skilled technicians can do this for you at a reasonable cost.

Merrill Audio, based in New Jersey has joined a small but growing number of companies offering tape preamps and the first to offer a non-tube unit. I chose to use the term non-tube instead of the dreaded term solid-state because many think of solid-state as having a cold sterile harsh sound, which todays best solid-state gear simply does not.

Much like a great phono stage, external tape head preamplifiers are similarly priced. The Merrill PURE has an MSRP of $9,000. Not inexpensive, but by no means crazy money, especially when put in the context of what a phono preamplifier of similar performance would cost.

The setup

The PURE is the first of three units that Merrill will be offering, with additional flexibility as you move up the chain. The PURE features an outboard power supply connected by an umbilical cable, sufficient in length, to allow placement of it away from the electronics. The preamp itself offers well machined casework with a large display that can be easily read from across the room. Although, given its pro audio roots, input and output connections are balanced XLR only.

During the review period, it was used in both balanced and SE mode, using Cardas XLR/RCA adapters with no degradation in sound. Two toggle switches hidden on the bottom of the chassis allow gain selection (65db and 71db) and tape equalization for numerous speeds. The PURE Tape Preamp comes with predefined Equalization settings for 3 ¾, 7 ½, 15 for both NAB and IEC as well as a 30 IEC2/AES setting.

Diving in

With the general audience for external tape preamplifiers being pro studios and very serious tape users, there is a lot of demand for the 15 i.p.s. setting, but this isn’t the only path. A number of internet pundits devoted to open reel playback have a general disdain for pre-recorded, ¼ track tapes, which run at 7 ½ i.p.s. and 3 ¾ i.p.s.. With a large collection at my disposal, I feel that overlooking this segment of recorded music is a mistake. Though many rock titles were produced using a high speed duplication process (resulting in somewhat inferior playback quality) many of the early Jazz and Classical title offer sound that surpasses their vinyl counterparts.

The key to enjoying these tapes to the fullest is the ability to select the proper EQ for the tape you are playing – there is no one size fits all here. Other premium tape head preamplifiers I’ve used need to be recalibrated when changing tape speeds, or offer no predefined tape speed EQ at all. Fortunately, the PURE eliminates this problem, making it easy to switch EQ.

Background prep

Before sending our review unit, Merrill Audio asked if I required input cards for the ATR 102, a professional deck currently available from ATR Services. This leads me to believe that the Pure Tape Head preamp was targeted at those users. While I’m not an ATR owner I do have the following decks as reference components: JCorder with an external head block housing Flux Magnetics half and quarter track heads, a customized Revox PR99 that was built with direct head output as well as custom playback electronics by Soren Wittrup of CS Electronics and an Otari MX5050 with Flux Magnetics half track heads and direct output. My Studer A807 is currently out for service.

I tried to source a wide range of music and variations on the format to put the PURE through its paces. The following tapes were used for evaluation: AP’s Muddy Waters The Folk Singer, Fritz Reiner’s amazing version of Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije, The Tape Projects’ Jerry Garcia/David Grisman, and Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus – all are produced at 15i.p.s. using IEC EQ. Commercial 7 ½ i.p.s.quarter track versions of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and A Love Supreme along with Charles Mingus’ Mingus, Mingus, Mingus and Blues and Roots were used for comparison.

Shhhhh

The sheer quiet of the PURE is apparent before you even push the play button.

Before the tape starts, background noise seems to be reduced. When the music starts, the PURE’s ultra low noise floor allows subtle details in the recordings to shine, much like a premium phono preamplifier offers a deeper and blacker background, it’s the same with tape. Merrill’s electronics are known for lightening fast transient response, and the PURE upholds that tradition. Garcia’s guitar work on the Garcia/Grisman tape has the ring associated with well recorded acoustic guitar. The opening rim shots on Sonny Rollins’  “St. Thomas” are equally lifelike and full of excitement.

The soundstage rendered expands far beyond my speaker boundaries and depth has the illusion of extending beyond the rear wall. This is true analog involvement. The Lieutenant Kije tape gives a panoramic view of the orchestra, and the dynamic swings have no drag in timing. Finesse is not a word I usually associate with Muddy Waters however it is the word that comes to mind listening to the tape. It’s easy to hear and feel Waters’ breathe and bellow at the beginning of “Mr Captain” in a way that you just can’t realize without the additional resolution an external tape head preamplifier provides.

Bonus points

The PURE’s ability to play 7 ½ i.p.s. ¼ track tapes without recalibration is its crowning achievement for tape enthusiasts with a diverse tape collection. While the current crop of 15ips tapes use new high output tape, vintage commercial tapes were recorded at lower levels, to avoid saturating the tape formulations of the day. Switching the output of the preamp to the higher setting. selecting the 7 ½ NAB setting allows these tapes to shine like never before. While they will never challenge the performance of the current premium crop of master copies, they can outperform their best vinyl counterparts, as I hinted at earlier.

Those with tape collections that include these pre-recorded vintage tapes can now take full advantage of what these tapes have to offer. An informal gathering of audiophile friends left my place shocked at just how much information is lurking in these tapes. The vintage version of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme eclipses even my best vinyl pressings on hand. From the opening soprano sax cry in “Acknowledgement” through the opening bass line of “Resolution” it feels as if you are being moved closer to the control room than in any other version available.

The PURE offers a level of refinement, with a smooth extended top end, but the overall bass performance is really this unit’s calling card. Without exception, bass takes on a new dimension on every recording thrown at it.

Final thoughts/fine points

In auditioning the three decks on hand, the decks with Flux Magnetic heads reap the biggest gains in performance. Adding the external preamp allows your tape deck to become a fully realized audiophile component. The Revox Pr99 which has the stock Studer/Revox heads received the least bit of enhancement, more in terms of a lower noise floor and resulting dynamic range.

My only qualm with the unit is a remote that performs less than perfectly. Often, using a remote for another unit in my system it would cause the Pure preamp to change speed selection. Fortunately, the PURE rarely needs the remote; most will set it and only change the selection when a different format of tape is used. This is easily accomplished with a flip of the switch on the front panel.

Like all other Merrill components, the front panel has a very large display showing the tape speed and Eq currently being used. I understand how in a studio environment this is useful from across a darkened control room, however in a domestic environment it’s obtrusive, thankfully it can be turned off.

If you are a serious tape head and have suitable tape transports, I strongly urge you to audition the Merrill PURE. It is a worthy addition to your tape playback chain.

The Merrill PURE Tape Head Preamplifier

MSRP: $9,000

www.merrillaudio.net/tape-head-preamplifier

PERIPHERALS

Preamplifier Pass Labs XP-32

Power Amplifier Pass Labs XA100.8 monoblocks

Speakers Wilson Audio Alexia 2

Cable Kimber Select

It only takes about eight seconds listening to a double stack of six REL no.25 subwoofers to realize that this is something completely otherworldly.

It’s not about sheer bass extension, though there’s plenty of that. The No.25 goes down to about 14 Hz (11 Hz in a well-dimensioned room) and will shake the room sufficiently if that’s the effect you seek. Go no further than your favorite electronica tracks to experience bass that goes beyond flapping your pants legs, or hitting you squarely in the gut. Winding out my reference system hard, really hard with a string of Aphex Twin tracks, both me and the Maxell man are peeling ourselves off the wall. But you can get this elsewhere.

What you can’t get elsewhere is low frequencies that feel real, rendered four dimensionally, with a true sense of height, depth, power, and texture. You don’t know where all of this perfectly rendered low frequency content is coming from – it merely exists. Just as it would if you were outdoors and heard a gunshot, an explosion, or a wall of sound from an outdoor PA system at a live concert.

The effect this will have on your reference system as well as what you thought a hifi system can accomplish is transformative. Combining the rest of my system with six REL No. 25s has brought an improvement that can’t be expressed in percentages. Before their arrival, I was listening to well recorded music on a premium hifi system, now I’m experiencing music that, if the recording is of the right caliber, it feels real. This level of improvement is nearly impossible to quantify.

More than a subtle shift

It’s one thing to make a pair of small speakers disappear in a room. It’s quite another to make six large cabinets, weighing 168 pounds each in a room vanish into thin air. Yet under the expertise of REL’s John Hunter (REL’s head designer who paid a visit to set them up properly) the dual stacks do just this in my listening room. It’s almost a Spinal Tap moment when they are optimized. “Yes, it’s all quite fearful, people run away screaming.” Something like that. The six pack of No.25s are a fundamental shift in what I believed was possible in a music system.

Nearly eight months after the six-pack has been installed, it remains tough to concentrate on two things at once, so I default to just listening.  The musical experience is so much different, so much more involving that what I’ve been used to, my point of reference is now reset. Unlike other components that thrill out of the box, only to fade with familiarity, if anything I’m more engaged and excited about listening to music than I have ever been, as a result of the six pack being part of my system. Though the word magic is often overused in the context of product reviews (of any kind) something supernatural is going on here.

More than excursion

The first thing guests say when they walk in the room is usually a comment about how much bass these must produce, or “do you really need six subwoofers?” The answer to the latter question is an unquestioned “Yes”. The answer to the first question is more complex.

Initial shock aside, what happens on a regular basis at modest listening levels, the reaction to the REL no.25s is one of overwhelming emotional involvement and connection to the music. It usually involves tears, and even a bit of outright sobbing. That’s the connection to music and the REL stack’s true power. Watching someone listen to one of their favorite pieces of music, perhaps one that’s been heard hundreds, if not thousands of times before, come way out of their comfort zone and just tear up – uncontrollably –  is pretty amazing. These 6 No.25 are the final step in making the illusion real.

But even this still isn’t the full story, either. What six REL No.25s do is bring your hifi system to life in a way that is not possible without them. Performing Mr. Hunter’s favorite demo of listening to a piece of music, even one with modest low-frequency content, and then quickly shutting the subs off with the 212SEs that were my past reference is one thing. I immediately want to turn the 212s back on, their contribution significant.

Shutting off the six No.25s is what I imagine quitting heroin cold turkey must be like. The world is no longer right and I just want another fix. Yep, it’s that good. It’s that powerful. Great as one or two No.25s can be, the stack is where it’s at. It’s that much of a buzz.

The secondary shock, if you will, is just how much low frequency content lurks in so many records that I thought I knew inside and out. Even after living with a pair of REL 212SEs and before that the mighty GamuT S9s, which went down deep. Between about 12,000 ripped CDs, a few thousand LP’s and all the new music I’m either discovering or revisiting on Tidal and Qobuz, I’d be lying if I told you I’ve gone through my entire collection.

More than dynamics

The six low-mass/high excursion 15-inch carbon fiber drivers in the REL no.25s, are each powered by a 1000-watt Class-D amplifier that has been refined over a few generations of REL subwoofers. Mr. Hunter tells me that this amplifier was chosen strictly on sonic and reliability parameters, as they use both Class-D and AB amplifiers for their products. “It’s simply the best tool for this application.”  You can read the full specifications of the no.25 here.

However, with this much power and cone excursion at your beck and call, it’s questionable that you will ever use most of it. The benefit at normal levels is the elimination of any distortion or smearing of the sound field being generated. It’s truly amazing at how much low frequency content is present at conversation levels. Neither the drivers nor the amplifiers are being stressed at all, and this sense of ease is what paints such a broad sonic picture.
Where other manufacturers have looked at a subwoofer to extend the frequency response and move a lot of air, the lack of resolution is what always makes them sound like an afterthought. This is what gives you that feeling of hearing those two boxes on the floor, thumping along. This is not the REL way of doing things.

The resolution is the solution

What this all adds up to is a bass system that is built to the same level of excellence that your main speakers are, if not better. Considering that the majority of the energy present in music is in the lower registers, doesn’t it make perfect sense that this is where the attention be paid?

Once the RELs are in place, set up and properly matched to your room and main speakers, even music without high levels of apparent LF energy take on more depth, more life. Common audiophile terms like pace and timing take on new meaning. Should you take the plunge, you’ll notice even the most average recordings in your collection have all become so much more listenable, and the best recordings will fix you in your listening couch or chair to the point that hours will slip away.

And, you just might be surprised how much spatial information is lurking in recordings you thought you knew. It’s not all just way up on the top end of the musical spectrum. This was the biggest revelation of having these subwoofers now part of my system. And with every kind of music. Even well worn Electronica/EDM/Ambient tracks, that use no real instruments still felt way more alive, while acoustic recordings now have so much more realism. Again, listening to someone play a stand up bass in the context of a small club feels correct, yet that last bit of harshness and screechiness that usually accompanies a violin or viola via a pair of speakers vanishes too.

Once optimized and broken in, the REL six pack will have you rediscovering your entire music collection. Cliché but true.

Setup

Mr. Hunter is busy writing a detailed blog on setup of the No.25 Line Arrays. A link will be posted shortly on Tone Audio for those interested in learning how to dial-in their Line Arrays. Suffice it to say, those familiar with the basics of REL setup and dial-in will have a solid grounding in the listening tools needed. But the obvious need for a meticulous, methodical approach when dealing with 6 units totaling over 1,000 pounds, 6,000 watts and over 1,000 square inches of driven surface area necessitates having a solid game when it comes to the finer aspects of pulling a 6-pack together. As always, John Hunter will deliver all the fine points needed to help his customers and especially his dealers achieve the kind of performance expected from a ne plus ultra product such as this.

As someone who started the serious part of their audio journey with Quads 57s, MartinLogan CLS, Acoustat and Magnepan speakers, it’s easy for someone with my built-in bias to minimalize the importance of low frequency content done right. “Me, I’m all about the imaging and soundstage.” “I prefer the transparency of a panel speaker and bass just isn’t that important.” And the well repeated, “you can’t really get a sub to keep up with a panel speaker.” You know the excuses. And hey, you lovers of small mini-monitors are guilty of the same sins.

For those living in the past with their heads in the sand of 1985, yes. But it’s 2020 (for all practical purposes) and there are more than a few excellent cone speakers offering incredible imaging, tonality, delicacy, and dynamics. They even provide decent low frequency reproduction, some very good. However, subwoofers have made similar advancements, and it is possible to get more bass extension in a more unobtrusive way.

Like nearly everything offering high performance, and a high degree of craftsmanship, the best of the best still costs extra – and justifiably so. A six pack of REL no.25 subwoofers is by no means overkill, especially once you’ve had the experience. Many of you know the obvious advantage of two subwoofers versus a single – it allows you to optimize the bass output in your room so much more evenly than a single one can, and also allows more bass excursion with less distortion than a single subwoofer can provide.

The key to this extroadinary experience, is the way the array interacts with the room and the main speakers. The array connects to your main speaker system via a high level Speakon connection at the speaker terminals. This helps the subs to accurately mirror the sonic signature of your amplification chain, as well as letting your main speakers run full range.

This would be where a regular REL subwoofer would pick up, but with the array, each of the three subs per channel is optimized to a slightly different output level, crossover frequency and fine adjustment of the filters, so that each can blend with the room and main speakers perfectly. Your REL dealer will facilitate delivery and setup to perfection.

Justification

One, or even two REL no.25s, at $7,500 each is probably not going to be an idle purchase. And while you might think $45,000 is just crazy for a set of six of these, in the context of a system built to take advantage of what they can bring to the table, the percentage of total system cost is probably going to be between 10-20% of your total system investment.

Looking at this from a cost/benefit analysis, like the pair of REL 212SEs that used to be my reference, the amount of performance gained in relation to the rest of the system is off the chart good. As a comparison, I have heard the Wilson Audio Thor’s Hammer on numerous occasion (about $50k/pair, without crossover and amplifiers) and I feel a six pack of REL no. 25s exceed the ability of the Hammers in every possible parameter – which makes the REL stacks a stone cold bargain. Especially considering that when playing in this league, a highly advanced audio enthusiast could easily spend way more than this on cable or a couple of equipment racks which might bring a few percentage points of improvement in the scheme of things.

Wait for it

A single REL no.25, or even a pair, is the finest subwoofer I’ve heard. But the six pack is in a class by itself. There’s nothing to compare them to. The level of realism that they bring to a world class system is unmatched. That is why the REL no.25 six pack is more than deserving of one of our first ever Product of the Decade awards. This is the new benchmark, indeed it is the missing link in our systems, not just for low frequency reproduction but for dissolving the boundary between recorded music and physical reality happening in one’s own home. And there’s no other way to get it.

The REL no.25 six pack

$45,000

www.rel.net
Peripherals

Preamplifier Pass Labs XSPre

Digital Source dCS Vivaldi One

Analog Source GrandPrixAudio Parabolica Turntable/TriPlanar Arm Koetsu Jade Platinum

Amplifier Pass Labs XA200.8 Monoblocks

Speakers Sonus faber Stradivari (35th anniv. edition)

Cable Cardas Clear, Tellurium Q Reference

Features

AWARDS!

Product of the Year, Exceptional Value, Publishers Choice…

AND-PRODUCTS OF THE DECADE!

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Juan Calvillo looks back at the Marantz 2252

Headphone Art:

Auditioning the Focal Utopia Phones

The Audiophile Apartment:

Jeff Dorgay spends time with the Pathos Logos Mk.II Integrated

Shanon Says:

Our Canadian correspondent tells us about power

Mine: It Should Be Yours

Grenade Launchers

Classic Adidas

More Lego Stuff

and more….

Awards

NEW! Product of the Decade

Product of the year
Exceptional Value Awards
Publishers Choice

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world

Future Tense

Gear in our immediate future

Cover Feature: Tubes

Jeff Dorgay reviews JBL L-100 Classic speakers

Thirty years ago, I spent $4,500 on an Audio Research SP-11. Think about that for a second. Granted, it had a really good, built-in phonostage, but that was crazy money for a preamp in 1989.

Fortunately, I keep track of nearly everyone that buys my vintage gear as it passes through, and much like vintage cars, I always feel like, with a great piece of equipment like the SP-11, you’re merely taking care of it for the next owner. So, getting it back for a day to listen to what used to be the top of the heap, comparing it to PrimaLuna’s best, was illuminating, to say the least.

Staring down the barrel of 2020, $4,495 for the PrimaLuna EVO 400 has to be the preamplifier bargain of all time. This is a bit of a gray zone, where it’s not inexpensive, but in a world of $100k boutique preamplifiers, very reasonable indeed. More than likely, you’ve got something you’re trading in/up. Hypothetically if you are trading up to an EVO 400 from any $2k preamplifier out there, and you can still get $1,000 for it on the secondary market, you’ll never hear this much of a difference in your hifi system for what it will cost you to trade up to the EVO 400. I can think of several $10k preamplifiers I’d sell for $6k, buy an EVO and take a road trip with the change. Maybe even drive down to see Kevin and take him to lunch.
When PrimaLuna first hit the scene around 2003, their first integrated amplifier struck a delicate balance between new and old, both visually and sonically. It was reasonably priced, but built and finished like components costing far more. This is a trait that has only improved over the years and given PrimaLuna the reputation they now enjoy.

For a while, the naming conventions were a bit confusing, but they have now standardized on the EVO lineup, with 100, 200, 300 and 400 designations of their integrated, pre and power amplifiers. Going up the range, each model reveals more sonically and has additional functionality. This is in part due to a higher concentration of premium parts (wire, resistors, and capacitors) along with a more massive power supply in the EVO 300 and EVO 400 models. Finally, the EVO 400 includes a balanced input and output – a first for PrimaLuna, which makes it able to drive a broader range of power amplifiers. This also allows for using the EVO 400 with some of the world’s finest DAC’s and phono stages that only offer balanced outputs. You can use adapters to achieve your goals, but going straight balanced to balanced, more often than not, provides a little bit more sonic perfection.

Finally, the EVO 400 is available in a silver or black finish, with a handy, but not overdone remote. We’ve commented in years past on the extraordinary level of finish that PrimaLuna products offer, and the EVO series now has an even more finely machined front panel. The chassis finish remains on par with the world’s finest automobiles. All PrimaLuna components are triple boxed, delicately wrapped, and come with a pair of cotton gloves to help you avoid fingerprints.

What’s in a name?

The EVO series is appropriately named. With nearly 20 years of evolution behind them, all the improvements that have been made from generation to generation add up to something truly spectacular. In the past, some have shied away from PrimaLuna because of the lack of balanced input and output. With that hurdle removed, the only thing stopping you is whether you like the aesthetics or not. That’s a personal decision that only you can answer. But like several iconic brands, PrimaLuna maintains a lineage of design that welcomes the new buyer and remains familiar to the legacy customer, so mixing and matching components, should you choose is easy. Before you underestimate this, a quick scan of your favorite audiophile forum or Facebook user group clearly illustrates how many people love having all one brand on their rack.

Which begs the question, when is PrimaLuna going to release a phono preamplifier to go along with their components? Kevin Deal and Herman Van Den Dungen, the guys behind PrimaLuna, are always coy when I’ve brought this up, but maybe one of these days…

Stacking up

As the quality of capacitors under the hood increases, so does break-in time. In the past, most PrimaLuna components have been rocking out of the box, improving a bit over about 50 hours, tops. The new EVO 400 preamplifier, like the EVO 400 power amplifiers, still sound exceptional at first turn on, but it does improve a bit over about 100 hours. So if you love it when you unbox it, you’ll love it even more after about a month of play.

That out of the way, the EVO400 is straightforward. At 52.8 pounds, it’s substantial, so plan where it’s going to go on your rack. This is a reasonably substantial preamplifier, so make sure that your rack or shelving solution has enough heft to hold one of these without issue.

The rest is easy, connect your sources, plug in your power amplifier (s) and start listening. While a pair of EVO 400 power amplifiers (which are now reference components here at TONEAudio) were on hand, serious listening began with Pass XA200.8 amplifiers to get a feel for just what the preamplifier was contributing in a known environment. The dCS Vivaldi ONE was connected via RCA outputs, and the Boulder 508 phono stage was used via balanced outputs, along with a Luxman PD-171 turntable fitted with a Kiseki Purple Heart cartridge (also available from Upscale Audio). Everything was cabled together with Tellurium-Q Reference cable, and a pair of Sonus faber Stradivaris rounded out the system, so the EVO 400 was indeed in good company.

Again, a miracle from PrimaLuna

Taking as much personal bias out of the equation as possible, the EVO 400 preamplifier delivers a level of sonic performance that is not uncommon in preamplifiers in the $10k – $30k range. As this can be hard to quantify, most premium preamplifiers in this price range simply reveal a level of musical nuance that lesser models do not. There is nothing we’ve heard at anywhere near the cost of the EVO 400 that achieves this level of low-level resolution and delicacy, combined with sheer dynamic swing. That’s what you have to write the five-figure check for, as it is with nearly everything.

Adding further to the dynamic prowess of the EVO 400, thanks to its large, dual-mono design and the utilization of three 12AU7 tubes per channel (for maximum current swing), maximum gain is kept to about 10db. This makes for an incredibly quiet preamplifier, and with today’s’ higher output sources and higher gain amplifiers, you don’t really need a ton of gain anyway.

Even in the context of using the EVO 400 with the Pass XA30.8 amplifier and the Pure Audio Project Horns, which have a sensitivity of about 96db, background noise is non-existent, even pressing your ear right up to the horn driver. Dare I say the EVO 400 is nearly solid-state quiet.

Using the 12AU7 also makes re-tubing simpler and less expensive. Where ultra-premium 12AX7s are getting tougher to come by all the time and pushing the $250-$500 range (each), it’s nice to know that you can re-tube the EVO 400 for the cost of one Telefunken 12AX7. Past experience with PrimaLuna and tube life has always been excellent. Unlike a few current tube brands that run their tubes incredibly hard (requiring new tubes sometimes in the 3000-5000 hour range), I’d be surprised if the EVO 400 needs tubes 10,000 hours down the road.

You can knock yourself out tube rolling if that’s your hobby, but the EVO 400 sounds fantastic right out of the box with the stock tubes. After doing a little bit of this, it was more of a “different” than “better” experience, yet for some, this will offer the last bit of system fine-tuning that you are looking for. And in some cases, it’s just plain fun. Buy your EVO 400 with an extra set of tubes, and you just might pass it down to one of your family members without needing more.

Kevin Deal is quick to mention that they voice the EVO 400 slightly warm, because “that’s how 90% of our customers like it.” You can swap the center two 12AU7s out to the new, re-issued Mullards ($30 each) for a little more bite. Way easier and more consistent than trying to change tonality with a piece of wire.

The final question

Whether you add an EVO 400 to your system or not will boil down to the final question of whether you like the voicing of this component. Vacuum tube components, more often than not, have a slightly to substantially warmer, more sonically saturated sound than solid-state components. This is usually more associated with an “airier” presentation.

The EVO 400 provides this in abundance. Yet, where some tube components take this to an extreme, where it is so lush and romantic, dynamics and resolution suffer, the EVO 400 is a modern tube preamplifier. Most tube families have their own voice – the 6922/6DJ8 based units have one range of sound, those based on the 6H30 another, and the 12AX7/12AU7 still another. There are even a few designs based on the 300B tube.

Without going into an endless playlist of tracks, the EVO 400 is definitely rich in tonal saturation and contrast without over embellishing. Great recordings sound great, yet mediocre recordings sound pretty good, unlike some overly “tubey” preamplifiers, where everything sounds pretty good, yet nothing sounds brilliant. All of your favorite audiophile clichés apply to the sonic landscape painted by the EVO 400: big, broad, three dimensional. This is that “reach out and touch – it” feeling that tubes accomplish with ease.

The top end is clean, clear, and defined. Cymbals have the right amount of sheen to be believable, yet drums sound dynamic and forceful. The bottom end of the EVO 400 is taut and powerful, but slightly softer than what you’d expect from the world’s finest solid-state preamplifiers – and I’m comparing the EVO 400 to my reference Pass XS Pre and the new Boulder 1000 series. ($38,000 and $21,000 respectively)

A ten minute listen with three of your favorite tracks is all you need to see how much performance is packed into the EVO 400 preamplifier, whether it’s at the dealer or in your home system. I think those downsizing from a six-figure system that doesn’t want to give up the performance, or the audiophile on the way up, wanting six-figure system sound, but doesn’t quite have that budget will be equally impressed with this preamplifier. I’d even say that for 95% of you, the EVO 400 could be your destination preamplifier. Period…

High-performance audio is always so much more than wires, tubes, and specs. It’s about emotion and how close a component can bring you to what your idea of musical bliss is. You truly need to experience an EVO 400 to believe it. This is one of the world’s finest vacuum tube preamplifiers at any price. That you can have one for $4,495 is pretty cool. That’s why the PrimaLuna EVO 400 is our Product of the Year in the preamplifier of the Year category.

The PrimaLuna EVO 400 Preamplifier

$4,495

www.primaluna-usa.com

Peripherals

Analog source AVID Volvere SP/Kiseki Purple Heart/Luxman EQ-500

Digital source dCS Vivaldi ONE

Power amplifiers Pass XA200.8 monos, PrimaLuna EVO 400s, Audio Research REF160M

Cable Cardas Clear

Speakers Focal Stella Utopia

With vinyl showing no indication of slowing down whatsoever, more and more people are looking for a place to dip their toe in the pool.

While many seasoned vinylistas might stick their noses in the air at a four-hundred dollar turntable with a built-in phono stage, it’s a damn good deal.

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of junk out there for $400. Thanks to their level of vertical manufacturing, Pro-Ject is making a decent turntable at this price, and are giving you the option of a built in phono stage. And, unlike nearly every other belt drive turntable at this price, you can switch between 33 and 45 r.p.m. from the plinth, without having to remove the platter or touch the drive belt. Some tables costing considerably more still make you do this. Not a great idea in the middle of a party, when your hands could contain food residue. Not good for the belt.

Putting it all in perspective, those $99 dollar turntables from Pioneer, Dual, Garrard and a few others back in the late 70s would be about $450 in today’s money. None of those included a cartridge or phono preamplifier handily built in either. Value proposition, check.

60 second setup

After carefully removing the T1 from its box, you need merely attach the drive belt between the pulley and the sub platter (the bigger black pulley), gently lower the platter onto the subplatter, and connect the cable to the output jacks on the rear. Plug in the 15V wall wart power supply and job done.

Because the T1 has a built in phono preamplifier, you can connect it to an aux or line input on your amplifier, receiver, or powered speakers. Should your device have a moving magnet (MM) phono input, order the less expensive model without onboard phono, and take that extra $50 to grab lunch, or some records!

The tracking force is already preset from the factory, and the Ortofon OM-5MM cartridge is already set up properly. A cursory check with our tools confirms that the cartridge was installed with care and the tracking force where it needed to be, right at 1.9 grams. Any tools precise enough to squeak 5% more performance out of the T1 will cost more than the table, so leave well enough alone and enjoy your T1.

The T1 has enough output to drive any line level you’ve got. We used it with a PrimaLuna EVO 100 vacuum tube integrated, and a Cambridge solid state integrated, driving a pair of Paradigm Atom SE speakers, making it the centerpiece of a nice $1,000 – $1,500 system. A perfect spot for this table.

The four hundred dollar question

Going for broke, listening begins with a MoFi one-step version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. The T1 presents a solid musical foundation on this stellar pressing. That Ortofon OM-5 is a real sleeper and one of the best low key values in audio. Should you want just a bit more performance out of your T1, when the removable stylus needs replacing, you can put the stylus from an OM10 or OM20, it plugs right in.

Tracking through the crate full of classic rock LPs that are in the “party bin” in my living room, the T1 continues to impress. While digital audio converters (especially the ones in the $350-$1,000 range) have improved tremendously, there’s still a level of warmth and continuity to the sound that you won’t get with something like an AudioQuest Dragonfly. Granted, streaming 24/192 via Qobuz might offer a little more ultimate resolution, but the Pro-Ject wins hands down in the organic way it assembles the sound molecules from a vinyl LP. And Vinyl is all about the tactile experience.

An impromptu gathering of a few neighbors, has everyone joining in, playing a few records and marveling at how easy the T1 is to use. While the T1 makes a great start to your vinyl journey, I highly suggest that even seasoned audiophiles have one, for casual listening. And starting out your friends with one of these means that their records won’t get damaged either. Nearly everyone buying those cheapie tables is not doing their records a favor.

Ticks all the boxes

In a world full of $5,000 tonearm cables, a $399 turntable, cartridge and phono preamplifier combo is a pretty refreshing thing. Legacy audiophiles forget that we all started somewhere, and most likely it wasn’t with a megabucks system. I can’t think of a combination that is more user friendly, with such a high level of sound and build quality than the Project T1. Another thing often overlooked, is that an entry level has to deliver compelling enough sound for the user to stay interested. Again, the T1 is a major triumph in this regard.

In addition to the semi matte white finish you see here, it is also available in black and simulated wood finishes, so it should fit in easily anywhere (I personally like the white).

In the end, as easy and fun as vinyl gets, from a name you know and trust.

www.pro-jectusa.com

Sometimes, the toughest part of adding a subwoofer to your stereo or theater system can be where to put it.

The SVS PC-4000 makes this easy; its 16-inch in diameter cylinder shape fittsin a corner perfectly. The PC-4000 is only available in black, and that’s my only complaint – white would disappear in the room better, and in the context of my 2.1 system with the powered Totem Kin Play speakers, you’d barely even know it was there. But that didn’t stop me from buying the review sample. We usually watch movies in the dark anyway so who cares?

Moving the PC-4000 out to our living room as the heart of a 5.1 system, featuring SVS Prime Elevation speakers, it works equally well, though in a quest for even more slam, I could fit two in this room. Because hey, you can’t get enough punch when watching action movies or playing games, can you? It has certainly made following this years’ Formula 1 season exciting. Watching the pack roar into turn one is way more engaging with all that low frequency energy. As is everything else.

SVS has built a tremendous reputation on high performance for the dollar and over the top customer service. The PC-4000 will no doubt, strengthen this reputation even further. While the shipping container looks rather imposing, once unboxed, the PC-4000 only weighs 93 pounds, so it should be easy to unpack and place with the help of a friend. Our more buff readers will be able to handle it solo, and our most buff readers will be able to play catch with it. Ha!

The proof is in the listening

The PC-4000 is easy to integrate into your system, once plugged in, download their app and adjust the necessary parameters. You can use the standard presets, or tweak to your heart’s content. The option of using the PC-4000 ported or plugging the three top firing ports makes fine tuning the sound to your room and system a snap. Deep in the corner of the bedroom system, plugging all three ports helped level out the corner gain in the room, and tweaking the EQ with the app takes things to perfection, not to mention perfect integration with my two main speakers. Once set up all the way, it was impossible to hear the subwoofer standing out.

Viewing the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, with the PC-4000 turned off makes it so much more dramatic when the sub is engaged, showing off the full force of this legendary band in action. Awesome! For many, a pair of powered speakers utilizing the sub’s LFT channel might be all you need in a small room. In our 12 x 14 viewing room, we don’t even need to pop the popcorn, just putting the Orville Redenbacher bag on top of the PC-4000 and cranking it up makes the kernels spontaneously pop!

But seriously, having the level of bass extension and slam that the PC-4000 adds, makes you wonder how you ever did without it! Movies and music come alive and this sub is not a one note wonder. At the sound pressure levels that my small room accommodates, clipping or compression wasn’t ever part of the agenda. The level of detail and resolution it offers is tip top.
Moving the PC-4000 back to the living room, and taking advantage of the EQ presets earlier, it’s easier to achieve a bigger sonic picture. While we started our living room test with an Anthem MRX multichannel receiver and a set of SVS Prime Elevation speakers, this time around we made the PC-4000 part of a larger, more audiophile oriented 2.1 audio system with the PrimaLuna EVO400 preamplifier and EVO400 power amplifier with the SVS Prime Pinnacle floorstanding speakers. High res audio files were streamed with Qobuz and ROON via the dCS Bartok.

Thanks to the pluggable ports and the wide range of settings that the SVS app provides, you can easily optimize (and store) the PC-4000 to work with the LF requirements of a theater environment or a strictly music environment. Whether rocking out to AC/DC or listening to Stanley Clark playing acoustic bass, the PC-4000 digs down deep. In a larger room, it was easy to achieve near concert hall levels, and we could not drive the PC-4000 to clipping or exceed the woofers excursion levels. The heartbeat at the beginning of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and Aphex Twin’s SYRO had the windows and the cabinets rattling!

Of course, the deeper your main speakers can go, the easier it will be to achieve perfect integration between sub and mains, yet trying the PC-4000 with a wide range of speakers large and small confirms this subwoofer has excellent upper bass response, with low coloration, making it easy to mate with a wide range of main speakers.

Easy to set up, easy to acquire

One of the smartest things they’ve done at SVS is to make it easy to finance their products. A set of speakers and a sub at $3,000 might not fit in your budget right now, but $125 a month is a lot easier to swallow for great music, gaming and movie sound. Putting it in perspective, that’s less than a foo foo coffee a day. I’d give that up in a heartbeat for rocking sound, how about you?

Those hungry for the full specification sheet, please click here, but SVS claims solid output down to about 16hz. Essentially the equivalent of their big, more traditionally shaped subs, with 1300 watts rms power on tap (close to 4000 watts peak) but in an easier to integrate form factor.

The SVS PC-4000 has no downside. It’s all good. And at $1,799, it fills a niche that no other subwoofer covers. Should you want/need a pair, the price drops to $1,600 for the second one – a nice touch.

If you need bass, and floor space is at a premium, the SVS PC-4000 is the way to go.

The SVS PC-4000 Subwoofer

www.svsound.com

One of the things we always battle as audio enthusiasts is the effect that power has on our systems.

Whether you look at power as a giant pool that you tap into with your power cord or a stream that’s come a long way to get to you, there is still a fair amount of noise and audible grunge in the AC power that runs your audio system.

Again, some take the perspective that your amplifier’s power supply should effectively filter out whatever’s in the AC line. However, not all power supplies are created equal. Some are more effective than others – it’s no surprise that many of the world’s finest, (most expensive and heaviest,) almost always have massive power supplies, with gigantic mains transformers and banks of enormous filter capacitors.

Are you with me or against me?

If you’re of the mindset that power conditioning doesn’t matter or make a difference, there’s no point in reading any further. But if you’re with me, and you think that your HiFi system is like any other electromechanical device benefitting from fine-tuning, read on.

While the Deep Core is described as a power conditioner and can be used alone as a treatment option for your AC line, the Deep Core website suggests that for best results, it be used in front of your favorite power conditioner. Close listening to a few different conditioners from Clarus, ISO-TEK, Running Springs, and Torus confirm this, though in front of my PS Audio P15, (which actually regenerated a new AC signal) the Deep Core had no discernable effect. However, with all other passive conditioners at my disposal, this is a very worthwhile addition.

Adjusting the Deep Core in this manner is like fine-tuning VTA on a turntable when you hit the perfect spot, the music reaches a higher level of clarity, with more focus and transparency. Go slow, and you’ll know when you hit it.

This will depend on what you are starting with. In my main listening room, which has relatively new wires and a new AC panel, was not quite as grungy as in my living room, with the 60-year-old wiring. Interestingly, the PS Audio P15 in the studio registers about 1.8% distortion on the AC line, where the one in the house registers 3 – 4% on a regular. Garbage in, garbage out directly relates to how transparent your audio system will sound, because your amplifier at its lowest level is essentially modulating the AC power from the wall with a music signal. So the fewer artifacts in that carrier signal result in a more realistic presentation.

Bottom line, it works

I’ve always experienced power line conditioning products to have a more noticeable effect on vacuum tube gear than solid-state, and the Deep Core offers the same result. Interestingly enough, regardless of circuit topology in the source component, the Deep Core had a more profound effect on lower priced gear, no doubt because these components do not have as sophisticated power supplies as those further up the range.

Proof for the snubbing effect took no more than powering up my vintage Dynaco Stereo 70, which always makes a nasty click through the speakers. Via the Deep Core, tweeter destroying clicks are a thing of the past. My mid 80s vintage Linn LP-12 is guilty of the same offense. Again, its crimes pardoned with the Deep Core in place. If you happen to be riddled with noise in your environment from an older furnace or appliance somewhere, the Deep Core may be the only thing that cleanses the artifacts these things produce from your listening environment.

Power products are basic – you either hear the difference they make in your audio system or you don’t. Some change the sound without necessarily improving the presentation or revealing more musical detail.

After trying the Deep Core in a few different system configurations, it unmistakably does reveal more music with no shortcomings. Transients aren’t compromised, and the bottom end is not smeared – another sin that more than one power conditioner has committed during the audition process. Best of all, more musical detail is revealed, without the mid to high range becoming etched, harsh, or overemphasized. This is much harder than it sounds. That’s why most power products ultimately end up being unplugged in favor of the existing devil in the wall socket.

Trying not to go all Darth Vader on you, when you plug a Deep Core into your system, you should hear your soundstage get bigger, and thanks to the noise floor going down, things should sound slightly louder at the same volume level. As always, queue up a few tracks you know intimately. If you already have a power conditioner in your system, insert the Deep Core in front of the existing power conditioner, and as always, use the highest quality power cord between Deep Core and the wall socket.

I started with new and old acoustic tracks from Crosby, Stills and Nash, along with some of my favorite Kurt Vile tunes. Densely packed rock records still sound cleaner, but delicately layered vocal compositions are going to have you smiling faster. Those who’s tastes lean towards female vocal audiophile recordings will freak out instantly.

Once you’re really comfy with Deep Core, having gone back through a few cycles of auditioning it in and out of the system, get ready to fine-tune with the contour control. If you can enlist the help of a friend, this will make the process much more comfortable, because you can be sure of staying in relatively the same listening position. Going in about 5-degree increments slowly will take you to the sweet spot.

With a claimed capacity of 1800 watts, the average to slightly above average system will be good to go with a Deep Core. Plugging a gigantic, high current draw power amplifier will tax the Deep Core, and you will hear a flattening of musical transients at extreme volume. You’ll know when you’ve gone too far. Then you’ll have to decide which part of your system is more important to cleanse or perhaps invest in a second one. At $1,295 the Deep Core is by no means crazy money, and in the context of the improvements it makes, an excellent bargain.

https://www.underwoodhifi.com/products/deepcore-1800

The CORE POWER Deep Core 1800

Peripherals

Analog Source AVID Ingenium Plug N Play

Digital Source Gold Note CD-1000

Amplifier VAC Sigma 170i, Pass INT-60, PrimaLuna EVO400

Cables Tellurium Q Black Diamond

Listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s classic, Bridge Over Troubled Water, on AVID’s Ingenium Plug&Play table is not only highly satisfying but clearly illustrates how much difference the turntable makes in the analog equation.

Too often, I’ve seen audiophiles put a mega cartridge on a mediocre turntable/tonearm combination expecting excellence. But like a backyard mechanic that thinks merely putting a big engine in a car that is not capable of handling the extra horsepower will guarantee more speed, the same applies to your analog front end. It’s a system and should be treated as such. Too much or too little performance in any area throws off the balance, and in the end, throws away resolution. The AVID Ingenium Plug&Play is perfection in the sense that it all works together optimally.

An often-quoted audiophile truth states the source is the most essential part of your system, because if you don’t have the musical information to begin with, what’s downstream won’t matter, or at least not as much. To that end, AVID’s founder, Conrad Mas believes that the platform provided by the actual turntable as a stable mechanical platform is perhaps the most important. If you’ve visited an AVID demo at a dealer or hifi show, no doubt you’ve experienced his good/better/best demonstration, where he puts a mid-grade tonearm and cartridge on three different turntables in the AVID line. It’s always a straightforward exercise hearing how much more music is revealed as you go up the AVID range, proving that the table does make a massive difference.

Big sound indeed

Coming full circle, the same thing applies here. The Ingenium Plug&Play centers around the Ingenium turntable, which is a fantastic product on its own. For those interested, I own Ingenium #0001, so I’ve had as much seat time with the Ingenium as anyone but Mr. Mas himself. The level of fit and finish here at $1,795 with the Rega sourced arm and cartridge is nothing short of stunning. The key to the success of the Ingenium’s big sound is the main drive/sub-platter/bearing assembly, made to the same high standard as AVID’s flagship tables, with AVID’s inverted bearing design. It also uses the same high quality, machined center clamp equipped with every AVID table.

Having experienced this tonearm on Rega and other tables that are similarly priced illustrates that the much lower mechanical noise floor of the Ingenium extracts more musical information from this arm than anywhere else I’ve heard it used. The machined, minimalist chassis is used with a combination of three elastomer pucks. Not actually suspended in the classic sense, but not firmly coupled in a solid plinth way either.

While discussing various aspects of the Ingenium’s design, Mas mentions that the Ingenium is now only available as a Plug&Play, in both black and white finishes, it is no longer available sans tonearm. The aluminum platter will be forthcoming, so a sequel to this review is already in the works. And those of you that have a standalone Ingenium possess an instant classic.

Skip the setup

Whether you’re new to analog or a seasoned enthusiast, having a turntable optimally set up is critical to getting every bit of performance you’ve paid for. However, if you’re new to the game, it’s easy to get it wrong – no shame to that. As a result, more manufacturers are starting to sell pre-packaged turntable/cartridge combinations that need little more than unboxing, but most of these are budget tables in the $300 to $500 range. That’s great to get started, but as your excitement for spinning records grows, you quickly outgrow the tables in this range.

The Ingenium, a perfect choice for the analog enthusiast craving more performance than the budget tables, offer but isn’t quite ready to jump off the cliff for a much more expensive model. It unboxes in a few minutes – all you need do is install the drive belt, mount the platter, and remove the stylus guard. Double-checking the factory alignment of the cartridge with our Analog Majik tool suite reveals near-perfect alignment. More than good enough for all but the most obsessed. If you’ve spent the money on this level of tools, chances are you’ve moved up the range with your turntable as well. Kudos to AVID for doing a great job with the factory setup.

This reveals another aspect of AVID tables that is a major bonus. Once you set them up, they stay set up. In nearly a dozen years of using AVID tables daily, they are not fiddly turntables at all. It’s also worth noting that when checked, the speed accuracy of the Ingenium is right on the money.

Should you need performance beyond the Ingenium (even with the aluminum platter) this table is resolving enough to accommodate a better phono cartridge. To keep this as “plug and play” as possible, I’d suggest staying in the Rega range of cartridges, or something that has the same stylus tip to top of cartridge body measurement. (I believe about 15mm here) Then you won’t have to resort to spacers and the like to keep VTA where it should be. Or you can just play records and enjoy it!

Returning to the program

Spinning an old copy of Peter Gabriel, a record I’ve listened to thousands of times over the years, I’m taken back at how much nuance this table reveals. All of the care that went into Gabriel’s first solo album is readily available, and the Ingenium does a fantastic job of painting a large, three-dimensional sonic picture. The harmonies at the beginning of “Excuse Me” is absolutely brilliant – this is the kind of thing that draws people to analog in the first place.

Running the gamut, the Ingenium delivers a finely detailed upper register and well-controlled bass. The elastomer pucks supporting the chassis, do an excellent job at insulating the cartridge from the environment. Bass-heavy tracks can be enjoyed at high volume levels without acoustic feedback, and this is a plus.

As with all the other AVID tables I’ve owned and reviewed, the Ingenium shares a signature core sound that is lively, detailed, and never overdamped. The sense of musical pace is easily discernable. It draws you into the music, wondering “what’s different here,” when compared to listening to the same tracks streamed on a similarly priced DAC. As it should be.

Tipping point

$1,795 is a serious investment for most music lovers, so if you’ve come this far, chances are very good that you’re more than just a casual vinyl lover. For many, the Ingenium Plug&Play will be an excellent destination turntable, especially considering that the platter and cartridge can be upgraded further.

There is a point at which analog really draws you in and makes you crave more. I feel getting to this point requires more than the budget tables offer. This is what the Ingenium Plug&Play gives you at a cost that won’t break the bank, yet still provides a reasonable upgrade path should you want even more analog enjoyment. Well done.

And that is what makes the AVID Plug&Play The Audiophile Apartment’s Product of the Year in the Turntable category.

www.avidhifi.com

Features

Old School:

Looking back at the Meridian 808

1095:

Michael Laurance really enjoys the latest from Cambridge Audio

Journeyman Audiophile:

Jeff Dorgay celebrates the CDs resurgence with GOLD NOTE

The Audiophile Apartment:

Rob Johnson puts his headphones on to listen to the new mini marvel from TEAC

Mine: It Should Be Yours

Killer chairs from Corbeau

LeBron Sneaks

Capture C-60 Cassettes

Sigma’s FP Mirrorless Camera

and more….

Gear

Esoteric N-01 Network Player

Mytek Liberty DAC

Aqua LaScala II DAC

Nagra Tube DAC

Naia Uniti Core

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world

Future Tense

AVID Sigsum Integrated Amp

Pathos Logos Mk. II Integrated Amp

SVS Prime Pinnacle Tower Speakers

and more…

Cover Feature: Tubes

Jeff Dorgay reviews the dCS Vivaldi One

Everything seems to come around. With all the excitement for streaming building at a feverish pace, some people still like the old-fashioned way of serving up digital; namely, spinning a silver (or maybe gold) disc.

World-renowned turntable manufacturer Rega was one of the last manufacturers to produce a CD player, but when they finally did put their engineering mettle to the task, their players were brilliant. And very analog sounding. Years later, nothing has changed, and their new $1,095 Apollo is by far the most sonically engaging players we’ve heard at anywhere near this price. CD player? Have we gone mad in this world of curated playlists? Read on.

Taking up a tiny footprint only about 8 inches wide, 3 inches tall and 12 inches deep, the Apollo is meant to be a perfect bookend to Rega’s remarkable Brio integrated amplifier, but it looks awfully nice on the Quadraspire rack with my Nagra Tube DAC. Patterned after the rest of the players in their lineup, the Apollo uses the same Starship Enterprise shaped lid for the transport. Rega’s Roy Gandy is a brilliant man with a wacky sense of humor, so one never knows if this is on purpose or random. Either way, this manual lid assures that it is not another mechanism that will fail ten years later – Rega is always the master of simple elegance.

Fit, finish, and functionality is always top of the class, and the Apollo feels much more expensive than its price suggests. As well as feeling rather heavy for its price. The front panel features a large display, flanked by a power button on the left and 4 buttons to control transport functions on the right. That’s it. Perfect.

Quite the comeback

Several audiophiles that have ditched the compact disc in favor of streaming or vinyl have been sneaking back, with surprising results. On my recent podcast with John Darko of Darko Audio, he admits “I recently picked up a couple thousand CD’s at a great price recently. I like to start my day with a CD over the morning coffee.” Fascinating, captain.

Much as I love a well-oiled record player that’s set up to perfection, or a mile long Qobuz playlist, there is something pure about putting a disc in, pressing play, and hearing a full album from start to finish. “As the artist intended,” I believe the expression goes. Without having to get up and flip the record over. Not bad. Following Mr. Darko’s lead, I substitute the morning coffee for a dreadful bit of wheatgrass, and a copy of Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon. With absolutely no worries about network issues. Sixty-eight minutes fly by.

The Apollo comes out of the box with a sound that is tonally neutral, free of digital artifacts, and full of life. To get immediate perspective, the Apollo is put in comparison with a stack of Nagra Classic gear (amp, preamp, and DAC) driving a pair of Focal Stella Utopia Ems, with a dCS Bartok along for the ride in input two. The Apollo makes an excellent debut, and when switching back and forth between the much pricier competitors, the lines are quickly drawn.

Where was sound this good 30 years ago?

Had digital sounded this good, this natural 30 years ago, who knows how things might have shaken out in the music business? In the early 90s, big bucks digital was just starting to engage, but nearly everything for a thousand dollars sounded like rubbish. Harsh, brittle, and lacking in tone. I know, I was there.

Leave it to Rega, a company that’s always been a little bit behind on the trendy curve, (but over the top on the engineering curve) to build a player that’s this good for this price. Centered around the latest Wolfson WM8742 DAC chips and their own analog stage, all carefully implemented in a compact case. According to Rega’s Terry Bates, the players designer, the analog output stage is entirely different. (Again, you’d expect nothing less from Rega) He refers to it as “A discrete implementation of an op amp with a nod to forgotten about 1960s amplifier circuitry with class A output.” In short, Bateman calls the Apollo “greater than the sum of its parts,” and we concur.

Tracking through an original digital pressing of Peter Gabriel’s Security, (the fourth album to many of you) the dynamic range of this player is stunning, offering considerable weight and drive. The Apollo keeps the pace with the densely packed, thunderous drumming on the opening track, offering compelling low-level resolution during the quiet beginning of “Lay Your Hands on Me.” This is a ton of fun listening to a disc, long since ripped to NAS, that was one of the first CDs I purchased back in the 80s, with its massive “full digital recording” sticker on the cover.

The far reaches of the audio spectrum are equally well represented. The deep, growling bass at the beginning of Charlie Sexton’s “Plain Bad Luck and Innocent Mistakes” puts the Focals to the task and rattles everything on the coffee table. Sorry, you can’t stream Under the Wishing Tree on Tidal or Qobuz, so there are times when a player comes in handy.

The transport option

Where many of today’s digital enthusiasts add a modestly priced vinyl deck to their system to dip their toes in the pool of spinning black discs, the Apollo is a perfect choice for those going the other way. With so many CDs popping up at yard sales and in used CD stores, there’s a lot available for next to nothing. And you don’t have to worry about backing it up either.

Thanks to an optical and coax digital output on the back panel, the Apollo can be used as a transport for those with higher quality DACs, powered speakers, or an all in one product like the Linn Selekt DSM, or the Simaudio MOON 390.

Used as a transport with all of these proved excellent, but returning to the Nagra TubeDAC proved to be the best combination. The Apollo as transport feels right at home plugged into this $20,000 DAC, and when playing 16/44 files, the sound from this combo often sounds more musical than what is streamed.

A perfect partner

Regardless of what you plug the Apollo into, the results are highly rewarding. In the context of a primary budget system, it holds its own and often betters the sound of turntables at the same price point. While our Rega P3/Exact combination still offers a bit more warmth and palpability through the midband, the Apollo corners the market on dynamics, and low bass punch. The two together make a formidable pair, offering the best of both worlds for a reasonable price – but that’s always been the Rega ethos.

Yet plugged into a six-figure system, the Apollo doesn’t disappoint in the least. Of course, it does not have the finesse you’d expect from a DAC or player that costs as much as a used Audi, but the basics are firmly in place, and that’s what makes the difference between digital being engaging or not.

Whether you use an Apollo as a full function disc player, or merely a transport, it will serve you well. In addition to giving it one of our Exceptional Value Awards, we’ve purchased the Apollo for our permanent collection, and it will be receiving a Product of the Year award over at The Audiophile Apartment. Can you feel the love?

The Rega Apollo CD player

$1,095

Rega.co.uk

soundorg.com. (US Distributor)

It’s the week of Halloween here in the Midwest, which mean a few things – crisp air, beautiful colors, falling leaves, and warmer clothes, but it also means the usual plethora of haunted houses. They pop up everywhere, and inevitably, someone tries to goat me into joining them on their adventure to one.

Each time, I politely decline. Seemingly without fail, the other party presses me about it, saying something like, “What’s the matter, don’t you like to be scared?” My reply is always the same, that people in costumes jumping out at you is not the definition of scared, it’s being startled. I am not interested in paying for the experience of being repeatedly startled.

However, in putting the Mytek Liberty DAC into my main listening system this week, I was just that- startled, but in a very good way.

Unboxing

The Liberty is conveniently one third the size of the Manhattan or Brooklyn Bridge from Mytek, making it a great fit into many systems. One control adorns the front panel, handling all source and gain duties. The black and gray finish sets off a sleek look, complimented by patterned vent holes in the top. Solid and well constructed, the Liberty is a featherweight component at only three pounds.

Listening

The disc I began my evaluation with (Jon Batiste’s Hollywood Africans)sounds even better now that the Liberty has a few hours on the clock. Using the Pioneer Elite DV79-AVi’s coaxial output into the first S/PIDF input of the Liberty- In particular, skipping to track 4, “Saint James Infirmary Blues.” I can hear Batiste’s lips part just before he sings. The reverb in this recording makes my room sound like an old New Orleans church. Voices come from the rafters, and the sax comes right out of the wall. It’s the piano, though, that pushes me back. Never has piano sounded this natural in my system or my room. I have always found it the hardest instrument to reproduce accurately. The Liberty gives it breath and life.

Spinning the classic track from Guy Clark’s album Texas Cookin’, “Anyhow, I Love You,” is where I got startled. I had listened to the song before having the Liberty in place, but now with it in the system, there was a striking new detail. Just before the female voices come into join Guy, I can now distinctly hear them inhaling in the left channel. To make sure I wasn’t losing my mind on this, I took the disc, and played on another system in my house, and that breath was not noticeable. Now, playing it once again through the Mytek Liberty, it is there, clear as day. When I first heard this, my head went right towards that speaker, thinking my wife was standing there, about to say something to me, but it was buried deep inside a 1976 recording. It made my heart race a little.

It also makes me crave a live recording, since this level of realism is getting so enthralling. On the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s gold release of Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive!,“Penny for Your Thoughts” rings in this room with striking clarity. Solo guitar with a crowd that I feel part of. Since the electric guitar is my other vice, I can’t help but indulge in the anthemic bliss of “Do You Feel Like We Do.” Everyone has that overplayed FM staple that never got old for them, and this is mine. There are a lot of huge dynamics in this song, lost if you only ever heard it on the radio. The peaks, which need to be played at concert volume, are large and full, with Frampton’s Les Paul Custom grinding big and fat out of both channels. The valleys get low, with a subtle ride cymbal, and then a pulsing high-hat, while the audience reacts. I’ve heard this song thousands of times, but the Liberty is giving me much more clarity from Frampton’s amps. I can hear more of the individual audience members. The iconic talk box solo sings with more soul. It’s a more elevated live listening experience, overall.

Just Ones and Zeros?

I’ve been doing the majority of my listening with the Pioneer Elite, but I did make use of all four digital inputs on the Liberty. With S/PDIF 2, I connected mt Sony ES changer, and utilized the Toslink input for my TEAC CD recorder. While the Mytek does a splendid job with all three of them, it will very quickly demonstrate that all transports are not the same. There are clear, audible differences between all three units, with the more expensive Pioneer Elite outshining it’s more economical cousins in my system.

Upon receiving the Liberty, I quickly made the decision that I wanted to utilize the USB input with my 6^th generation iPod touch. I purchased a Lightning to USB and plugged in to find that there was no response. A quick call to the very friendly and very helpful people at Mytek provided a solution. Since the Liberty does not supply any power from the USB, a specific adapter needs to be used. With the procurement of an Apple USB 3 Camera adapter, suddenly, I was in business!

Here again, this is a fantastic experience. Playing the iPod digitally through the Mytek Liberty yields a remarkably satisfying, rich, event that I’ve never had from my little device before. My playlists are now suddenly far more useful and enjoyable, and not just for the car anymore.

Use of the Liberty

As a DAC, the Mytek Liberty is wonderfully straight-forward. The single knob to the right, when pressed, switches between the four input sources. When turned, it increases or decreases the output level. The LED display shows either your source or volume level. I am using the unbalanced RCA outputs, but ¼’ balanced outputs are provided as well. There is a built-in MQA hi-res decoder. Conversion is up to 384K, 32 bit PCM. Native DSD up to DSD256.

Getting into My Head

Besides being a stellar DAC, the Mytek Liberty is also a serious headphone amplifier, so it’s time to switch off these speakers, and cozy up to the system. Grabbing my Sennheisers and a copy of Blind Faith, I plug in. Here is where the multi-purpose control becomes very handy, as this is now the volume control. On “Presence of the Lord,” the Liberty instantly shows that it is right at home with the great Mytek products I’ve been hearing for years, including its big brother, the Manhattan. The Liberty presents a large soundstage in the headphones and loses me in this disc, rather than sounding like a couple of cans on my ears. Detail is just as sharp and striking coming out of the front of the Liberty as from the rear outputs.

Wrapping it Up

Mytek packs an incredible amount of sound and technology into a very small package with the Liberty DAC, and at a fantastic price. To get a DAC with this much striking detail, plus a formidable headphone amplifier, all in a 1/3 rack space is just amazing. I don’t like to be scared, but I might be changing my tune on being startled.

Listening to a slew of Peter Gabriel favorites, via NAS drive and ROON, I ponder in earnest the thought of life without a turntable.

Which trend to follow? The declutter lady, telling us to pare down to a minimal compliment of things that bring us joy, or the vinyl enthusiasts, that want us to condemn digital and buy as many overpriced LPs as possible? Even though I’m a life-long vinyl enthusiast, after living with the N-01 for some time now, this minimalist solution certainly is enticing, especially now with Qobuz and Tidal at my disposal.

Esoteric’s N-01 weighs in at $21k; a world class DAC and streamer (or network player, as they call it)

For those not familiar, Esoteric is the premium division of TEAC, the same company that brought a full line of incredible tape decks to the world in the 70s and early 80s. All Esoteric components are hand built and hand tested to the highest specification.

Ultimate versatility

With optical, USB, AES/EBU and RCA digital inputs along with the Ethernet connection, chances are a great many of you will be using this as a DAC via an analog preamplifier, and the N-01s output level up all the way. Thus negating any issues with a very slight loss of resolution at the lowest levels. There is also a USB slot on the front panel [町田1] to accommodate a USB stick. This has to be the most inconvenient way of transmitting music ever – so I did not bother with this at all, but if this is how you do it, it will be a welcome addition. There is a second USB slot on the rear panel as well, adding to the N-O1s flexibility.
Of course, you can use the front panel USB port for an external hard drive, which could be handy for out of town guests to bring their music. As someone who is as territorial as a Chow-chow when it comes to letting others add random devices to their hifi system, if you’re coming to my house and you can’t find something on Tidal, Qobuz, or a NAS with 12,000 CDs on it, we probably shouldn’t be listening to music together anyway. But you can, with the N-01.

Besides, plugging in an external drive to the front panel takes away from the aesthetic of the N-01. Like all Esoteric products, the N-01 is beautiful to behold. Their casework is some of the best in the business, and I appreciate that their products all have a similar look and feel. This is a massive box, weighing in at just under 60 pounds, and it comes in a box that’s about half the size of a dishwasher – you’ll have to get through four sets of cartons to get to your N-01.

There’s as much beauty lurking inside the casework of the N-01 as there is on the outside. The power supply is separated from the signal carrying electronics by a thick, Nickel plated, pure steel plate. The bottom half of the N-01 reveals four massive toroid power transformers and two banks of capacitors that you might expect to see in a power amplifier. That a DAC has such a massive power supply speaks volumes. And the attention to detail everywhere else is equally fanatical.

A quick look at the spec sheet reveals that the N-01 plays everything. Everything from the lowest resolution MP3 to the highest resolution DSD file and MQA, so it’s safe to say this component is future proof. I’ve never been a DSD fan, so this is the only aspect of the N-01s performance I can’t comment on directly, with enough depth to have meaning. But if you have a NAS full of DSD files, I’m sure it will be up to task. All of the DSD files I’ve heard in the Esoteric rooms at shows have been fantastic.

All of my listening was done within the ROON environment, with the N-01 as an endpoint. This works incredibly well on a number of levels, but primarily because it is so much better at integrating multiple storage and streaming locations. It also eliminates the more cumbersome user interface available with Tidal or Qobuz.

Initial listening

Functionality aside, the N-01’s spot-on neutral tonal balance. Some components can impart a sonic signature that is either overly etched and hyper-detailed, or slightly warm, this leaves the end user making other compromises in the audio chain to “tune out the difference.” Starting with a neutral source lets you fine tune elsewhere in your system, assuring much more longevity (i.e. the need to upgrade later) for said component. A good thing when spending $20,000.

Those needing an upgrade, can add the G-02X clock ($6,500) or the G-01X Rubidium clock. Staffer Tom Caselli uses the latter in his digital front end and claims a massive increase in sound quality, as it should for the price. Past experience with adding a clock in the context of our players has always been the ability to achieve another level of refinement – dare we say a more analog like presentation. This gives you an excellent upgrade path with your N-01, should you need even more performance.

The N-01s grain free sound immediately puts you at ease, with a palpability quickly putting arguments to rest. Tracking through a bit of Ella Fitzgerald and Diana Ross, as well as the excellent Jackson Five: The Stripped Mixes, there is a delicacy afoot here that is rarely associated with digital playback.

Acoustic instruments come through with an excellent balance of tonal accuracy and saturation. The N-01 never sounds “digital.” Pianos, violins, and other stringed instruments breathe with the correct amount of attack and decay to further paint the illusion of real instruments in a real space – provided the rest of your system is up to task. Finally, the N-01 paints a large, but not overblown sonic landscape in your listening room that feels right from a sense of scale. Where some components can only offer up a huge, three-dimensional sonic picture, the N-01 expands and contracts as the music demands – a true sign of engineering prowess and maturity.

Solo or ensemble use

Using the N-01 with the Pass XS Pre, the Nagra Classic, and the conrad-johnson GAT 2 preamplifiers all proves excellent, with the neutrality of the N-01 merely allowing the sonic signature of these top shelf preamplifiers shine through. A similar result was achieved using the N-01 by itself with the Pass XA30.8, the McIntosh MC275 and the Luxman M-900u power amplifiers. As someone who prefers a slightly warm tonal balance, I particularly enjoyed the combination of the N-01, the MC275 and my Quad 2812 speakers. Thoughts of living without a turntable again filled my head.

Embellishment aside, further critical listening reveals the N-01s ability to separate fine musical details within densely packed recordings, delivering fantastic musical pace, no matter what the selection. Even though said CSN tracks possessed slightly more tonal saturation, the air around the four musicians’ voices was greater, and the distinction of their vocal character easier to discern.

More choices

With so many recent arguments about MQA, I submit that not all MQA decoders are created equal. That being said, the N-01 does a fantastic job at unfolding MQA files. Every A-B comparison on Tidal between the standard 16/44 and MQA version had the MQA rendition revealing more musical information in every sense. Comparing some MQA tracks on Tidal to 24/96 proved to be a mixed bag – for now, we’re going to relegate that to differences in mastering and internet arguments. Suffice to say again, MQA performance through the Esoteric is some of the best I’ve experienced.

Esoteric offers their own Sound Stream app for those not wishing to use ROON, but now that this device is fully ROON compliant, it’s somewhat of a moot point. I loved just plugging it into the network and getting down to business with my music collection.

Esoteric combines multiple 32-bit DAC chips and a 35-bit D/A processing algorithm to process the digital signal with full 35-bit resolution. With old school 16-bit chips falling back in fashion, I prefer the logic behind processing with extended bit depth and that Esoteric implements it to perfection here. There are multiple upsampling and filter settings, but as with my experience with dCS and a few other manufacturers, I saved myself hours of agonizing and second guessing, using it at the factory settings.

Maybe the factory guys are on to something, because that always seems like the best balance of overall musical priorities. Other settings may provide a slightly warmer tonal balance or something else, but it always ends up being the thing that you keep changing, relentlessly. I found bliss with the factory settings.

What’s in a name?

Because the Esoteric N-01 has such a high-quality DAC built in, with the ability to add a clock later, should you wish, it seems a bit of a misnomer to label it a mere “network player.” I like to think of it as a destination level DAC that just happens to stream files. It certainly seems like a much better value proposition from this angle.

The Esoteric N-01

MSRP: $21,000

www.esoteric-usa.com

Peripherals

Preamplifers Nagra Classic, Pass XS Pre

Power amplifiers Pass XA200.8 monos, Nagra Classic, Audio Research REF160M

Cable Cardas Clear

Speakers Focal Sopra no.3 w/REL 212 subwoofers

If you’ve ever experienced a set of GoldenEar speakers, you know that their founder and head concept guru Sandy Gross is a master of great sound without breaking the bank. And for a good reason, he’s a music and hifi guy to the core, with decades of experience.

Where the top speakers in the Triton range include powered woofers, the Triton Five is an entirely passive design, taking advantage of a pair of 6-inch drivers coupled to four side-firing 8-inch passive radiators. As with all Tritons, the Fives have a slender form factor, making them incredibly easy to integrate into your listening space. A 90 db/1-watt sensitivity means that they are equally easy to integrate into whatever gear you might be using.

The GoldenEar site claims that the Triton Fives “deliver exceptional performance with moderately priced receivers while allowing you to appreciate the subtle qualities of the world’s finest audio components.” We’ve been listening to the Fives for some time now, and have had the opportunity to audition them with an extensive range of components from vintage receivers to components costing 100 times the $1099.99 (each) price of these speakers.

The short story? They pass with flying colors.

Utilizing the same HVFR (High-Velocity Folded Ribbon) tweeter as their top speakers, the Fives have much in common with the $10k/pair Triton REF speakers. Because the Triton REF speakers are more prominent, with larger LF drivers, and a built-in powered subwoofers, they move more air and have more dynamic capability. But at less than concert hall levels, the Triton Fives share a core sound with the REFs. The primary voice, transparency, and colossal soundstage you love in the Triton REF is just here to less of a degree. That’s a pretty amazing feat of engineering for slightly over $2k/pair.

The Fives join a concise list of speakers that deliver a vast look at money no object performance at a very agreeable price. These are speakers that you can build an incredible system around without giving up your vacation plans.

Yes, there are a couple of mini-monitors at the 2-3k level that might offer a bit more midrange accuracy or more “pinpoint imaging,” but they are specialist speakers. The Triton Fives are a real full-range speaker that can fill your listening room and be the anchor to your system without a subwoofer.

Begin at the beginning

Knowing Sandy Gross shares my love for vintage audio, my listening begins in earnest with a Dynaco Stereo 70 that was recently restored by our buds at Gig Harbor Audio. This classic amplifier has a soft, inviting sound, and the resolution of the Triton Fives fleshes out this character. The presentation is big, spacious, warm, inviting, and slightly rolled off on top. It’s a ton of fun and a great place to start your hifi journey. A similar sonic experience is offered by the original PrimaLuna ProLogue One, as well as the current EVO 100. 30 watts per channel of tube power is all you need to get into the groove.

Switching to the new Prima Luna EVO 400 monoblocks and the Audio Research REF160Ms is a different story. There’s plenty of extension at both ends of the frequency range here. Sandy was using the big Prima Lunas at Axpona, and if you were there, you know how great that sounded. Putting some significant power behind these speakers shows off their high degree of resolution and imaging ability. With amplification that’s up to the task, the Triton Fives do a remarkable job clarifying and unscrambling slightly compressed recordings that you might have thought unlistenable. That’s the mark of a great speaker at any price, but pretty much unheard of at two grand a pair.

The GoldenEar site says you can enjoy the Fives with a basic receiver, and that’s true. These are some of the most amplifier friendly speakers we’ve spent time with. However, we’d suggest going for quality over quantity. We had incredibly great results with the $2,400 Sugden A21SE integrated, which is about 40 watts per channel. But it’s all power supply and is single-ended class-A.

Tracking through Rick Springfield’s “That’s When I Found You” sounds like a big, unintelligible ball of sound on my LS-50s, yet through the Titan Fives, there’s a wealth of information that wasn’t coming through. Switching to something better recorded, with a much larger soundstage (in this case, The Police’s “Tea in the Sahara”), is expansive, with the speakers vanishing in the room. Again, this is what high-performance audio is all about, and it’s well within your reach. A beginning to end listening of Synchronicity is enlightening, the Fives creating a soundfield that extends well beyond the speaker boundaries, with plenty of height information as well as the other two dimensions. And if you really want to hear some treble clarity, wait for the bell in Queen’s “Bicycle Race.” Awesome – it sounds like there’s a vintage Schwinn right there in your listening room.

Easy to optimize

Thanks to their narrow front baffles, and broad horizontal dispersion, GoldenEar speakers are always easy to set up, even for the uninitiated. Ironically, you don’t have to be a “Golden Ear” to get them 90% of the way, yet an hour or so of fine-tuning, should you be so inclined will offer benefits in imaging and spatial placement.

The Triton Fives didn’t take a ton of time to break in, they sound great out of the box (and fortunately they are not terribly heavy, so one person can set them up) and benefit from about 50-100 hours of play at a moderate level. A little less if you’re playing a lot of bass-heavy program material. At that point, they lose a touch of mid-bass fog and really deliver the goods. You might want to consider doing a rough set up, and then after a week or so, really spending an afternoon making the final adjustment.

I followed Sandy’s lead, placing the Fives about 12 feet apart in my 16 x 25-foot listening room on the long wall. Experimenting with the long and short wall, I preferred the long wall, with them toed in a little bit more than usual. This offered a really spacious sound, and I am biased towards an immersive soundstage. So, if you’ve got the room, spread the Fives out until they separate into two mono speakers, and then pull them back together about 6-12 inches. That should have you in the ballpark.

GoldenEar does it again.

Everyone who’s experienced the GoldenEar Triton Fives is thrilled with them, so add us to the list. This is a high-end speaker with a budget price tag because the designer has made the right choices. The cabinets are functional and only come in one finish – gloss black with a fabric front. One SKU means a massive scale of economy. Looking closer, you see the deceptively simple cabinets have a curved shape with no even surfaces to create cabinet resonances.

Basic black goes with everything and makes for an elegant speaker that has had the budget spent on sound quality. And that earns the Triton Fives a spot on our Product of the Year awards list at The Audiophile Apartment. Great sound, great value, great price.

https://www.goldenear.com/products/triton-series

Not just anyone could build something like this, to the level it’s made.

Who better than McIntosh, a company now in their 70th year of production, with a considerable amount of expertise in vacuum tube, solid-state electronics – both analog and digital, to come up with something like this…

At first contact, the new MTI100 looks like one of any number of turntables that might have an integral phono preamplifier, but it’s much more. Along with a phono preamplifier on board to handle the factory mounted Sumiko MM cartridge, there is a vacuum tube preamplifier (with a pair of 12AX7s in full view) a high-resolution DAC and a 50 watt per channel (into 8-ohms, 80wpc into 4) power amplifier. All on one chassis. Pretty cool. This is where 70 years of manufacturing expertise comes to bear.

You might think something like the MTI100 would be an engineering nightmare, but the McIntosh team has pulled it off perfectly. There is no audible noise in any section of the MTI100. Phono and digital sections are free of playback artifacts, even with highly sensitive speakers.

All this excellence doesn’t come at a budget price. The MTI100 tips the scale at $6,500. This is not an entry-level product. It’s a boutique product. There is plenty of chatter from the crabby audiophiles in the audience for several reasons, but they are all missing the point. This isn’t meant to be a modular, upgradable, rack system, though there is an output for a powered subwoofer. The MTI100 is a very stylish, compact music center.

Just add speakers

You don’t buy an Eames Lounge because you need a chair. There are plenty of those at IKEA. Don’t buy this because you merely want a turntable with a built-in phono preamplifier. You buy the MTI100 because you want to take a different approach – good sound, unencumbered by traditional componentry. And because you want something special, something with a history behind it, you want the security that comes with the McIntosh logo on the front. The McIntosh MTi100 delivers style and performance on all levels.

With 50 watts per channel into 8 ohms, the MTI100 drives most speakers with ease, and it’s enough power to give you a wide range of speaker choices. As fate would have it, we just happened to have a pair of the new Sonus faber Minima Amator speakers ($4,000/pair) on hand, so all that was needed was to grab the supplied power cord, and connect a pair of Cardas Iridium speaker cables. What other high-end audio system can you set up in 90 seconds? And for what it’s worth, we did plug the MTI100 into our reference Sonus faber Stradivari Homage speakers, so you can use them in a very high style system too. If you’d like to see the MTI100 in action, click here for the first of our “Music in Minutes” videos.

Going more “All American,” we take a detour with the new JBL Classic L-100s. (also $4,000/pair) Combining these iconic speakers in the living room of our decidedly mid-century modern house, it’s a system that’s never felt so right across from the Noguchi table. But there’s nothing ancient about the sound this system serves up.

As the MTI100 features Class-D amplification, the overall tonal balance is slightly thin in the upper register, but pairing it up with something ever so slightly on the warm side of things makes for a perfect balance. The JBL L100s, a pair of Vandersteen 1Cs, some Harbeths, or (of course) anything from Sonus faber will be outstanding. Your McIntosh dealer will also be able to make some great suggestions.

Multiple options

Cool as that belt-drive turntable is, making up the majority of the MTI100s form factor, it has three line-level inputs as well as two digital inputs. The onboard DAC processes digital files at up to 32bit/192khz resolution, perfect for music lovers streaming their content from a NAS or one of the more popular streaming services.

If you do feel the need to add more gear, like a tape deck, outboard DAC, or maybe connect your flat screen television to the MTI100 there are three single-ended RCA inputs, so expansion can be in the cards if you would like to go further. Adding the JL Audio’s new in-ceiling subwoofer makes for an incredibly versatile 2.1 music and theater system with a minimal footprint. A large TV adds to the two-channel capability, creating a perfect backdrop for streaming your music collection, even when you’re not watching movies.

It is a breeze to link an iPhone and iPad up via Bluetooth. A quick pairing has us sharing high res files from Qobuz in roughly a minute. This functionality is perfect when friends arrive. The MTI100 is a guaranteed conversation starter, and once your friends plug in via their mobile device, they’ll be begging you to let them spin records.

Spin away

Just like the rest of the McIntosh lineup, the two 12AX7 tubes on the top of the MTI100 glow orange until warmed up, turning green when the operating temperature is reached. Though real estate is at a premium and those tube cages beg to be removed, with their close proximity to the cartridge end of the tonearm, we suggest leaving them in place as the folks at McIntosh intended.

Thanks to that pair of tubes in the phono section, vinyl playback has more romance, both visually and audibly. Those tubes go a long way to remove the slight edge from the overall tonality, and spinning your favorite albums is just so much fun. The Sumiko sourced MM cartridge has a removable stylus, so if there’s a situation, a replacement stylus shouldn’t be much more than $100 – $150. If you entertain a lot with a vinyl friendly crowd, it might not be the worst idea to have a spare on hand. Again, your McIntosh dealer should be able to set you up on this.

Speaking of setup, the turntable section of the MTI100 couldn’t be easier to get rolling. Install the belt, place the platter on top, and install the counterweight. If you want to upgrade the sound of the MTI100, a better MM cart could be installed and aligned, but this does slightly defeat the ease of setup/ease of use ethos that the MTI100 brings.

Don’t forget the phones

For some of you in a really small space, you may want to use your MTI100 as a super cool personal listening station. We ran it through its paces with a number of headphones, from our Audeze LCD-1s, all the way to the AXISS Dianas and Focal Utopias. The on-board headphone amp is more than up to task, and will satisfy the most demanding headphone user. This was definitely not an afterthought.

Know thy customer

Living with the McIntosh MTI100 for a while proves it is worth the price asked. The level of quality, functionality, and audio performance makes it the perfect purchase for anyone wanting a high quality, all-inclusive music system. It is not a substitute for a rack of separate components, but you’d be awfully pressed to find a turntable/arm/cartridge, phono preamplifier, streaming DAC, and amplifier (along with four power cords, four sets of interconnects and a rack) that all work together for this price.

But as mentioned at the MTI100 is so much more than that. This is a piece of sonic artistry, that provides high-end sound from all the sources you can imagine, and looks great doing it. For many, this and a great pair of speakers will be a destination music system. For others, it will be a second or even third system. And I’m guessing there will also be a few die-hard, completist McIntosh collectors that will just have one because…

Much as I hate to profile anyone, I suspect the MTI100 will appeal to what I refer to as the “qualityphile” customer. This customer liking solutions off the beaten path, that are as technologically curious as aesthetically motivated. Gazing into my crystal ball, I expect the MTI100 is going to end up in some very design rich environments, and cherished by its owners.

We’ve decided to make the MTI100 The Audiophile Apartment’s Product of the year for 2019. Click here if you’re curious about what else we’ve picked.

www.mcintoshlabs.com

Many of us think of “that other company” when we think Italian loudspeakers, but the team at Gold Note is a serious contender, making their way into North America, after achieving major success in the rest of the world.

We’ve been very excited with the performance of the Gold Note electronics we’ve used so far, and our first experience with the small A3 EVO you see here is equally good.

This 5-inch, two-way, compact monitor delivers an incredible wallop for its small size. This gorgeous little pair of speakers is like a tuned Fiat Abarth. More sound and fun than you’d ever think could come from that small shape. Starting the listening with some jazz fusion from FORQ, via the VAC Sigma 170i amplifier, sets me back in the chair, Maxell man style.

Design choices

Everyone has their preferences, but I’ve always loved silk/soft dome tweeters. While not the champions of getting the last few molecules of musical detail like a diamond or beryllium tweeter, there’s an organic nature to the soft dome presentation that keeps me in the chair for hours on end. The SEAS sourced tweeter in the A3 EVO is a perfect balance of high resolving power and tonal smoothness, without being slow.

Cymbals fade off into the background with a natural ease, and acoustic instruments have a natural palpability that always engages. Transitioning from FORQ to Michael Hedges’ Aerial Boundaries, his blisteringly fast guitar work is truthfully rendered, and this record is always somewhat of a challenge. Yet, the EVOs succeed brilliantly.

The cabinets are beautiful, as you’d expect – these are Italian speakers, of course! Available in black or walnut, they’ve kept choices down, to keep the price in line. Every corner, every joint is exquisitely finished, to the same standard as their flagship speakers. The pride in manufacture shows the minute you get them out of the box.

Around back, a single pair of high quality binding posts get the job done, and the rear firing port is an aluminum tube. Precision and care in assembly is everywhere you look. These are speakers you will be very proud to own and show off in your listening environment. As it should be.

Setup and such

The A3 EVO are tiny, but not as light as their small size suggests, at a little over 20 pounds each, they will give you pause when you lift them out of the box. Gold Note packs them with care, and even installs a plastic tweeter cover (magnetically attached) to prevent damage. Make sure to remove the grilles and remove these covers, or you may be horribly disappointed at the lack of treble response when you first fire them up!

Your listening chair position will determine the tweeter height, or you can just use the Gold Note stands and adjust from there. We tried 20, 24, and 28 inch stands, settling on 28-inch for the best balance in our listening room. Horizontal dispersion is good, so if you have to place the speakers at less than the perfect height in your listening room, a bit more toe in will easily compensate.

Finally, whether you’d like a more immersive listening position or a larger stereo image, with a bit more bass response will determine whether you’d like corner placement or nearfield. Again, both provide excellent results, yet with the speakers in more of a corner placement, they produce an incredibly large soundfield in the room. For many of you wanting big speaker sound in relatively small quarters, the A3 EVOs can be your ticket to ride.

As a two-way speaker system, with a rated sensitivity of 87db/1-watt, the A3 EVOs benefit from a little bit of power to achieve higher sound pressure levels. Again, this depends on your desired result. If you’re listening to music with smaller dynamic swings and don’t require high volume, your favorite 30-watt per channel amplifier will get the job done, and if nothing else, provide a great place to start. With these speakers it’s definitely about quality instead of quantity.

Those wanting to rock the house more, will want to move up to an amplifier in the 50-100 watt range to get the little A3 EVOs to move serious air. But remember a 5-inch woofer can only do so much. Just as my little Fiat Abarth is a sheer blast to drive between 25 and 85mph, so are the A3 EVOs. Don’t push them too hard and the level of enjoyment is off the chart good. A bigger amplifier will give them a bit more ease and headroom, and certainly will make an excellent next step, should you have to invest your budget in speakers to start.

Further listening

The A3 EVOs offer up great sound right out of the box, but after a few days of constant play, the woofers go a bit deeper and the upper bass response tightens up slightly, along with the tweeter having an even greater sense of ease and extension. These are very user friendly speakers, so don’t fret over ultimate placement until you’ve got about 50-100 hours on the clock.

Listening to Carole King’s Live in Hyde Park clearly illustrates how natural these little speakers sound, as the audience swells at the beginning of the track, giving my modest sized living room an incredible sense of ambience, almost as if there were surround speakers hidden somewhere in the room. Damn good for a small pair of two ways!

An equally impressive result is had with Springsteen’s new album, Western Stars. There’s a delicacy here that the A3 EVOs are able to communicate, thanks to their exquisite tonal balance. And with program material like this, the tiny A3 EVOs feel much larger. As with all great small monitors, they disappear into the room without a trace, making for some great lights out listening sessions.

What’s not to love?

If you’re looking for a high-performance pair of compact monitors, that are beautifully executed, and a bit off the obvious path, Gold Note’s A3 EVOs get our recommendation. At just over $4,000/pair they offer everything you need to build a highly satisfying system.

The Gold Note A3 EVO Speakers

$4,099/pair – Black
$4,499/pair – Gloss Walnut (as reviewed)

www.goldnote.it Factory
www.rutherfordaudio.com NA distributor

Peripherals

Analog Source AVID Ingenium Plug N Play

Digital Source Gold Note CD-1000

Amplifier VAC Sigma 170i

Cable Tellurium Q Black Diamond

Listening to the deep bass line in Lyle Lovett’s “She’s Already Made up her Mind,” I’m still amazed after nearly 20 years of reviewing speakers, at how Totem’s Vince Bruzzese gets so much bass out of such small cabinets.

These svelte speakers are instantly riveting. The tiny frontal area of the enclosures houses a 1.3-inch soft dome tweeter coupled to a pair of 4-inch Torrent drivers, which are technological marvels. Totem has the only 4-inch woofer that is capable of a 26Hz free air resonance, and the dome tweeter goes effortlessly up to 30kHz. You can read more about the tech involved here, but it’s safe to say that Totem has succeeded brilliantly here in terms of clarity and phase accuracy.

Moving on to some more bass-heavy tracks, these speakers move serious air, regardless of their size. Five different amplification choices from Boulder, Nagra, Pass, PrimaLuna and VAC all deliver the goods: the highly resolving nature of the Tribe Towers quickly shows off the nuances between them all. With a 4-ohm impedance and an 89db/1-watt sensitivity, they work well with tubes or solid-state amplification. As expected, they offer slightly more slam with a big solid-state amplifier, but your personal preference will dictate what you pair your Totem Tribes with. We’ve often seen Totem use a Boulder amp in their demos, but rest assured that you’ll still get that deep bass you heard when tracking through Yello (just like you heard in the demo) with a good tube amp too.

Switching the program to Laurie Anderson’s Live at Town Hall NYC reinforces the exceptional spatial abilities of these speakers – from the ethereal openness of Anderson’s voice to the correctness of the applause in the audience. Staying in the Laurie Anderson groove a little longer, “Excellent Birds” (from Mister Heartbreak) combines both characteristics in one track. It’s incredible how far cone speaker design has come in 20 years or so – you no longer need a panel speaker to achieve this kind of three-dimensional presentation, only to have to compromise dynamics and impact.

Fine details make the difference

The new Totem Tribe Tower tips the price scale at $5,300/pair in Satin white or black and $5,800/pair in gloss ICE (white) or DUSK (black).Perhaps it’s Bruzzese’s love of automobiles, but these speakers are finished as well as any luxury car (if not better than some) and sport a gloss and lack of orange peel that you might expect from a $100,000 pair of Wilson or Focal speakers. Much like a cool car, they look great just standing still.

Our review samples arrive in the gloss black and reveal another great surprise: these beautiful speakers only weigh about 30 pounds each – a significant bonus. Nothing like high-performance speakers that won’t break the bank or your back. After a year of moving 300 and 400-pound speakers, I can’t tell you how welcome this is.

While the Tribe Towers deliver excellent sonics and top value for their price, this is a very important category. With so many great speakers starting at $10k/pair, making the Tribe Towers the anchor of your system allows you to build an excellent system for under $10k, and something pretty stunning for $20k – $30k (depending on whether you require equally good analog and digital performance, or just one excellent source) The Tribe Towers offer enough sonic performance that you can grow pretty far with them, as your enthusiasm and budget allow.

Every aspect of these speakers offers a level of quality that isn’t seen at this price. It starts with the finish, but it’s more than just a pretty paint job. The absolute precision of the finish work on the cabinet edges, dual WBT binding posts, and an innovative approach to the speaker’s feet is impressing. Totem eschews the spikes in favor of round, machined, ball-like feet that offer the same sonic coupling benefit of spikes, yet won’t damage your floor.

The only possible drawback to these feet is the small footprint, and light weight of the enclosures may be a bit wobbly on a relatively loose weave carpet or area rug. Those with small children and modest to large dogs will have to be a bit cautious, as I fear these speakers might be easier than some to topple. The price we pay for beauty.

Back to the sound

One of the secrets to the Tribe Towers success is the quality of the enclosure, crossover, and drivers, along with the meticulous attention to detail in the construction process. Totem hand-builds their crossover boards with a point to point wiring scheme, avoiding the pitfalls of a printed circuit board. The drivers are all hand-matched for uniformity, and the crossover is a gentle, first-order design, only connected to the tweeter.

Totem claims that this helps to offer a cleaner phase response, and it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to confirm this. Combining this with the minimal front baffle makes for a speaker that quickly disappears in the room, and creates a broad, immersive soundfield in all three dimensions. No crossover whatsoever in the woofer path adds to the fine detail these speakers are able to resolve.

Whether your go-to demo tracks favor vocals or acoustic instruments, the Tribe Towers deliver such a detailed presentation, it almost feels like a pair of premium headphones. We were consistently surprised, having several “wow I didn’t hear that” moments with these speakers. Again, this is the kind of thing you expect for 10, 20, or 30 thousand dollars a pair, but is rarely offered at this price.

The Tribe Towers perform equally well in our 12 x 18-foot room (on the short wall) and our larger 16 x 26-foot room (on the long wall), with just a tiny bit of toe-in. In both places, we followed their suggestion, starting with the speakers about 4 feet from the rear wall, which is an excellent starting point. In the smaller room, the speakers ended up about 6 feet apart and then in the larger room about 10 feet apart. While the smaller room offers a slightly more intimate sonic presentation, these speakers are capable of filling a bigger room with ease.

Should you really like to rock out and have a bigger room, you may want to consider an amplifier in the 75-200 watt per channel range. Physics is physics. In a smaller room, 30-40 watts of high-quality amplification will suffice for all but those needing excessive volume.

Just like the other Totem speakers we’ve either reviewed or listened to at various shows, they possess incredible dynamic range. The Tribe Towers can play loud, really loud when you want to listen to heavy rock, but they also sound good at low level (around 75db average). Not all speakers can accomplish this, but the Tribe Towers are as much a joy to listen to quietly.

Their ability to process large dynamic swings also means the Tribe Towers make a great pair of front speakers in a modest-sized theater system. While we didn’t have a full Totem system to do this, we did use them briefly in our bedroom system, powered by the latest Anthem multichannel receiver with excellent results. And, Totem makes a full line of surround and architectural speakers along with their own subwoofers, so you can keep a uniform sonic signature throughout.

Parting random thoughts

After living with these speakers for some time and using them in a variety of different listening situations, the smile only gets bigger. These are approachable speakers that are indeed without compromise. Their design is very user-friendly – all that experienced them enjoyed them as much as we did, with nary a “not in my living room” comment to be had.

Knowing that Totem has been around for decades, and has a well-established dealer network around the world means that your Totem Tribes will always be supported. This is a big part of what makes them a trustworthy investment. Their commitment to a phase coherent design makes them so engaging to listen to.

Bottom line: zero complaints.

www.totemacoustic.com

Of all the perils analog enthusiasts are faced with, the worst is breaking the cantilever on a precious cartridge.

Ask any audiophile with more than few cartridges, many of them will tell you that it is not a matter of if, but a matter when. If you handle tonearms and cartridges long enough, sooner or later you are bound to break a cartridge, hopefully it will be a Denon 103 and not a Clearaudio Goldfinger.

Thankfully, there are a few cartridge rebuilders on both side of the continent, and I have had the misfortune of trying a few that provide less than exemplary work. However, François Saint-Gérand of Ana Mighty Sound is one of the (if not THE) best cartridge rebuilders in the world today. Here’s a bit of what he had to tell me.

TA:  When did you start Ana Mighty Sound?

FSG:  I was encouraged by Thomas Schick, designer of the Schick Tonearm and personal friend, to start Cala Mighty Sound in 2012. In 2015, Xavier Delacoux joined out team together with Laszlo Szalai and Vencel Szabo. Christian Bianchi (founder of Prisme Audio in the eighties) who develops and build our Le Phono SE phono stage, also came on board.

We were originally called Cala Mighty Sound, “Cala” (Calamean) means beauty in ancient Greek, and it was also my DJ name. But the French pronunciation (spelled Calamine) basically means the dirt in a motor, and the name was also registered by another company so we decided to call ourselves Ana Mighty instead. It is referenced to my beloved wife and of course by extension to analog.

What is your background?

I have a Ph.D in speech recognition and its impact on speech theories and other linguistic fields. I’ve also taught Linguistics, Speech Theories, and Communication at the University level.

Who is in your cartridge rebuilding team?

László Szalai, chief engineer and László Vencel Szabó, his apprentice. László has worked in different audio studios (Hungarian Broadcasting Studio, Hungaroton Records, Archive of the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Research Center) as an audio and broadcast engineer. He made hundreds acoustic music recordings and is of course obsessed with excellent sound and HiFi. Vencel is his apprentice and assistant.

Can you tell me a bit about how the rebuilding/repair business in general?

Rebuilding cartridges involves extensive scientific research and field experience. We work with our suppliers and customers to offer dedicated and coherent solutions to our customers.

Rebuilding is actually more difficult than building a new cartridge, you have to completely unmount the cartridge and coils, with no manual or guidance. Working on a Neumann DST, for instance, is a very good example. In lieu of the manual, you must understand its construction and to feel it in your hands in order to get the best results.This is where the extensive experience of Laszlo Szalai is crucial.

Our extensive hands on experience with cartridge building gives us an unparalleled advantage on understanding the entire cartridge manufacturing and rebuilding process.  Very few people have seen the inside of as many cartridges as we have.

What are the common problems you see?

The most common problems are the broken stylus tips, snapped cantilevers, or general wear and tear over time

Specifically, what can be repaired, and what cannot?  What makes you different than other cartridge builders?

We can replace broken cantilevers, rebuild coils from scratch, change dampers, and retip the stylus. Very few people on earth can do all of these, especially rewinding coils, but we can. All rebuilds must meet four basic requirements:

– Repair a cartridge only if it is less than replacement cost.

– The cartridge body must be able to be opened without causing damage.

– Here is what makes us different. Cartridges are best repaired by not adding weight on the moving mass assembly of the cartridge. This is why we do not repair cartridges which have no cantilever shaft (like Audio-Technica and Benz cartridges). Our competitors will insert a larger aluminium tube extend the broken cantilever with glue, rather than rebuilding with a new cantilever. This produces a much larger effective mass of the moving ensemble, resulting in a lower resonance frequency for the coil mechanism, with negative repercussions in the audible range. We feel a cantilever should never be extended, but replaced.

– We cannot repair cartridges which can only be replaced by original parts.(for example AT, FR-7), which are often unobtainable.

What if you use parts different than original?

We have sources for almost all cartridge parts, and in some cases, we custom make our own components which exceeds the performance of original parts. For example, modern suspensions can be better than 30 year-old components. Small variations in parts can have a huge impact on sound. Sometimes even two new cartridges can have totally different sounds.   Our goal is to maintain sonic integrity of the cartridge after repair.

We have used newer parts on many well-known MC cartridges (Ortofon SPU, Denon 103, EMT TSD-15, Koetsu, etc…) the results obtained (both sonically and on measured specifications) were higher than what we expected and this is when we decided that this service should benefit to our customers.

How many repairs have you done?

Ana Mighty has repaired more than 200 cartridges, but László has a solid background with hundreds and hundreds of repairs from the past 40 years.

What is involved in cartridge rebuilding?

No two cartridges are identical. A repair always starts with a cleaning and a detailed inspection of the cartridge. We have a strict policy about not altering the original aspect of the cartridge (except for our highly modified version of cartridges). Once the body is open, we are able to inform the owner about all problems found. The whole process is documented by photos.

The actual repair starts with a very detailed cleaning and finishes with setting the parameters (VTF, compliance, tracking ability, etc.) of the cartridge. At the very end we test each cartridge for 3-4 hours, play them for 24 hours and then run a new set of tests to optimize the fine parameters of the cartridge again, with measurements documented.

What are the most important cartridge components?

The sonic characteristics of a cartridge is a combination of the sum of its parts, and therefore no  single component is more or less important than another. A good example of this is in the process of building coils. Very few have the capacity to rebuild coils, but we do. We can even build a coil from scratch, and at times we have to build it 5-6 times in order to have the right sound. Coils have different winding patterns; the most well-known are cross coils and square coils but we also rebuild the triangular coils unique to Neumann DST cartridges.

Do rubber dampers age over time?  What is their lifespan?

Time is a big enemy of cartridges. The life of the damper is unpredictable, but temperature and humidity does play a role. If a cartridge starts to sound distorted or grainy, it is a warning sign that the damper may need to be changed.

A problematic/damaged/old damper can change the position of the cantilever causing an uneven wear of the stylus (diamond tip). This can also damage LPs over time.  Due to technological advancement, we have better dampers than the original, such as our silicon frictionless dampers available in either single or double donuts as well as dual circular internal designs.

Do you see more wear and tear in coastal cities vs say inland USA?

Certainly yes, temperature (changes), humidity, change of air pressure, vicinity of seas or oceans (salty air), polluted air, altitude, etc. can have an effect on the components. Unfortunately, we don’t have any statistical data about it and it would be very hard to draw a definite answer.

Do you see uneven cartridge wear if Antiskating is set incorrectly?

Yes, and this applies to both entry-level and high-end turntables alike. Not only the stylus (diamond tip) wears unnecessarily and unevenly, but the record as well and while the cartridge can be repaired, the record unfortunately NOT.

Without a proper test record it is not possible to correctly set the anti-skating and this also affects the tracking ability of the cartridge. AnalogMagik is a tool which we use to set Anti-skaing.

The proper setting depends on the stylus pressure as well as on the stylus cut (shape/profile), also slightly on the length of the tonearm and tis dynamic capabilities. Last, but not least it also depends on the turntable settings (its proper leveling, etc.). Some people set the anti-skating by placing a glass disc on the rotating platter and set the stylus on its surface and set the anti-skating to keep the tonearm in position (avoid moving it away). However in this case the stylus is touching the surface of the glass at one point (on its tip), while on the stereo (test) record it touches with its 2 sides representing totally different frictional properties.

What causes bent or skewed cantilevers?

This is mainly caused by the aging of the damper. However, let’s not forget the damper assembly consists of not only a damper (rubber /silicon ring), but also a steel, copper or plastic string that is invisible from outside. The deformation or aging of these strings can also cause such problem. Bent cantilever can also be caused by careless stylus cleaning or by the cartridge dropping off from the side of the record.

What are some good cartridges you have seen, and why do you like them?

The following list is very subjective and is far from complete: Audio Note Japan (Kondo), Jan Allaerts, EMT, Ortofon SPU, My Sonic Lab, Accuphase, Lyra, Koetsu, Phasemation, Air Tight… For us some of the units of these manufacturers provide such musical experience since many years that we enjoy a lot. They have rather neutral sound, they have a relaxed sound, but at the same time they are very dynamic, analytical, precise and show a wide stereo soundstage. They are well designed and mechanically solid.

Is it true that Japan is the only country that can make a complete cartridge?

We don’t think so, however it is true that decades ago serious/excellent cartridges were coming          mainly from Japanese manufacturers. Let’s not forget though about the before mentioned famous European brands, such as EMT, Ortofon, Audio Note UK, Benz Micro, Clearaudio, Van den Hul, Jan Allaerts, etc.

Some have claimed that Koetsu differs only by body, but the cores are the same inside?

This is definitely not true.  Their models have different magnets or pole pieces, coil material can also be different, for example they use parallel wire (copper and silver) making the coil. They sort and match the components carefully, selecting the bodies to the sonic properties of the matched components. For sure this can be also valid for other manufacturers as the magnetic properties of the magnets are not always the same. The earlier Koetsu models have gained a prestigious reputation.

Is it true that only 1-2 manufacturers do all the tipping, cantilevers, and suspension in the world?

To the best of our knowledge there are only a few companies able to manufacture these, however we don’t exclude the possibility of new manufacturers entering this market.

Who are the main cartridge makers of today? Matsudaira of MSL?   Nakasutka San of ZYX?   Audio Technica? Who else do you know?

There are different type of builders and of these builders are important in thier own way :

–    Mass market like Audio Technica and Ortofon with advanced technologies and less human process implied in the building of their products. They produce thousands of MC cartridges, and represent a very small percentage of their total sales. Of course there are some exceptions like the Audio-Technica ART-1000 (of which we are proud exclusive dealers in France) which is produced at around 200 samples per year by only person… and which is also a beautiful and technically made product. Ortofon and Audio-Technica are OEM builders too.

–    Medium mass market like Excel, Benz Micro, Lyra, ZYX, MSL which also address OEM market

–    Small mass market builders like : Jan Allaerts and a lot of artisan Japanese cartridges (Sumile, Top Wing, Miyajima, Fuuga, etc…)

Main cartridge maker is not the one that sells the most cartridges but the one(s) that make the cartridges you prefer. ;)

Show us some examples?

Here is a cartridge repaired by another. You have coil wires soldered together (this is something we would never do), and an aluminum cantilever attached to the end of the original cantilever, on this Koetus Urushi Vermillion.

Here is what it looks like after the repairs with upgrades. We completely rebuild damper, coils and cantilever from the ground up.

And here, we have a modified Denon 103, with one of our body, and cartridge internals.

Closing thoughts from ANA Mighty Sound

It is important to mention that most cartridges that come to us are usually old, many of them were made many decades ago. Similar to other used equipment the aim is to repair it the closest to original condition. It is not always possible to return the cartridge to its original/brand new condition as the parts used for the repair might not be 100% the same as the originals.

With solid experience and special care most of the times it is possible to repair the cartridge very close to its original condition/sound. Many times, we received such feedback that the repaired cartridge sounded better than originally. We dare to state that in most cases changing the stylus to a modern and sharper cut as well as to change the cantilever to something more rigid improves the sound of the cartridge.

We would like to grab the opportunity and highlight here the importance of properly cleaning of the record and the cartridge’s stylus (diamond tip). If you look closely to the record and the stylus you can experience the wonder of this historical micromechanical technology. Love and respect your records, phono cartridge and all your equipment.

Closing thoughts from Richard

Does a rebuilt cartridge sounds as good as the original?  The truth lies with the pudding, and Francois provided me with a rebuilt EMT TSD15N cartridge, and asked me answer the question by listening to his cartridge.

The cartridge has been rebuilt from the ground up with 12 ohm silver coils, it has a proprietary frictionless dual donut damper, a new boron cantilever with Nude Microridge S tip (the smallest diamond tip available).  The rebuilding cost of the cartridge is €1800, but Anamighty does sell fully modified models for €3500.

At first I was skeptical given the cartridge looks a little weird, with wire leads coming out of the cartridge body instead of pins. But as soon as the cantilever dropped onto the LP, my jaw literally dropped!! The sound of the rebuilt TNT15 has the details of my My Sonic Lab Ultra Eminent BC, it has the dynamics of the Lyra Olympos and the transient attack of the ZYX Universe Optimum. Does it sound better the original EMT TSD 15N?  I cannot answer fairly   because I do not have an unmodified original for a side by side comparison. But sitting beside the some of the best cartridges in the market, this €1800 rebuilt EMT holds its own!

I give ANA Mighty Sound my highest recommendation.

www.anamightysound.com

A relative newcomer on the HiFi scene, AudioSolutions comes out of the gate producing speakers that are top performers, offering tremendous value.

To be straight up with you, I prefer speakers more in the GamuT, Sonus faber, and Gold Note part of the spectrum. Slightly on the warm side, but still dynamic and resolving. A bit of extra tonal saturation goes a long way with me. So, that’s my bias. If you are looking for a speaker with these sonic characteristics, I can’t suggest the AudioSolutions speakers highly enough. They offer all the qualities I love in a speaker at incredibly reasonable prices. The Figaro M floorstanders you see here are $7,500/pair. Close your eyes, and you might just think you’re in Italy.

After about 50 hours of background duty, the first track up is Drab Majesty’s “Foyer.” Hardly the last word in audiophile fidelity, this track offers layers of atmospheric sounds and synthesizers, that in a lesser system, just sound flat and uninvolving. A great alternative track in the same vein is Thomas Dolby’s “I Scare Myself.” I’m sure you have your faves.

Team players

The Figaros present an easy load to drive, working equally well with tubes, solid-state or class D amplifiers, keeping their signature sound, but revealing the character of whatever they are plugged into. Mating them with the Boulder, Nagra, and Vitus amplifiers we had on hand for review, the Figaros become more dynamic overall, producing more LF extension and sock. Pass and Luxman provide a bit more warmth with tube amps from Line Magnetic and PrimaLuna even more romantic.

 With a rated sensitivity of 91.5db/1-watt, precious few amplifiers will be off-limits, but a few vintage amps in the queue were a bit too much of a good thing for this writer. As always, experiment, experiment, experiment to find your little slice of nirvana. The Figaros even turn in an enchanting performance with my PSAudio Sprout II. This was used in the garage after unpacking to burn them in, with a lot of metal tracks being played at a neighbor annoying level. After a weekend’s worth of parts cleaning, they were ready to move into the studio.

The front panel snaps off so you can use them with flush grilles or without – I always love to look at the drivers, so sans grille cloth I say. The flat, speckly finish covering most of the cabinet tends to diffuse the light bouncing off of the Figaros, so they are not as imposing as a pair of gloss black speakers. They are not as fussy to live with as a result.

The music lover trying to get as much sound as they possibly can for their dollar will appreciate this approach. Beautifully finished cabinets are wonderful, but they do add to the MRSP. AudioSolutions keeps the cost in check going this route. This finish is certainly easy to keep clean and fingerprint free. Half of the side panels are available in any one of 17 different colors, and you can read about that here.

Free of fatigue

Even after a long string of punk tunes, via the Pass XA200.8s (at a higher volume than is reasonable and prudent) the Figaros prove they can play loud with total control. Listening to Amyl and the Sniffers “GFY,” lead singer Amy Taylor channels Wendy O. Williams, along with a little bit of Lemmy and Yoko Ono, the Figaros are cranked to the point of pain. That’s my pain though, the speakers show no break up even at ear-splitting levels – they play loud with ease.

Going back to Yello’s “Vicious Games,” music bounces all over the place. The Figaros create a soundfield that is wide, deep, and tall. These speakers do an incredibly good job at reproducing height information along with the standard width and depth. Same thing, tracking through U2’s debut, Boy. All the tinkly bits float in space, and the Edge’s layer upon layer of processed guitars are all easily decipherable.

As you might expect from what I’ve told you so far, vocal and acoustic music is perfection on the Figaros. ABBA’s rendition of “Dancing Queen” is just as much fun as the Yayhoos remake. Yoko Ono’s vocals on “Watching the Rain” are everywhere in the sonic picture. If your musical taste is more traditional, I had an equally engaging time with Ella Fitzgerald.

Big bottom

AudioSolutions claims bass down to 32hz, and while we don’t measure speakers, a quick run of test tones confirms there is plenty of action at 30hz. The trick to getting the optimum setup with the Figaros (at least in my three rooms) was to get them a bit further out in the room than you might other speakers. It’s kind of like when you order shoes and a particular manufacturer runs half a size large. Get it wrong, and they sound uncharacteristically boomy – it’s not the speakers’ fault. Once you have achieved the perfect low and mid-bass balance, play some of your favorite bass-heavy tracks, and you’ll see what I mean. The Figaros deliver solid and substantial low-frequency output.

Running through a long playlist of hip-hop, EDM, and even some classic rock tracks with a lot of LF information, all but the most bass addicted end users will probably not need a subwoofer. The Figaros achieve true full range performance. Should your musical taste be strictly EDM and electronica, move the speakers slightly further towards the room corners to pick up a little bit of room/midbass gain and get the party started!

Further tech bits

The black finish is definitely slimming. The Figaros weigh 90 pounds each, so it’s up to you if you’ll need help placing them. They are well packed and easy to unpack without drama. Their footprint is small (44.1 inches tall x 10.7 inches wide and 18.5 inches deep) so they won’t overpower your listening environment.

A pair of 7.2-inch woofers, a 5-inch midrange that is run “further than the usual region” and a silk dome tweeter with a mini waveguide make for a full three-way system. Again, it’s important to note what a great job AudioSolutions have done on the crossover network and driver choices. These speakers have a coherence that you’d expect to pay 2-3 times this much for.

Even though the speckled finish is utilitarian in nature, the execution of the cabinetry is flawless, thanks to AudioSolutions “self-locking” cabinet. This is a level of detail I would expect on a $50k pair of Sonus faber speakers, but am thrilled to see in a $7,500 pair.

Adding up to excellence

We could go on and on, with this track and that, but the bottom line with the Figaros is the level of music they reveal. While $7,500/pair can bring you a considerable glimpse into the upper strata of high-end speakers, Audio Solutions delivers a masterpiece. In the context of a $10k – $100k system, they’d probably be the last thing I’d upgrade if I did at all. The only key is that if you like this “sound” as much as I do. If you’re more of a mega detail person, these may not be the droids you want. I can’t think of a speaker in the last decade that’s delivered more sonic enjoyment than the Figaro Ms do for $7,500 a pair. Hence, I am happy to give them one of our Exceptional value awards for 2019. This is a lovely pair of speakers without fault, that could easily be the last pair of speakers you buy.

AudioSolutions Figaro M

$7,500/pair

www.highendbyoz.com

Peripherals

Digital Source dCS Vivaldi One

Analog Source Luxman PD-717 w/Kiseki Purple Heart

Phono stage Luxman EQ-500

Preamplifier Pass Labs XS PRE

Amplifier Pass Labs XA200.8

Cables Tellurium Q Reference

August 31, 2019
I love wristwatches, but I’m kind of a lurker.

I’d love one of those big, chunky, Rolex Submariners, but I can’t quite make the leap to almost $20k for a watch. I wear a much more modest Tudor Bronze Black Bay. In a recent article from John Mayer on the Hodinkee.com website, he referred to my watch as “a way to get into the serious watch guy game without spending five figures.” Made me feel even better about my purchase.

High-performance audio is a similar thing. We see so many amazing technological triumphs, but some of them are out of our reach. Interacting with our readers for 15 years now, I’m amazed at how many of you have invested 30 to 100 thousand dollars in a music system. While that seems to be a big sweet spot (as are the 5-10k system owners) it’s still a far cry from the “money no object system” owners. No disrespect, it just is what it is. But guess what, that’s what we all want, right? Occasionally, you can cheat the numbers, and a few rare pieces of gear with a moderately high price tag, aren’t so far out of reach that you’ll never even be able to dream of owning one. And because they offer such tremendous long term value, make perfect sense to pull the trigger on.

The Boulder 1161 is precisely that kind of thing

If I received a big lottery payout tomorrow, I’d buy a full Boulder 3000 series system. It’s the most musically revealing gear I’ve heard in my journey as an audio consumer and audio writer. These are all six-figure components and worth every penny. But, they will remain out of my reach unless I have a major windfall. The new 1100 series is spectacular, in its own right. At $22,000 for the amplifier and $21,000 for the matching 1110 preamplifier, you could add your favorite pair of 10-20k pair of speakers a great source to make up a system that is close enough to what the crazy money gear costs, to live with for the rest of your life. And have no regrets.

Much like our discussion in the review of the dCS Bartok recently, you probably aren’t going to walk out the door and buy a $43,000 amp and pre tomorrow, and you probably aren’t going to start your hifi journey here. (Bully for you if that’s your starting point, though!) You work up to components like this, so you probably have something decent to sell or trade as a starting point, so this isn’t as scary as it seems at first blush.

After giving the 1161 an hour to fully stabilize thermally, the first cut to evaluate the mettle of the Boulder is Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Mary Magdalene,” a track combining a lush female voice, a wispy percussion track, and some of the deepest bass grooves going. It feels as if I’ve pushed my speakers and the listening room about 25% further apart. Many audiophile clichés come to mind, but the way this amplifiers’ complete lack of noise and coloration is uncanny, and if you’ve never heard a Boulder amplifier or system, might even freak you out a little. In an excellent way. I’ve never forgotten my first Boulder experience, and listening to the 1161 takes me right back there. The clarity that this amplifier offers is stunning.

What you don’t get

Because the 1161 is conservatively rated at 150 watts per channel (into 8 ohms), it doesn’t require the massive “big blue” 32-amp connector and power cord that Boulder’s bigger amplifiers use – providing considerable cost savings. Using a high quality, 15-amp AC socket means your favorite power cord will work just fine. Most users having speakers with a sensitivity rating of about 86db/1-watt, should be just fine with the 1161, so this shouldn’t be a deal-breaker. Those requiring more power can step up to the 1160, producing twice as much power, with an MSRP of $28,000.

Because of its power rating, this is a Boulder amplifier that can be easily lifted solo. Hitting the scale at just over 60 pounds, this one is maneuverable. Should you step up to an 1160 (at 135 pounds) assistance will be required. And remember, this is still the 1100 series. 

Boulder is known for casework that is flawlessly executed. This is because Boulder controls every aspect of their chassis building in house, from machining the raw aluminum to the final finish. They look great from a distance, but when you get close and truly inspect any Boulder product, you can see what a fantastic example of metalworking art they are. They are the only manufacturer in the United States that still has this level of control.

Functionality is king at Boulder, and their casework is not self-indulgent – the intricate design of the heat sinks allows higher heat dissipation while saving space over an amplifier with traditional finned heat sinks. The 1161 features the same heatsink design that graces the rest of the line, but the front panel and remaining chassis bits are of a slightly simpler design. The front panel design of the 1100 series is in part homage to the Flagstaff Mountain, which is near their Louisville, Colorado offices.

Finally, you don’t get to use your speaker cables if they have banana ends. The large wing-nut speaker terminals will only accommodate spade lugs because Boulder feels that is the best way to connect speaker cable – bananas loosen with time. So be prepared.

What you do get

Most importantly, you get the sonic virtues that have made Boulder a legend: tonal neutrality and freedom from coloration like nothing else, incredible dynamic range, and high resolution without fatigue or distortion. This fully balanced amplifier runs in class A mode up to 17 watts, (gently transitioning to AB above that) does a better job at disappearing than anything we’ve experienced. It’s so exciting that Boulder has not decreased the quality of their smaller amps, just the amount of raw power on tap.The 1161s 150 watts per channel never max out our Sonus faber Stradivaris (92db/1-watt) or the Focal Stella Utopia Ems (93db/1watt). These flagship loudspeakers deliver incredible performances with the 1161 in the amplification chain, and I couldn’t play them loud enough to detect any kind of clipping. Though the 1161 manual says that the white power indicator will briefly turn red in the presence of clipping, we were not able to make this happen, even playing TOOL at disgustingly (or invitingly, depending on your perspective) loud levels.

Where my reference Pass amplifiers sound slightly tubey in comparison, the Boulder is straight in the middle neutral. We will be revisiting this amplifier again in a month or so when the new 1110 preamplifier joins the system, along with our reference Boulder 508 phonostage for a full Boulder experience. For those curious about the difference, the larger Boulder amplifiers (with larger power supplies and even more output transistors) run further into class A mode, with the top amplifiers running class A all the way to rated power. And that’s what you pay a higher price for.

Many amplification components touted as “neutral,” merely exaggerate detail, overprocessing tonal contrasts in a quest for resolution, but these same products become exhausting to listen to for any length of time. When the Focals were in the system, I felt like I had a miniature version of Boulder’s reference system which features the Focal Grand Utopia EMs and a full complement of 3000 series components. This is an amplifier that you can listen to for days on end, and as you do, discovering new information in your recordings.

Sonically excellent as the 1161 is, most of its other virtue is underneath the top panel. The level of attention to detail rivals what you might expect from the Ferrari Formula One garage. (and, I’ve been to this garage) It’s no surprise that when you visit the Boulder factory, you see their biggest models being wheeled from one department to another on engine stands, in a spotless environment. Boulder’s employees are well trained and have been with the company for years, some for decades. (image courtesy of Boulder Amplifiers)

Nothing I’ve ever had the privilege of lifting the cover on in the audio world is built to this standard. This is what gives Boulder products the highest secondary market value of anything going – if you can even find them used. I’m sure people that trade Boulder in for something else are out there, but every Boulder owner I’ve encountered has only traded up. It’s rarely if ever for sale used, and I’ve never heard of one that has malfunctioned. I don’t even recall seeing a service area when I visited the factory, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.

Excellence defined

In a world where countless hifi reviews lead to a conclusion where the reviewer says, “Is the XYZ amplifier worth the price asked? I don’t know, I can’t make that decision,” I have no reservation saying the Boulder 1161 is one of the best values in high-end audio today. On their website, Boulder says that the 1161 “has no sonic drawbacks.” For a change, the product exceeds the manufacturers claim.

And that’s what you write the check for. Given the Boulder 1161s sonic performance, build quality, and that it is as obsolescence proof as a component can be, I find it to be a more than worthy candidate for one of our Exceptional Value Awards for 2019. If you seek what Boulder offers, there is no better. And if you don’t need the raw power of the 2000 or 3000 series, this amplifier can easily be the last one you ever buy. Unless of course, you get a hankering for a bigger Boulder…

The Boulder 1161
MSRP: $22,000

boulderamp.com

Peripherals

Analog Source GrandPrix Audio Parabolica/Koetsu Jade Platinum

Digital Source dCS Vivaldi ONE

Speakers Focal Stella Utopia EM, Sonus faber Stradivari

Cable Cardas Clear, Tellurium Q Reference

For some odd reason, paging through the album artwork in the Roon browser, trying to decide what record to play first on the Wharfdale Lintons in my system, Queen’s News of the World jumps out at me.

Maybe it’s that I haven’t actually listened to this record in ages, or perhaps it was just watching the Family Guy episode where Brian terrorizes Stewie with the album cover, or, maybe it’s just that these reasonably priced speakers from Wharfdale really rock. Yes, they do. Those of you that have had the chance to hear them at recent audio shows know what I mean.

Budget speakers are full of compromise because there’s only so much a designer can give you on a tight budget, yet the Lintons are as close to perfection for $1,200 a pair as anything we’ve ever heard. They are genuine full range “bookshelf” speakers in the best British tradition, and very substantial. You’ll notice how lovely the cabinets are as you unpack these 40-pound three ways. The Lintons look and feel like a $4,000 pair of speakers. Actually, cabinet-wise, they are finished to a higher level of quality than my $4,000/pair JBL Classic L-100s.

Thanks in part to a pair of ports on the rear panel the Lintons offer solid bass down to the 40hz range, negating the need for a subwoofer in nearly all environments. Their ability to deliver claimed peaks of 110db means you can crank these speakers way past the point of prudence. You’ll never get there with a pair of mini-monitors.

System and setup

While you’re at it, consider buying your Lintons as a with their matching stands, bringing the cost to $1,499 a pair. That’s what you’d pay for a pair of KEF LS50s without stands. They are available in walnut, as you see here, or red mahogany. Both are pleasant and easy to integrate with your décor. Another fun aspect of the Wharfdale stands is the small shelf on the bottom that will comfortably hold 20 or so of your favorite records in each. Nice touch.

Finally, the Lintons 90db/1-watt sensitivity makes amplifier choices a breeze, and they are both tube and class-D amplifier friendly, so whatever you have on hand will be a good place to start. I began my break-in period with a stack of vintage Nakamichi 600 components and ran the gamut after that. Everything from the PS Audio Sprout II to the Audio Research REF160Ms plays well with these speakers – nothing should be off-limits.

Final review listening was done in our living room system with the VAC Sigma 170i tube integrated (85wpc) the dCS Bartok DAC and the MoFi StudioDeck +U that we just recently reviewed. Great as the Lintons work with everything, again, there’s just something about these speakers, a great tube amp, and a long playlist of classic rock that is inescapably good.

A day or two of varied program material is all you need to hear the full potential of the Lintons and then do final room tuning. Horizontal and vertical dispersion is excellent, so these speakers are less critical than most to optimize, especially if you are using the Wharfdale stands. This makes the Lintons easy to engage anywhere in your listening environment, not just on the center of the couch. This is also excellent when friends drop by, even those sitting off to the side or corner will get a good helping of the music, making these speakers everyone will enjoy at a get together.

Provided you have enough freedom to place your Lintons, it won’t take very long to achieve a good balance between bass extension and upper bass smoothness. In our 12 x 18-foot living room, they ended up on the short wall about three feet from the back and side walls with a few degrees of toe-in.

The Lintons are not terribly cable sensitive, but Cardas Iridium speaker cable offers up a few more molecules of warmth than our other favorite budget speaker cable, Tellurium Q black. The former offering the best synergy with solid-state and the latter slightly more tube friendly. For those on a super tight budget, cut this Home Depot extension cord (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Yellow-Jacket-50-ft-14-3-SJTW-Outdoor-Medium-Duty-Extension-Cord-with-Power-Light-Plug-64826701/204651253) in half, strip the ends and get down to business. It’s all good.

An excellent gateway to audiophile madness

Nearly all of the competitors in the Lintons price range run out of performance pretty quickly, so when the desire to upgrade your system arrives, the speakers are often the first thing to go. Not so here. After using these speakers with a relatively wide range of source and amplification components, the Lintons deliver highly satisfying musical performance with entry level  electronics, yet have enough resolution to remain keepers when the upgrade bug hits. That’s superior value.

The key to these speakers is genuinely the balance that they’ve achieved at their price – sonically and aesthetically. In the best British tradition, they go about their way of delivering great music without a fuss. Not quite as warm and woolly as a pair of Harbeths, yet not quite as dynamic as similar offerings from Totem and Paradigm, the Lintons are fantastic all-rounders.

Their real strength, beyond being easy to place and drive, is their wide tonal and dynamic range. If there is any sacrifice here (and again, all speakers at this price make some sacrifices), it’s that of pinpoint image placement within the soundstage. My reference $4,000 JBL L-100 Classics have the same issue, and for my money, I’ll take a speaker with a bit more diffuse soundfield that offers bass extension and dynamic ability every time.

They also offer a high degree of tonal accuracy and cleanliness, that is rarely offered at this price, so if you don’t share my love for classic rock, they do an equally good job with acoustic, classical, jazz, anything you have in your collection. This is another bonus for the beginning audiophile that loves to stream their music. Speakers with this kind of capability will invite you to sample more new music because they won’t poop out when you turn the volume up. Hmmm.

Which brings us full circle. That’s what makes the Wharfdale Lintons really rock, and so much fun to build a system around. These are speakers that you can get lost in for hours upon end just listening to music, and that’s what it’s all about. We can go on and on about specs and such, but none of that matters, if ten minutes into the music, you’re distracted by that new face aging app on your phone.

While we don’t offer a TONEAudio Maximum Fun Award, the Lintons would be our first choice. However, they are more than worthy of one of our Exceptional Value Awards. They’ve got it all, great sound, great build quality and a heritage that few speakers can match.

The Wharfedale Linton Speakers

$1,198/pair (without stands) $1,498/pair (with stands)

www.wharfedaleusa.com

Peripherals

Analog Source MoFi Ultra Deck, AVID Plug and Play

Digital Source Rega Apollo CD player, dCS Bartok DAC

Amplification VAC Sigma 170i

Cable Cardas Iridium, Tellurium Q Black II

Features

Old School:

Jeff Dorgay continues the roll with Pioneer and bags an RT-701 Reel to reel deck

1095:

Michael Laurance samples the Bowers&Wilkins 607 speakers

Journeyman Audiophile:

We put the Linn Selekt DSM through its paces with multiple power amplifiers

The Audiophile Apartment:

McIntosh’s new MTI100 is a killer combination

Shanon Says:

Shanon breaks in the Hana ML cartridge
By Shanon Swetlishnoff

Mine: It Should Be Yours

Styling Shades

Snoop Dogg Loafers

Weinermobile AirBnB

Fielder’s Choice Wallet

and more….

Gear

ARC REF 160 Monoblocks

Conrad-Johnson ART 27A

BAT VK56SE

Line Magnetic LM-45

VAC Sigma 170i Integrated

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world

Future Tense

AVID Acutus Dark

Anthem MRX 520

Mikek Brooklyn + DAC

and more…

Cover Feature: Tubes

Jeff Dorgay reflects on the Prima Luna EVO400 Amp and Pre

Listening to the delicacy of Allison Miller’s drumming in Boom Tic Boom, in my living room system, it’s easy to see how this DAC can be the end of your digital journey.

Like every other dCS DAC I’ve owned or reviewed, they always manage to hit a perfect tonal balance, combined with wide dynamic range and a natural presentation that never feels digital at all. Good as their last entry-level piece the Debussy was ($11k about 8 years ago), the new Bartok at $13,500 (and $15,000 with a built-in headphone amp) offers quite a bit more. By comparison, many of your favorite automobiles have gone up in price by a much greater percentage.

The Bartok’s sonic signature is similar to the Vivaldi but the Vivaldi is further refined. The Bartok reminds me much more of my former Paganini in terms of the ease it presents. Much like my reference dCS Vivaldi One, the Bartok just sounds like music. There’s no “pretty good for digital” stuff going on here. dCS’ John Quick had this to say about the similarity of the Bartok in their lineup:

“Bartok and Rossini share the same processing and RingDAC analog boards, so overall, they have the same processing capacity. The differences between the units (that affect their cost and ultimately their overall performance) are literally down to the Bartok having half the power supply and the chassis being far less expensive. The Bartok’s construction overall is less complicated, using thinner metal. It uses a folded metal internal chassis wrapped in aluminum side and top panels; and although the front panel seems like a thick hunk of aluminum like everything else, it’s actually a very thin cap that either includes the punch-outs for the headphone outputs or not.”

A long-term investment

It’s been argued elsewhere that components like the dCS Bartok will only be purchased by the wealthy, in reference to its $13,500 price tag. ($1,500 more, if you want the internal headphone amplifier, and I highly suggest that you spend the extra- you won’t regret it)

However, I submit that $13,500 – $15,000 isn’t out of reach for all but the well-heeled (read my article on “motorcycle money” here). Call me crazy, but I’m guessing you probably didn’t wake up today and say “I’m gonna buy a $15,000 DAC today.” Most audio enthusiasts don’t start there. Some do, but most don’t. Most of us work our way up the ladder. More realistically, you’re probably trading in a $3k-$8k DAC and moving up to what might be your last. dCS’ programmable architecture goes a long way towards making an investment as future proof as digital technology can be.

Over the nearly ten years I owned the Paganini stack, numerous upgrades were only an upload away, giving me a new DAC every time. You can read more about dCS’ approach and technological solutions here at their website.

This is an excellent time to make an investment like this because Roon is well implemented, there are several excellent streaming services available (directly via dCS’ own Mosaic App should you not go the Roon route), and all of the dCS players have proprietary fully-implemented MQA. We could have a dodgeball game to the death about MQA, but if you are a fan, rest assured that dCS has done a fantastic job at decoding MQA. I’ll even put the Nomex suit on and go as far as to say they’ve even outdone Meridan on MQA decoding ability – these files though both of the dCS DACs here, sound more lifelike than they have on any other MQA equipped box we’ve heard.

Just grab your favorite phones

Because the Bartok has already started achieving a lot of fanfare in the headphone world, let’s start here. As dCS’ first entry into this world, they’ve built a brilliant product. The Bartok’s full class-A headphone amplifier drives everything from my Koss Pro-4AAs that I’ve had since high school to the new Focal Utopias to perfection. You’d probably spend more than $1,500on a premium interconnect and power cable to add a headphone amplifier of comparable performance to a Bartok based system, so it’s almost like getting a fab headphone amplifier at no extra charge- and you don’t need to find more rack space. How’s that for justification?

After exhausting auditioning with about 20 different pairs of phones in the $50 – $4,000 range, I don’t need a better headphone amplifier than the one built in the Bartok. A couple of the top choices from Luxman ($4,995) and Woo Audio ($16,000) reveal a little bit more music, but nowhere near enough for this moderate headphone user to ever justify the additional cost. The front panel features a standard ¼-inch headphone jack and a 4-pin balanced jack. While this won’t cover every single headphone out there, all of the premium headphones on the market have one of these two options (if not both) available (and most have detachable cables allowing for adapting to either).

Headphone use couldn’t be more straightforward. Plug into the front panel and switch the Bartok’s output from line to headphone, and then use the knob on the front panel as volume, or control from your mobile device or laptop with whatever app you are using for playback.

Even the most fanatical of my headphone pals came away highly impressed with the Bartok’s performance. Those of you living in tight quarters, tight enough that you can’t afford the space for a power amplifier and speakers right now, would do well to grab a Bartok, a Roon subscription, and a few of your favorite streaming services.

This leads to my only complaint with the Bartok- it would be lovely if dCS would add a single analog input, so those needing just one input could use it as a standalone preamplifier, or those going strictly for the headphone experience, could add a phonostage too. If you’re all digital, the Bartok is pretty incredible.

Tomato/Tomato

Rather than seeing the Bartok as a $15,000 headphone amp that happens to be a remarkable DAC, I see it as a destination DAC that’s a steal at $13,500 and even more so with the addition of the headphone amp. Perspective is everything.

After coming off a year with the Rossini and now nearly a year with the Vivaldi ONE, the only thing the Bartok doesn’t offer that the other two larger and more expensive players in the lineup offer are scale and some ultimate top-end refinement. Some of this refinement can be achieved by adding a dCS external clock.

The sense of scale comes from bigger power supplies, isolation of functions to individual chassis and the added electrical and mechanical isolation that comes with taking core functions to separate chassis. The progress dCS has made here is astounding. Again, Mr. Quick chimes in, offering some more insight:  “We are getting better at trickling down more of the sound of our flagship in our current offerings, and Bartok is really special in that regard. Considering it has 6-7 years of R&D ahead of it from Vivaldi and Rossini – far ahead of anything else we’ve done- versus the 2.5-3 years that separated Scarlatti and Debussy… that definitely made a big difference. Beyond that, where we’ve taken the RingDAC in the latest series is also a primary contributor. We could not have made nearly the same overall improvement in changing the mapping algorithm (as we did in Vivaldi and Rossini v1 versus v2) in the older generation products.”

It’s all about resolution

Having the unique ability to compare the Bartok side by side as the anchor to a very nice $50k system (which is where I suspect most Bartoks will end up) and my reference system, worth nearly ten times this much, illuminates the differences clearly.

In my primary reference system, that has a much broader dynamic capability, more low-level resolution, and a magnificent soundstage, the Bartok makes a great showing. For many analog crazed audiophiles I know that are primarily analog, but would still like digital, this could be an excellent choice.

Regardless of choosing delicate, small ensemble choral music, or the most raucous rock, starting with the Bartok feels just fine. But then switching up to the Vivaldi One shows precisely where the limits of the Bartok lie. Yet going back to the system in my living room, which is unable to resolve as much musical information, the delta between the two is not nearly as vast.

The point here is that the core musicality of the Bartok is highly similar to the bigger boxes in the dCS range, and that’s what I appreciate. Some manufacturers are not nearly as good at delivering a linear increase in performance as you go up the range. The Bartok is at the top of its class for the price asked, as are the Rossini, Vivaldi ONE and full-blown, four box Vivaldi – as it should be. There’s no law of diminishing returns if you have a system capable of resolving the difference.

Versatility defined

The Bartok can accommodate any digital source you’d like to connect, via its RCA, Coax, or optical SPDIF inputs, single or dual AES inputs, USB or network inputs. That’s right, it’s got a fully capable streamer built in that will access your UPnP network and bring files in from your NAS or straight from your network.

The Bartok has a fully balanced, class-A output stage in addition to the headphone amplifier, and there are balanced XLR and standard RCA outputs, that are both variable. More about that in a bit.

Our experience with the Vivaldi ONE, the Rossini, and Bartok is that the best results are streaming music files right from the network. Those not wanting to pony up for a ROON subscription can use dCS’ own app, which works well and sounds excellent, though lacks the ultimate functionality of ROON. It’s also incredibly handy that you can chain another network device through the Bartok. I use a Naim Uniti Core for CD ripping and offline storage in addition to my NAS, so this is a perfect way to keep the Uniti Core close by.

Excellent luck was also had with a variety of different CD players as transports. Those who want to keep it all dCS might consider a used dCS transport for their disc needs, and if you use a Paganini transport with the dual AES connection, native SACD playback is possible. There are no limitations to digital playback with the Bartok. You can even connect to it as an Airplay zone!

Pre or not to pre

The ultimate question for some will be whether to use the Bartok as a standalone preamplifier, forgoing a linestage/preamplifier, or putting one in the system. Conventional wisdom suggests that less is more, but digital volume controls are always a touchy thing. At extremely low listening levels, they tend to lose resolution. Where the Vivaldi One can, in fact, be used without a line stage, if you are only concerned with digital playback, the Bartok is pretty good.

Ultimately, this is the other area where the entry-level Bartok is bested by the top dCS player. In my living room system when playing the Bartok directly into the BAT VK 56SE power amplifier and Focal Kanta no.3s, adding a preamplifier made a slight difference, offering up a little bit more spaciousness and definitely a smidge more warmth at very low-level playback. It was easier to notice the minute level of flatness there at the lowest level after going back to having a tip-top preamplifier in the system, but it will depend on your needs.

However, switching from the Kanta no.3s to the much larger and more resolving Focal Stella Utopia Ems, the jump in performance added by our Nagra Classic Preamplifier was unmistakable, especially in the area of tonal contrast and saturation. And of course, low-level playback is warmer and more full-bodied.

It’s about music

As I’ve said before, the dCS DACs have always deliver supreme musicality, and I have hung my hat on their products, using them as a reference tool for over a decade. However, what I love about dCS is the way they serve the music and not the other way around. This is a player than I can listen to for 12-16 hours a day (and have on many occasions) with zero fatigue.

dCS does an outstanding job at presenting music with a tonality that is dead center in the middle of the scale. Their products (and the Bartok is no exception) are neither warm and romantic nor overly bright, bleached or harsh. Hitting the tonality bullseye is tougher than it sounds, but they manage to pull it off every time.

Every other musical parameter is equally well represented. Rather than go on at length with tracks you may or may not know or like, the best way to see what I mean is to go to your dCS dealer and give the Bartok a listen.

Is it for you?

Returning to our original conversation, you don’t have to be an aristocrat to have a dCS Bartok of your very own. If you love music, and you want a top-quality digital front end that will offer enough performance to stay put, the Bartok is a winner. The performance that it provides more than justifies the price asked. dCS has put a considerable helping of their top technology in a package that outperforms many far more expensive boutique DACs.

Best of all, the customer service and ongoing support that comes with a dCS product assures that this is a digital player you will enjoy for years to come. Highly recommended. And yes, spring for the headphone amp!

The dCS Bartok

$13,500. ($16,250 with headphone amplifier)

www.dcsaudio.com

Peripherals

Preamplifier Nagra Classic Preamplifier

Amplifier Nagra Classic Amplifier

Speakers Focal Kanta no.3 and Focal Stella Utopia EM

Cable Cardas Clear

After 40 years of being an audio enthusiast, consumer (and someone covering this world for the last 17 of those years) I think we have a fundamental confusion in what we’re talking about.

To me, “high end audio” means something condescending, something unapproachable, something you can’t have. It means the secret handshake, the elite club.

I’d rather it not be that way.

In the world of cars, you have cars that get you from point a to point b reliably, like a Toyota RAV 4 or a Kia Soul, that are perfectly good cars (I’ve owned both of em) and they get the job done with no fuss. And for probably 99 percent of the population that’s just fine. If you think I’m nuts, how many of your friends, male and female, have said at one point or another, “cars don’t mean anything to me, I just need one to get from a to b and back.”

There’s no shame in that at all. Most people don’t give a shit about cars.

I’ve got news for you, most people don’t give a shit about audio either. But almost everyone loves, or at least likes music. But for so many, it’s something in the background, it’s something to listen to on the subway, or when friends are over. Or sing along with.

It’s something to get from point a to b.

But high performance audio is something completely different. High performance audio, like high performance cars, motorcycles, bicycles, cameras, concentrates on delivering more experience, no matter what the approach. It doesn’t always have to be expensive, and it doesn’t always have to be brand new. $30,000 will buy you a well-appointed Toyota camry, or it will buy you a really nice, used Audi S4. Think about it. If you love the way a car feels going around a corner, or stopping hard, you’d probably rather drive the Audi.

But even if you take the new approach, high performance audio does not have to break the bank. Many of the manufacturers that we might consider “high end,” and perhaps even out of our reach, make great products, that are very affordable. And they are all a great place to start your journey.

A perfect example of this is Vandersteen Audio. Their flagship 7s cost upwards of $60k/pair, but the current version of their model 1 is just under $1,500/pair. If that’s still crazy money in your book, look at the Paradigm Atoms. $299/pair. Both of these speakers are designed and built by the same people that build the flagship models with plenty of TLC.

I can cite plenty of examples in the realm of amplifiers, preamplifiers, DACs and turntables, but I’m guessing you know most of the players.

You can spend a little bit of money or a lot of money. That is up to you and those are your personal priorities.

But stop worrying if your system is “high end,” and where that line begins. Think “high performance,” or even “performance oriented.” Then we can all play, and we can all get on with it. Best of all, we can all get back to enjoying music, to a greater degree than what a mass market solution offers.

Who’s with me? If you’re enjoying music, and you’re having fun doing it, you’re in. It’s really that easy.

My apologies for the title. To be absolutely correct, the TUKs are all you need if you don’t want to listen to records. Music lovers sourcing their tunes digitally, have everything they need inside the small (but well packed) box that the TUKs arrive in. And for $799 a pair, these speakers offer an incredible amount of sound for the price.

Much as I hate listening to the Eagles, their first album is well recorded and offers some great harmonies, most that get lost on so called, budget speakers. The integration between the TUKs 5 ¼” woofer and AMT tweeter is flawless, and they offer distinct separation of these voices, doing an excellent job keeping the tracks’ pace locked down. Whether listening to layered harmonies, densely recorded metal tracks, or acoustic tunes, the TUKs are a pleasure to listen to, for hours on end.

This, along with the first week of listening was done strictly with the Bluetooth input from my phone, via Roon and Qobuz. I suspect that a lot of the potential audience for these speakers (or any compact, powered speaker for that matter) is more of an “on the go” listener, so if this happens to be you, you will not be disappointed using the TUKs this way.

Moving up

Should you have further audiophile aspirations, the TUKs have you covered with a built in 24/96 DAC, accessible via the rear panel USB port, RCA/SPDIF port, or an optical input. Sampling each, with an old SONY CD changer and Mac Book Pro, versus streaming 24/96 files from Qobuz and CDs is a major step up, with the TUKs offering a much higher level of performance from the already impressive Bluetooth input.

Listening to a number of the same tracks from the initial audition period, is a completely different experience utilizing the on-board DAC. Clarity makes a major jump forward, and if you have the opportunity to truly place the TUKs for optimum sound, a much bigger and deeper sound field awaits you as well. In typical fashion, Kanto puts the amplifier and DAC in one speaker, tethering to the other with a speaker cable. The powered speaker is designated left and the passive right, but should you need to place the powered speaker on the left due to proximity of your AC outlet, it takes a mere push of the button on the remote control to re-orient the speakers, so that left is left again.

Subtleties make the difference

This is a very nice touch, and something I haven’t seen on other powered speakers. The TUKs are full of nice touches, from their satin finish to the aforementioned remote. Fit and finish is high quality, and if there were no badges on these speakers, you’d believe me if I told you that these were built in the same factory that the $4,500 pair of Bowers & Wilkins Duo’s we reviewed recently.

Attention to detail is more than skin deep with the TUKs. In addition to the high-quality DAC and 130 watts per channel on tap, the TUKs also offer an on board phono stage, which we took advantage of with a few budget turntables from Rega and Pro-Ject, utilizing moving magnet cartridges, as well as a vintage Technics with a new Pro-Ject MM cartridge. On one level, this might be the most impressive feature of the TUK – these speakers have a damn good phono stage built in! If you already have a turntable, or are thinking of starting to spin records, the TUKs are a perfect place to start.

Put em anywhere

The small 8.5”W x 10.9”H x 7”D footprint makes the TUKs easy to place for maximum fun. Thanks to the TUKs wide dispersion, they offer great sound no matter where you have to place them. However, if you do want a more traditional audiophile setup, a good pair of stands with the speakers about 6-9 feet apart delivers the goods. Work with the room, best you can to achieve the best balance of upper bass smoothness and lower bass extension. Kanto claims a low frequency limit of 50hz, and this seems reasonable as long as you don’t push the TUKs too hard with tracks having a lot of sub bass information.

For the rest of you, a subwoofer is easily added. Thanks to an 80hz internal crossover, you can add one of Kanto’s subs, or anything else that has a high-level input. As I didn’t have a Kanto sub on hand, my REL T7 (which used to sell for about $349) worked well, and its white finish goes with the current aesthetic. Much as I love the TUKs, adding the sub really makes for a more full-range system, especially if you like music with a lot of low frequencies. With sub in place, tracking through hip hop and EDM faves is a breeze, and crossing over the TUKs, relieving them of amplifying the lowest frequency gives them even more dynamic range.

The small footprint makes the TUKs easy to bring music along wherever you might happen to be. They were as at home in my garage for a weekend worth of car maintenance as they were at an impromptu gathering, and on my back porch, by the fireplace. Actually, they work exceptionally well as a go everywhere party speaker. You might even call the TUKs the perfect road trip companion.

Thanks to all the inputs and small size, they also work incredibly well as powered desktop monitors. Those of you that spend a lot of time in front of a screen will enjoy these as conduits for your favorite tunes, or even to use editing video. Editing a few upcoming YouTube pieces was a snap through the TUKs.

Sonic superstars

Cool as everything else about the TUKs are, their sonic performance is well above everything else we’ve heard in this price range. They not only reveal a high level of musical detail, they have a level of refinement that is absent in this price category. Oh yeah, they even have a built-in headphone amp too. And It’s really good.

With or without a subwoofer, we can’t think of a better way to spend $799 on a hifi system. And remember, this isn’t just a pair of powered speakers, the Kanto TUKs are a complete hifi system. Everything you need to listen to music is in the box. Well, except for a turntable!

And we are pleased to award the Kanto TUKs the Audiophile Apartment’s first Product of the Year award. Whether you are just starting your journey, or need another system elsewhere in your environment, a pair of these will provide you with a lot of listening pleasure.

www.kantoaudio.com

Rickie Lee Jones’ version of “Bad Company,” from her latest album puts the Paradigm Premier 700F speakers in perspective immediately. These speakers create a massive, immersive soundfield on this ethereal track. Combine this with a level of resolution rarely available in a $1,598 pair of speakers along with major low-frequency capability, and we’ve got a winner.

Our art director Brian Gage did some of the heavy lifting, putting serious break-in time on the 700Fs, but did not find nirvana in his reasonably large living room. I had a similar result here in my main 16 x 25-foot room – the 700Fs got slightly swallowed up, with a bit brighter feel than either of us liked. Moving them to room two, (measuring 15 x 13 feet) proved to be the magic combination. A little bit of room gain makes for a bit more bottom end and better top to bottom balance overall. Experimenting with a couple more rooms lends us to suggest using a pair of 700Fs (without a subwoofer) in a small to medium sized room for best overall tonal balance.

Placed on the short wall, with the speakers about three feet out into the room, six feet apart and toed in only slightly was a great place to start. Because the 700Fs have wide dispersion in both planes, and substantial HF energy, they will work well in a typical home living room with a fair amount of furniture – and will not need too much attention to final placement for a good result. But the patient can fine tune them for even better sound.

As Brian noticed, the 700Fs offer excellent dynamic contrast – a longtime Paradigm hallmark, and are great for home theater applications. I followed his lead, and after full evaluation in my listening room, moved them into my small theater room as front speakers. This time, power coming from the new Anthem MRX 520 surround receiver. In my HT system, they were part of a mixed group of speakers, with the pair of Paradigm Atoms we reviewed a while back, a Paradigm Defiance subwoofer and a Bowers & Wilkins sub.

Those building a theater system from scratch would be wise to pair the 700Fs with any of the other three speakers (larger and smaller) and one of the subwoofers in the Defiance lineup to get the maximum effect, but back to two-channel world…

Crafted in Canada continued

A big part of the Paradigm story is that their speakers are all designed and built in their Canadian factory. Where some manufacturers have moved their entry-level products overseas, Paradigm does it all under one roof. This is vertical design and build at its finest. Where many speaker manufacturers must work around the compromises accompanying off the shelf components, Paradigm produces every bit of their speaker systems from the ground up – drivers, crossovers, and cabinets. If the driver in a new speaker doesn’t meet their goals, they go back to the lab and re-design it to be in spec, rather than just getting by. The purchasing power that a company of this size brings to bear also helps to keep costs way down and Paradigm has built their reputation on offering maximum performance for the dollar. The 700Fs uphold that 37-year history of excellence.

The stylish PPA™ (Perforated Phase Aligning) tweeter and Midrange lens technology combined with the ART™ (Active Ridge Technology) surrounds in the woofer, all hail from their flagship Persona speakers. This is a level of build quality and craftsmanship that is only offered by a handful of other manufacturers, that incidentally also design and build everything in house, so the 700F has few peers.

Understated black grilles are standard equipment, but if you don’t have to contend with prying paws or fingers, the bold design statement made by the exposed drivers and beautiful machine work seems way too nice to cover up. Spikes are also included, along with pucks so that the spikes do not bite into hardwood floors.

Setup and break in

The 700Fs come out of the box slightly stiff, so give them a couple of weeks of solid play to achieve the maximum bass response, smoothness, and cohesion of the drivers. If you have the luxury of playing them in a room, out of phase with a blanket over them, with some reasonably dynamic program material, this will accelerate the process somewhat. And don’t be afraid to break out the bass heavy tracks.

As mentioned, the 700Fs are easy to get up and playing music, but a bit of fine tuning the rake angle will maximize the imaging width and depth. We suggest placing the speakers for the best balance of lower bass output and upper bass smoothness to start. Then, adjust rake angle in small increments for maximum image width and depth, finishing off by fine-tuning the toe in for the best HF balance. Small steps are reasonable here, and thanks to the high resolution of these speakers, your efforts will be rewarded.

Fortunately, their compact footprint (8.375″W x 12.625″ D and 39.875″T) and light weight (48.2lbs.) won’t require significant acrobatics, or friends to unbox and move into position in your listening area.

Our test pair arrived in a gloss black, with gloss white and an espresso grain finish also available. No matter which finish you choose, the front and the top face of the speakers are finished in matte black – no doubt a move to keep the cost more reasonable. Two sets of binding posts are available for those wanting to bi-wire, but for the duration of our review, the 700Fs were used with a single pair of speaker cables and the jumpers intact. The quality of the finish on the side panels is as smooth as the $35,000/pair Personas we reviewed previously.

Again, this is where building everything in house is a benefit – the same people doing the cabinets on Paradigm’s top speakers are working on these too. However, it’s more than just the quality of the finish on the outer walls of the cabinet that impress. Looking at the 700Fs very carefully reveals the smoothness of the bevels on the front panel and how cleanly the drivers are mounted. There is no visible hardware. The cabinet corners intersect perfectly. This is the level of quality you demand from a $10k pair of speakers. Not something you expect for this price – a definite bonus to qualityphiles. These are speakers that you will be very proud to own.

A good seat

Thanks to a sensitivity rating of 91db/1 watt, it doesn’t take a ton of power to drive the 700Fs, but the more current and control your amplifier has on tap, the more involving the presentation. The difference between using the 700Fs with a few budget and vintage amplifiers versus contemporary offerings from Nagra, PASS, and ARC is impressive. Through the Nagra amplification chain, the 700Fs easily illustrate the difference between a wide range of source components. These are very capable speakers.

Paradigm claims a low-frequency limit of 33hz, with a +/- frequency range of 45 – 20,000 Hz. Though we don’t perform lab measurements here, a cursory audition of the original Stereophile Test Disc, with test tones down to 20hz reveals solid output down to 35hz. This is more than enough to enjoy whatever kind of music you love. It also is enough output to mate effectively with whatever subwoofer you might want to add to the mix. Often, speakers falling off around 60 Hz (as in a typical sat/sub combination) always seem to have a bit of a gap in the low-frequency response, making subwoofer integration less than seamless. Again, the 700Fs succeed brilliantly with or without a sub.

Again, in the 13 x 15-foot room, our favorite EDM and hip hop tracks reveal more than enough useable LF content to impress through the 700Fs. Paradigm calls them a full three-way system, with a pair of 5 ½” woofers, crossing over to a 5 ½” midrange driver at 800hz via a 2nd order crossover and then to the tweeter at 2500hz. The drivers work seamlessly together and provide a high level of coherency.

Much fun as these speakers are to tear up your favorite rock tracks, solo vocal tracks impress equally, as do acoustic cuts.

Tough to beat

The under $2,000/pair speaker market is incredibly competitive. Paradigm brings engineering and execution together for a class winner. They’ve achieved not only a high level of performance with the 700F; these are well-balanced speakers that do not compromise one area of audible performance for the rest of the spectrum. Quite an achievement for $1,598 a pair and more than worthy of one of our Exceptional Value Awards for 2019.

The Paradigm Premier 700F Speakers

www.paradigm.com

$1,598/pair

Peripherals

Digital source dCS Vivaldi One

Preamplifier Nagra Classic Preamp

Power Amplifier Nagra Classic Amp

Cable Tellurium Q Black II

Power Torus Tot II

Features

Old School:

Michael “Muppet” Laurance continues our love affair
with vintage Pioneer gear, this time one of their disc players

1095:

Jeff Dorgay spins a lot of CDs with the new Rega Apollo

Journeyman Audiophile:

The MoFi StudioDeck+U Turntable and cartridge

The Audiophile Apartment:

The Audiovector SR1 Avantgarde Arrete Speakers
By Jeff Dorgay

Shanon Says:

The Gold Note PSU10 Power Supply upgrade
By Shanon Swetlishnoff

Mine: It Should Be Yours

Cryo treated beer

Carbon Fiber wheels

Large floatation devices

Smurf PEZ

and more….

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world

Future Tense

Totem Tribe Speakers

Bryston BP-2 Phono/PS-3 Power Supply

Nagra Tube DAC

and more…

Cover Feature: Luxmania!

Jeff Dorgay takes a long look at Luxman’s finest amplification

Vitus Audio is well known around the world for fantastic sound and multiple box amplification chains that weight hundreds of pounds. Even their two-box reference phono stage weighs more than most power amplifiers!

Underneath the massive metalwork lurks enormous power supplies and electronics that are more than overbuilt for the task at hand. Many people that have full Vitus installations have spent well into the six-figure range to get this performance, and if you peruse social media and various hifi forums, you will see Vitus in a number of the world’s finest hifi dens.

However, if you are someone wanting to put together an incredible, yet not crazy money system, the Vitus RI-101 should be at the top of your list, it’s certainly at the top of mine. $15,600 gets you the RI-101 amplifier alone, delivering 300 watts per channel into an 8 – ohm load, which should be more than enough for nearly any speakers you have at your disposal. (yes, it even drove my Magnepans with ease)

From a rack level view, the RI-101 looks exactly like the top Vitus components, But instead of a CNC milled case, the case is standard, albeit heavy duty metal, powder coated black. At this price, it wouldn’t have made sense to go the full heavy metal route and I applaud Mr. Vitus for putting those dollars in the circuitry rather than the casework. With three balanced XLR inputs, two RCA inputs and a pair of balanced outputs (the preamplifier section is fully balanced), there is more than enough flexibility for future expansion. The binding posts on the rear panel are extremely robust and will work well with any audiophile speaker cables you have on hand. All of the connectors are first rate.
Weighing in at just under 85 pounds, the RI-101 is hardly a lightweight. Under the cover a massive power supply lurks, with all the attention to detail that is in Vitus’ top range. Even the volume control is from one of the top models. Again, keeping every bit of investment in the box, Vitus supplies an Apple remote to control volume.

An excellent trend

Add Vitus to the list of manufacturers that have put their resources into a premium integrated amplifier, and put them at the top. My review sample had been played for a bit before arriving, so it sounded great right out of the box, and full song by the next day.

The GamuT Zodiacs were in my living room system, making for a perfect combination. Our sample arrived fully equipped, with the on board DAC/Streamer module, which adds about $5,000 to the price. Closing in on the year 2020, why would you buy a DAC that doesn’t stream? The RI-101 is Roon ready, so you don’t have to waste time trying to make everything in your music collection interface with yet another app. Five minutes after unboxing the RI-101, it’s up and rocking. Roon found it instantly and I was playing music.

Unless you are completely anti-digital, or have a fantastic outboard DAC that is worthy of the RI-101, go for broke and get the DAC/Streamer built in. Considering what power cords and interconnect cables cost these days, and how much less shelf space you’ll need, the RI-101 with DAC/Streamer is an incredible bargain.

The DAC module features Ethernet, Coax, AES/EBU and USB ports, so any device you might have is covered. Much like the other DACs we’ve heard from dCS, Simaudio and a few others, streaming directly from the web or your NAS offers up the best sound, with the USB a very close second. The USB port can accept DSD files, and considering the DAC/Streamer is a module, you can count on Vitus to provide a hardware update should it be necessary.

Digital options

As most of my listening was a combination of 16/44 files from NAS and ROON/Tidal/Qobuz, the RI-101 proves flawless. Considering just how little music is available only in the MQA format, I don’t consider this a deal breaker. Moving on to a vintage SONY CD player and a current dCS Rossini CD player, both used as transports reveal that this is a fantastic combination for anyone wanting to still play shiny discs.

Auditioning the dCS via the XLR and Coax inputs with Nordost Heimall digital cables, it was tough to hear a clearcut difference between the two inputs, though we all felt the XLR input was just a touch more revealing. You’ll have to argue amongst yourselves on this, but suffice to say this aspect of the internal DAC is excellent. Should you be an occasional silver disc listener, Rega’s new Apollo player at $995 makes for an outstanding (and very compact) redbook transport that we really enjoyed.

Putting the internal DAC in context with stand-alone offerings from other manufacturers in the $5,000 – $10,000 range, this is the way to go. The combination of functionality and sound quality can’t be beat. Vitus approach to digital, combining the top ESS DAC chips with meticulous execution on all levels is fantastic.

The level of refinement on the digital side will easily win you over on multiple levels. First the amount of low level resolution present again rivals much more expensive units. Whether listening to Michael Hedges plucky acoustic guitars, or Shostakovich’s violin Concerto no. 1, the speed, tone and texture that this DAC brings to the table is incredible.

Switching the program to more contemporary faire is equally enjoyable. Tracking through Prince’s classic, 1999, layer upon layer is revealed, with a sound field that is both wide and deep. What else could you ask for from digital?

Because the low-level signals of a phono stage are so delicate, Vitus wisely chose to leave the phono section as something you can add in a separate chassis. The level of sonic excellence this amplifier delivers is up to any task, so you could easily spend the cost of the amplifier again on a phonostage.

In the end, the sound

Vitus has packed so much musicality into this single box, you might be tempted to stop your Vitus journey right here. The toughest part of the journey with this amplifier is that it is their entry level product. Should you go further up the line you will, of course, get more power, bigger dynamic swing, and even more resolution and delicacy, but this is the perfect introduction to the brand.

The top Vitus amplifiers are all class-A, so they take on a slightly warmer, more full bodied sound, but the class-AB RI 101 captures much of the flagship amplifiers’ character. Vitus calls this design a “high bias AB amp,” so the first 12 watts per channel are in full Class -A mode. At normal listening levels with moderately sensitive speakers, you’ll probably be listening in Class A on all but the most broad musical peaks. Just like the bigger siblings, the RI-101 is incredibly quiet, with well defined, powerful bass and a grain free high end to match. Vitus is one of the few solid state amplifier manufacturers that will not have you wishing for vacuum tubes.

Every speaker that we made part of the Vitus system was handled perfectly. Thanks to the amount of energy available with it’s well designed power supply, a few speakers that are somewhat power hungry, like the Raidho D1.1 felt almost as if we’d installed a subwoofer when driven by this amplifier. The mighty Focal Stella Utopia EMs with their beryllium tweeters can go horribly wrong when driven by an amplifier that is even the least bit brittle in it’s delivery. The match was perfection, as it was with the Focal Sopra no.3 and Kanta no.3. Honestly, there was no speaker that didn’t work well with this amplifier – a true sign of excellent design.

For anyone wanting a world class system without a rack full of gear, the Vitus Audio RI-101 is an excellent choice, no matter what speakers you currently own.

The Vitus Audio RI-101 Integrated Amplifier

MSRP: $15,600

DAC/streamer module:  $5,000 additional

www.vitusaudio.com (factory)
www.highendbyoz.com (NA distributor)

Peripherals

Analog source Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 w/Koetsu Jade Platinum

Phono Pre Boulder 508

Digital source Rega Apollo(as transport), ROON via network

Speakers Focal Stella Utopia EM, Raidho D1.1, GamuT Zodiac

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Audio By Van Alstine produces line stage preamplifiers, phono stages, DACs, and more, the marvelous AVA Vision 400 SET amplifier we review here represents a culmination of Van Alstine’s knowledge applied to music reproduction.

Frank Van Alstine brings over 50 years of experience to his component designs, developing modifications for classic Hafler and Dynaco gear, and of course, focused on his own line of equipment.

Selling direct from his company website, Van Alstine keeps the price low, making his gear more accessible to budget minded music lovers that prioritize performance. AVA’s components offer solid fit and finish, avoiding the audio jewelry approach to case designs. This utilitarian appearance keeps Van Alstine’s production costs down, passing the savings on to his customers. Keep in mind the adages, “What’s inside counts,” and “Beauty is only skin deep.” AVA makes applaudable tradeoffs or the best sound.

In line with this philosophy, the standard version of the Vision SET 400 comes in a basic, powder-coated black case with a simple rocker switch for $1,999. The updated model you see here, featuring a thick, anodized, aluminum panel and push button for the power switch is an extra $200.

The ins and outs

The Vision SET 400 is audio rack-friendly with dimensions of 7 inches tall, 17 inches wide, and 13 inches deep, weighing 38 pounds. Much of that mass results from the beefy toroidal transformer inside; providing the fuel to push 225 watts per channel into eight-ohm speaker loads, and roughly double that into four ohms. No matter how hard we pushed the amp, it never failed in its firm control over various speakers. Driving my GamuT RS3i speakers, the SET 400 never falters, even at high listening levels. The heat sinks jetting from the rear of the unit peak at a temperature so low they fail as a hand-warmer.

The gold-plated, five-way binding posts accommodate speaker cables with spade, bare-wire, or banana terminations giving the owner a lot of flexibility. The amp also sports a pair of gold-plated RCA inputs for connection with a preamp.

The “SET” in the Vision SET 400 solid-state amplifier’s name refers to its Single-Ended Transistor based circuit design. The Vision amplifiers offer a Class A/B topology. However, the biasing maintains pure Class A power at normal listening levels. When pushed, the amp leans on Class A/B at higher power levels.

Listening

The SET 400 needs but a few days to reach full operating potential. As with past AVA designs we’ve used, there’s no lengthy break-in period required. Consider a weekend trip away, with constant music play and you’re ready!

Overall, the SET 400s sonic signature features a lot to love and very little to criticize. Thanks to the amount of reserve power always on tap, Rock and Electronic music is always vivacious, yet there is plenty of nuance to satisfy jazz and vocal tastes.

Indeed, the SET 400 threads the needle with an overall neutrality, yet has a touch of warmth to boot. Never artificially fluffing up the sound, it manages the deft feat of taking harsh recordings and making them far more enjoyable. Even when pushed, the amp seems almost tube-like in its ability to create fatigue-free music which results in long, couch-locked listening sessions. For example, the opening synthesizer notes heard on Portishead’s Roads pour forth with a seemingly-loving embrace. Where some amplifiers portray Beth Gibbons’ voice harshly or stridently, the AVA excels. Van Alstine’s years of designing tube gear presents us with a solid-state amplifier with similar voicing. String instruments maintain their dimension, bass notes carry with appropriate authority, and percussion features a punchy strike combined with fluid decay.

Bass proves another strong suit. The AVA’s high power reserve gets a grip on speaker drivers and refuses to let go. Bass guitar plucks reverberate with realistic tightness, followed by a decay with a palpable presence. The Vision also offers great soundstaging capability. Music emits in all directions beyond the physical speaker bodies, with plenty of separation among musical elements to distinguish each in its own space with little overlap.

One needs a pickaxe and a shovel to dig for criticisms at this price. Comparing the AVA with an amplifier like the Conrad-Johnson ART 150 which is several times the SET 400’s cost, the Vision has a slightly compacted width and depth of the musical performance, resulting in a bit less sense of three-dimensional, organic realism. For instance, the airy spatial cues perceived in a superb recording’s ‘space’ – As heard in Johnny Cash’s cover of “Danny Boy” from American IV: The Man Comes Around– are reduced a bit. However, that’s hardly a fair criticism given the price discrepancy between the two amplifiers. AVA has created something very special with the Vision SET 400.

The combination of the AVA’s sound and power make it an excellent fit for all but the hungriest speakers. Our publisher mentions to all the Magenpan lovers in the audience, that this amplifier did a fantastic job with his Tympani IVs.

Summing up

$2,000 is not chump change for most people. However, in the world of high-end audio, that dollar figure lies at the lower-end of the cost-no-object spectrum. The AVA Vision SET 400 amplifier offers excellent performance and a tremendous value. The AVA never fails to deliver marvelous, forgiving, detailed, and rich sound. Though I remain smitten by my current reference amp, I’m sad to see the AVA depart. While the Vision amp has some small tradeoffs in comparison with amps many times its price, the Vision is one of those few components I could enjoy for many years to come.

After enjoying its voice for a month during our review period, I found myself beguiled by the AVA’s prowess. The amp represents a stellar choice for a budget-responsible system with very few sonic compromises. If you seek an amp in the sub-$2,000 range, the Van Alstine Vision SET 400 sets an extremely high bar and deserves a TONEAudio Exceptional Value Award for 2019.

Van Alstine Vision SET 400 Amplifier

Starting at $1,999

www.avahifi.com

PERIPHERALS

Analog Source SME Model 10 with SME V and Model 10 tonearms. Dynavector 17D3 and Denon DL-103R cartridges

Digital Sources Roon Nucleus, Simaudio MOON 780D DAC, Oppo BDP-103, Synology DiskStation 415 Play

Preamplifier Coffman Labs G1-B

Speakers GamuT RS3i, JL Audio Dominion Subwoofers

Cables Jena Labs

Power Torus AVR 15 Plus, RSA Mongoose, and Cardas power cords

Accessories ASC tube traps, Cathedral Sound Room Dampening Panels, Mapleshade Samson audio racks, Coffman Labs Equipment Footers

We’ve been using ROON at TONE since the final alpha release, and it’s a powerful solution. None of the other music delivery platforms come close – if you love music and the discovery of more music, it’s the only way to go.

ROON allows you to combine music saved on your computer or NAS with whatever music you stream, seamlessly in an album art oriented browser. It’s like going to the record store and flipping through the largest group of record bins on the planet. Minus the crabby record store person with a dominant attitude behind the counter making fun of your music choices. Want to find everyone your favorite artist has played with or was influenced by? ROON will take you there, leading you down path after path of music exploration.

One of ROON’s strengths has always been the “Roon Radio” function, picking up after your playlist is finished, finding music that is remarkably similar to what you’ve been previously enjoying. That function is improved; the radio function goes beyond your collection, searching whatever streaming services you are accessing. Now, in addition to having the world’s biggest record store at your fingertips, you have the world’s biggest and most diverse radio station to feed you new music.

But capability requires power, and we haven’t even talked about all the other cool stuff ROON does like stream over multiple zones, offer DSP room correction and EQ, as well as a few other goodies. We’ll talk about that in its own article.

The more you ask of ROON, the more it requires from your host computer. ROON actually gives you the specs to build a purpose-built server, but this requires a ton of computing knowledge and that kind of defeats the purpose of such an intuitive platform, at least from my perspective. Even dedicating a Mac Mini strictly to ROON service and stripping it down as much as possible, begins to drag with an extensive music collection and multiple zones.

It’s all about dedication

Thankfully, last year, ROON developed their own box, the Nucleus and Nucleus +. You can read all the techie bits in their white paper here. The ROON crew not only came up with a dedicated box that is dead quiet, compact, and looks super cool, they even wrote their own OS that is optimized for ROON and nothing else.

Both the $1,399 and $2,499 Nucleus and Nucleus+ look precisely the same. The standard machine is meant to handle music collections of “less than 100,000 tracks,” and the Nucleus +, collections larger.

Staffer Rob Johnson went for the standard model, and me with over 12,000 CDs ripped, and quite a few thousand more indexed via Qobuz, and to a lesser extent, Tidal and Spotify went all out for the Nucleus +. I can say without reservation, as much as I love the ROON platform, it finally delivers on the promises 100% with a Nucleus +. When scrolling through a full screen of albums, searching, or when we have all three of our ROON zones going at once, the Nucleus + never hesitates to deliver what we need.

This is even more important to those of you streaming high res files, either via MQA with Tidal or uncompressed via Qobuz. Even when playing 24/192 files in the house, garage, and studio simultaneously, we could not detect any performance gap. You will, of course, need your Nucleus and NAS (if you have one) connected via Ethernet and the fastest router you can put your hands on.

Connectivity

While the Nucleus needs to be hardwired into your network, you can access it wirelessly from your phone, tablet, or laptop anywhere in your listening environment. Simply go into ROON and create whatever “zones” you need. Now that so many streaming DAC’s can be used as ROON endpoints, there’s no need to be a computer-based music listener, tethered to your DAC. Considering what some premium USB cables cost, you can almost buy a standard Nucleus for the same price!

If you aren’t utilizing a NAS for some of your music collection, you can still select a hard drive that is connected to a computer on your network or plug a USB drive directly into the back of the Nucleus. Finally, there is an HDMI output that can be utilized for output, and the sound quality will work in a pinch, but streaming via a ROON ready DAC is still the way to roll for optimum sound quality. Either way, it’s nice that ROON offers the option.

Back to square one

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review – there is no better way to catalog, store and play digital music back than ROON, and taking advantage of the extra horsepower that one of their Nucleus devices is nothing short of perfection. The ROON team has made digital music playback as effortless and glitch-free as it can be made.

Considering what a Mac Mini runs these days, the Nucleus is a bargain in comparison. Get your email on your phone and leave the music serving to ROON. You’ll be glad you did.

roonlabs.com

Listening to Dexter Gordon’s classic, “GO” through the Sugden A21 (actually the A21SE Signature, but I don’t want to keep writing that) and my Quad 2812s is positively heavenly, with all the tone, texture, and dynamics I’d ever need.

There is something incredibly cool about listening to an amplifier that sounds this emotionally involving that doesn’t have a five-figure price tag. Record after record reveals one a-ha moment after another.

Honestly, it’s even better than that. Music and audio lovers often have a wide range of needs, and at times it’s easy to lose your way obsessing over things you don’t need. I’m not being judgmental, I’m sharing this from an “it takes one to know one” perspective.

I’ll make this easy for you

If you don’t need more than 30 watts per channel, or balanced inputs, buy a Sudgen A21SE Signature. Get off the anxiety train and just dig it. A big part of the magic that this amplifier possesses is because of its class-A operation. But Sugden takes this a step further – this amplifier is single-endedclass-A. If you’ve ever heard one of the early Pass Aleph amplifiers, they use a somewhat similar approach.
Running the output transistors in single ended mode gives this amplifier an added amount of liquidity that even the best class-A amps can’t achieve. Dare I say, they sound tube like. If you love the sound of an SET but need more than a few watts per channel, with some serious bass control to boot, this amplifier is going to quickly become your holy grail.

Bypass the bling

If you ask the fellow that manages Jerry Seinfeld’s fleet of Porsches his thoughts on the best of the breed, he’ll look you in the eye and say “mid 80s Carrera – they are the best mixture of fun, function, and performance, without all those weight adding features.” That’s what the Sugden A21SE Sig is – a perfectly executed 84 Carrera with no options. Pure driving excitement. Ironically, Jonathan Halpern, the Sugden importer drives a mid 80s Carerra. Coincidence?

If you’ve got a turntable and a DAC, do you really need a zillion inputs, all those blinking lights, meters and such? If you do – that’s ok, this amplifier will not make you happy. But if you just love to drive, I mean listen, and all that matters is sheer performance without all the frills, few things will do the job like the A21 does. And every amplifier I know that is this luscious costs a lot more. The A21SE Sig’s meager $3,250 MSRP is the best money you’ll ever spend in high end audio.

This is an amp that even if you move on to a more grandiose system, you should keep. Forever.

As mentioned earlier, the A21SE Sig features five, single ended, RCA inputs. We used the dCS Vivaldi ONE as our digital source and the Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 with Boulder 508 phono (via XLR adapters) for analog duties. This amplifier is not the least bit out of its element with world class sources, and it has more than enough resolution to hear the difference between a gamut of phono stages from $1,000 to $65,000.

Auditioning required

With only 30 watts per channel at your disposal, you have to use them wisely, so you’ll need to get the right speakers, but it’s not like only having 9 watts per channel to work with. John DeVore’s speakers work well with the A21SE Sig; Harbeth, Spendor, and Grahams make great playmates too. Ditto for the Focal Sopra and Kanta range. Those in small rooms can achieve magic with whatever flavor of LS3/5a you enjoy. Perhaps the biggest surprise was connecting the A21SE Sig up to the Focal Stella Utopia Ems. These massive three ways, with their 13” field coil woofers enjoy a sensitivity rating of 94db/1-watt and they thrive on low power, high quality amplification. Again, the A21SE Sig delivers a stunning, three dimensional presentation with these flagship speakers.

The Sugden doesn’t really need any “break in” beyond being powered up for 24 hours, like every other class-A amplifier we’ve used, it does need to warm up. Even though there are no vacuum tubes here, class-A amplifiers usually run fairly warm and it takes about 90 minutes to fully stabilize thermally.

Sound at turn on is fine, but as you’ve had your A21 for a while, and become familiar with it, you’ll notice a slight haze in the presentation when it is ice cold; slowly and gradually clearing over that first 90 minutes it’s on.

Glued to the listening chair

Record after record proves that this is an amplifier completely free of fatigue. There’s a level of inner detail present, that will have you scratching your head (or reaching for the screwdriver to take the top cover off) to find the vacuum tubes inside. While you won’t find them, this is the result of decades of engineering refinement.

Regardless of the music you love, the A21SE Sig allows an incredibly musical experience. Bass is powerful, controlled, and anything but one-note. As the Focals go down to 16hz, the sheer amount of control and texture that this little amplifier delivers might be lost on a listener with a pair of LS3/5as, but through the mighty Focals, it was dramatic and impressive.

Inner detail is equally fantastic. Especially when listening to music with densely packed, similarly voiced harmonies, like Crosby, Stills and Nash, Utopia, or Crowded House. Where lesser amplifiers would leave these tunes sounding like a fat, or maybe slightly overdubbed vocal, the A21SE Sig gives each vocalist and individual space within the recording. CSN’s “Helplessly Hoping” is just beautiful to behold. Going back to the 80’s self-titled Utopia, Todd Rundgren, Willie Wilcox, Kasim Sulton and Roger Powell all go back and forth trading lead vocals on each track, yet because they all have such a similar vocal range, it’s easy (on an lesser resolving amplifier) to think TR is doing all the lead vocals. Again, the A21SE Sig clearly reveals the subtle differences between the group members.

Acoustic music lovers will be equally, if not more enthralled. The sheer amount of texture this amplifier reveals when listening to violins and pianos of different kinds is amazing. Everyone who’s ever claimed that “solid-state doesn’t/can’t sound as good as tubes” needs to hear this amplifier.

I could go on forever

But I don’t want to bore you. Seriously the Sugden A21SE Signature is an amplifier that every audiophile and music lover should own. For some it will be a destination product – it’s certainly good enough in that capacity. For others it will be a bookmark, but either way, this is an amplifier that shouldn’t be missed.

Oh yeah, you can get one in orange too. I like that a lot.

I guarantee that this is an amplifier, that once you hear it, you will never forget it. Very enthusiastically recommended, especially in a world where we mistakenly think that “high end sound” requires a six figure budget.

The Sugden A21SE Signature

MSRP: $3,250
www.sugdenaudio.com (factory)
www.toneimports.com (US importer)

Analog Source Luxman PD171A w/Kiseki Purple Heart

Digital Source dCS Bartok

Speakers Quad 2818, Harbeth P3SR, JBL L-100 Classic

Cable Tellurium Q Black Diamond

Power PSAudio P15 Power Plant

The first time I drove an Aston Martin, it was an otherworldly experience. The sheer opulence of the car was equally matched by the performance, providing a feel in a sporting car like no other. Yes, a geeked out Subaru STi is just as fast, but the sheer beauty of the Aston is unmistakable. You’ll get the same feeling when you unpack an Artisan Fidelity turntable.

Except this is like unwrapping a freshly restored and re-engineered DB5. Yes, it is an excellent record playing machine:  luxurious to behold, I suspect it will always give you pause when playing a record. Old car guys like to say, “It looks fast just standing still,” and that sentiment applies to the Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 Statement Turntable, presented here in its latest version 2 form.

Gently placing the stylus down on Herbie Hancock’s Empyrean Aisles, I received an equally out of this world experience. If you’ve spent some time with idler drive turntables, you know they have a loveable, somewhat fat, burly, yet enjoyable tonal character. By comparison, my Thorens TD-124 sounds bloated and lacking in detail, when listening to the same tracks, even with the same phono cartridge. (in this case, a Lyra Delos)

Having an incredible digital front end at my disposal, analog has to be either really good or really different to go through the ritual that accompanies listening to a record. The Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 Statement offers up a degree of tonal saturation, dare I say, a slightly romantic presentation, that I doubt anyone would ever mistake it for anything but incredible analog. There’s nothing like this in the digital world, and every time I listen to this table, I want more.

Artisan Fidelity’s Christopher Thornton has built the ultimate sleeper Garrard 301 turntable. As a vintage based deck, it still lacks the last bit of clarity that a top modern direct drive offers, but that’s not the point here. We’re not talking about ultimate musical accuracy here, we’re talking about flavor. This table is all about the sonic and visual character) It’s like the difference in body that a Les Paul Custom offers over a Stratocaster. Some prefer one over the other, some have both. You know where I’m going with this…

If you’re of the “a Timex tells time as well as a Rolex, so why spend the extra money” school, stop right now. Turn the page. You won’t like what I have to say.

What makes the Artisan Fidelity Garrard so incredible, separating it from the other “pretty plinth for old hardware beneath” Garrards, is the excruciating level of design fanaticismand precision engineering found in every aspect of this table. Considering how many fine watches cost as much or more than the Artisan Fidelity table, if you value what this table has to offer, it’s a steal at around $22,000 with external regulated power supply.  I’ve used turntables that cost three or four times as much that didn’t provide near the experience that this table does.

Breaking in your brain

Arriving in a couple of crates, the AFG (as I’ll refer to it for the rest of the review) is respectfully packaged, and basic assembly takes only minutes. But it takes a while for everything to sink in fully. If you are as much of a qualityphile as you are audiophile and music lover, you may need to put this table on whatever rack you have in mind and just sit back to take it all in. No other turntable I’ve spent time with offers such a sensual nature of operation. This is a product that begs to be used, often.

Every surface on the AFG is sheer perfection, from the clear coating on the upper Copper platter surface to the premium glossy black automotive paint finish on their proprietary solid billet Aluminum alloy chassis. Everything shines and sparkles. It may even prove tough to keep your enthusiasm in check to mount a tonearm or too, but you will be rewarded. The sample in question, for now, sports an Audio Creative GrooveMaster II tonearm in the front position with the Hyper Eminent EX cartridge from My Sonic Lab.

The rear position is occupied by an SME M2-9-R arm, expertly reworked to feature upgraded bearings, Cardas internal tonearm wire, and a hardwired tonearm cable (also Cardas), sporting a Kiseki Purple Heart cartridge, making for an excellent tradeoff. Additionally, we’ve been using the rear position as a test bed for cartridge reviews on our new site (www.cartridgedude.com). Both arms have been feeding into the new Pass Labs XP-27 phono stage going forward, but for the purpose of this review, all comparisons were made on our reference Pass Labs XS Phono.

As a confessed mechanical enthusiast that loves anything finely machined, coated and painted, the AFG is as close to sensory overload as it gets. The plinth is only the beginning, and once the massive modular platter, consisting of copper, magnesium alloy, aluminum, acetal and stainless steel is installed, a lot of the beauty is underneath. But the plinth alone is a work of art. You can click here for the full explanation on the Artisan Fidelity site, but here’s the short version.

Details, details, details.

That’s what will have you doing a second, third, fourth, and twentieth double take on this table. If you are used to the shortcomings mentioned above of the idler wheel system, it only takes about five seconds of musical flow to turn your head like a dog in disbelief. All the speed inconsistency and cloudiness you’d expect from an idler table does not exist with the Artisan Fidelity. Every aspect of this decades-old design has been re-thought and re-engineered to 21st-century spec.

There is a staggering amount of person-hours in the assembly of one of these, and I suspect more than any other high-end turntable I’ve used. I highly suggest going for the slightly larger plinth which enables one to add a second tonearm, making the investment even easier to amortize. Not to mention the visual appeal of two tonearms!

From the inverted and modular Sapphire bearing/heavy balanced Copper hybrid main platter unit to the finely machined austenitic stainless steel idler wheel, that has only .003 inch variation in its periphery surface diameter and precision billet aluminum eddy current disk brake, it’s the refinement of every aspect of this classic table’s design, combined with fanatic, individual final assembly and listening tests that distinguishes this from your Grandfathers Garrard. Forget everything you think you know about the idler drive system.

Quick setup

As this table uses a rebuilt version of the stock English AC induction drive motor, which happens to be a 220-volt/50hz configured unit, my sample arrives with an optional Sound Carrier Universal Turntable power supply ($1995) and offers a wide continuously adjustable range of fine voltage and frequency tuning for each 33 1/3, 45, and 78rpm speeds. In practice, this takes about five minutes to set up to perfection completely.

Setting both tonearms up to perfection with Richard Mak’s Analog Magik tool kit and a SmartTractor alignment tool, has me rocking in the free world in about an hour. Not bad for two tonearms. You can now purchase both of these tools directly from Artisan Fidelity, and if you don’t already own them, I highly suggest their purchase with your table, as the investment will pay dividends both in the short and long run.

Returning to the listening chair…

We can talk tech forever, and designer Christopher Thornton is such a passionate individual that he can explain everything he’s done in as granular of a level as you’d like. As exciting as this is, I dare you not to fall in love with this turntable by the time you play the first track.

Where my reference Grand Prix Audio Parabolica lifts so much detail from a record, it’s often hard to believe that so much detail exists in these grooves, the AFG gets nearly as much detail, but adds slightly more weight and fleshes out the midbass just enough to carry you through the average to pretty good records in your collection in the way that the more resolving table can’t.

Your perception of musical reproduction is so personal, there is no best here. Some days you want to drive the Bentley, and some days you want to drive the Porsche GT4, both are awesome, but neither can really deliver the experience of the other. Both will get you to the grocery store and back, and you can live with either at moderate speeds.

Much will depend on where your musical priorities lie. I maintain that to really enjoy analog to the fullest, you need more than one setup, but that may not be practical for everyone. Where the AFG excels is in the sheer size, scale and weight of its presentation. Going back to the Blue Note and Impulse jazz catalogs, listening to a lot of acoustic instruments, this table does an incredible job of reproducing the texture and character of a stand-up bass, the force of a horn, or a quick ride around the drum kit. And Ella’s voice has never sounded more realistic in my system.

Classic rock lovers will feel equally at home. Electric guitars sound massive, and multilayered studio recordings from the 60s to the 80s open up a level of sonic sorcery that might have you double checking to make sure no one put something in your drink. The sound field presented by this table with either cartridge is big, wide, deep, airy and immersive.

An experience like no other

I could gush on and on about the Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 Statement for hours, but we’ve all got to get back to work, eh? The minute you listen to a record on one, it will either captivate you to the point where you can’t live until you find a way to make one yours, or its exuberant nature will not be your cup of tea.  Car talk aside, the only other thing I can really compare the AFG to that might make even more sense is a pair of top range Sonus faber speakers. They are the only other audio product I’ve used with a similar level of finish.  And it is the only other product where my friends’ spouses say, “yes, you can have one of those in the living room.”

Just like every SF speaker we’ve had in for review, the AFG is the only other product that brings a similar level of intrigue with it. Everyone wants to touch it. So much so, that I am thinking about mounting a very inexpensive cartridge to the rear tonearm, so everyone can experience the sheer physicality of operating this turntable.

As one who rarely turns fanboy on products, the AFG is a rare piece of gear that at the end of the review has me losing my ability to remain objective. If you genuinely love analog, you should experience one, whether you write the check or not. However, I suspect if you value the qualities I’ve mentioned here, you will have a very tough time not falling victim to its spell. This one has been here for the better part of a year now, and I pinch myself every time I use it.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is why it was our Analog Product of the Year for 2018.

The Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 Statement

www.artisanfidelity.com

Single 9″-12″ tonearm compatible plinth configuration, $18,995 (Exotic hardwood and Automotive finishes optional)

Dual 9″ – 12″ tonearm compatible plinth, as above, $19,995

Sound Carrier UTPS Power Supply $1,995 (optional)

In 1982 I wanted three things: A Nikon F2 with motor drive, a BMW 320i and a pair of JBL L-100s. I got two out of three. I needed the Nikon to earn a living, and a new 3-series was about 13k, well equipped. But I did get a pair of L-100s and they rocked.

But then I became an audiophile and I was too cool to have JBLs. I bought a pair of Magnepans and got serious about hifi.

As the years passed, the L-100s kept nagging and a few pairs of vintage L-100s have come and gone. I still have a pair of originals, which have been modded to sound a bit better than I remember. I drag them out once in a while and connect them to my Nakamichi 600 wedge series components, lamenting how far hifi has come in 4 decades.

That all changed at last years Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Harman was showing the new, Classic L-100s in orange! Woo hoo, the signature foam block grilles were back! And the sound was out of this world good.

Today, I use a Nikon D800, and there’s a fairly clean 83 320i in the driveway for old times sake, but it’s more like my vintage L-100s. Not modern transportation anymore.

But these new L-100s rock. The first track played is Joni Mitchell’s “Car on a Hill” and it’s the late 70s again. Awesome.

– And a big thank you to Steve Rowell at Audio Classics for making this happen.

Stopping by Pat Hickman’s place to drop off a pair of vintage McIntosh amplifiers for his special level of detail and restoration is always a treat. There’s always something super fun on his test bench, either about to be restored, or just finished, ready to go to a customer.

Today, he was going to put my McIntosh MC30 monoblocks on the bench to be returned to their original glory. As always, our discussion goes to his Whammerdyne 2A3 Truth amplifiers – the flagship got our product of the year award a couple of years ago and it is incredible. Not everyone can afford them, but his new DGA (Damn Good Amplifier) takes a lot of what he learned via the design of the Truth amplifier, but in a more affordable package.

This is a direct coupled (i.e. no caps or resistors in the signal path) single ended, class A stereo amplifier that uses a pair of 2A3 power tubes. Most people can barely coax 2 watts per channel out of a 2A3, but meticulous engineering and implementation makes for 4.3 watts per channel. And at this level, every few tenths of a watt counts. You can read more here:  http://whammerdyne.com/#technology

We step in to his listening room and Hickman plays a few tracks on his Pure Audio Project Quintet 15s, which makes for a stunning combination with the DGA (Damn Good Amplifier).I have the Trio 15s back at the studio, so am very familiar with the sonics. We cruise through a few polite but breathy and luscious female vocal tracks, and as lovely as it is, at the back of my head I’m thinking “but will it rock?”

Can you work with 4 watts per channel?

The toughest part of an engineering journey is the difference between building to a standard and building to a price point. The flagship Whammer amp was built to be an all-out assault on SET topology, using the best parts available. The result is nothing like you’ve ever heard from an SET. Every bit of magic that tube aficionados wax poetic is there, but with all the refinement you’d expect from the world’s top modern tube amplifiers.

There’s only one catch – the Whammers only make four watts per channel. Forget it if you’ve got a pair of Magnepans, or something equally power hungry. Hickman thinks 94db/1watt sensitivity or lower is pushing it, but the new Focal Stella Utopia Em’s (94db/1watt exactly) have been blowing me out of the room with a few watts, so why not ask?

Fortunately, today is the day that there’s a DGA on the bench that isn’t spoken for. Hickman warns me, “It takes about 45 minutes to come out of the fog.” He wasn’t kidding. Driving like an old man, taking great care not to jostle the unboxed amp on the way home, it is instantly put front and center in my living room system, built around the Focal Stella Utopia Em’s.

About that burrito

He is right. The amp sounds nice,on initial power up,but not as good as I knew it could. Burrito time. Taking the long way to grab a quick bite from my local taco stand has me back in a little over an hour. Three minutes into the DGAs initial power up, the title track from Steely Dan’s Aja gave me a place to start. Like I said, nice. Revisiting the track an hour later is a revelation, and there is some hidden musical treasure in this overplayed classic that instantly surfaces. Layer upon layer is rendered and all the spatial cues from the meticulous studio production melts the listening room walls away. The illusion of musical reality is vivid and convincing.

Conventional wisdom might suggest that pairing a $3,000 amplifier with a pair of $120,000 speakers might be madness. And it might with a lot of $3,000 amplifiers. Maybe even $30,000 amplifiers, yet the DGA delivers one of the most musically involving performances I’ve ever heard from the Stellas.

The DGA takes a few minutes to come fully up to operating temperature, and you’ll see the bias current going up during the process. Hickman suggests that both tubes bias be set as close as possible to each other. He makes it easy for even the uninitiated, with a digital readout on the top panel. All you need is a jewelers screwdriver and a steady hand. Once the amplifier has been powered up for an hour, check the readout and make sure both tubes read 60. A breeze.

The big difference

While most SET amplifiers deliver brilliant midrange, they fall short (sometimes dramatically short) when called upon to play complex or overly dynamic music. Great for Jacintha, not so much for Slayer. Some of them really hum, due to inferior design and parts quality. The DGA is so quiet, it takes full advantage of every bit of power delivered. As the music emerges from such a silent background it appears louder. Remember what you perceive as volume is the delta between loud and quiet. No background hum or noise, feels a lot louder than having the music dithered by noise.

I never wanted my playlist of Kraftwerk, Neu! and Aphex Twin tracks to end. The DGA has massive bass grip and texture, making this kind of music come truly alive. When was the last time you heard deep, defined, growly bass that made your pants flap via an SET? Via a tube amplifier for that matter? An equal amount of fun was had with a pair of even more sensitive Klipsch La Scalas, resulting in a long set of classic rock causing a few neighbors to give me the evil eye. Oh well.

The result derived from the LaScalas, Pure Audio Project Trios and the mighty Focals, though expressed differently, retain the core musicality that the DGH delivers. It has a level control for those wanting the ultimate simplicity, but I preferred the more fleshed out rendition when the Nagra Classic preamplifier (with outboard power supply) delivered.

The Whammer delivers pristine examples of all the audiophile descriptors that are so easily tossed about in reference to far lesser products. It’s reproduction of fine detail combined with such a clean distortion free and coloration free tonality will redefine what you think reproduced music is capable of. This amplifier reveals so much tonal contrast and saturation, hours will fly by as you track through your favorites. Where some of today’s best audio products can only offer a short amount of engagement, with fatigue or boredom creeping in after a few tracks, the Whammerdyne DGA is a cure for audiophile ADD.

It totally rocks

An exceptional value award really isn’t enough. If the Whammerdyne DGA had a Wavac or Gold Note badge on it, you’d be looking at a $100,000 price tag. And you’d pay it happily. Your audiophile friends would visit your audio den from the far reaches of the globe and get down on their knees and pray to it and tell you what incredible insight you have.

But this baby only costs $3,000. Add another few hundred bucks for having upgraded output transformers (which my review sample does not have) and a little more for a pair of NOS 2A3 output tubes (which my review sample does have).

I could neither have written this review, nor fully appreciated just what the Whammerdyne DGA delivers when I began this magazine. But I can assuredly say that after almost 1000 product reviews, this is as good as it gets. If you have sufficiently sensitive speakers, one of the Whammerdyne amplifiers will take you straight to audio heaven – on the express elevator. That Whammerdyne can build one of the world’s finest SET amplifiers for $20k is amazing. That they can give you the essence of their flagship for $3,000 is a sheer miracle.

Best of all, it’s not out of reach of any music lover. With a wider palette of high efficiency speakers available these days, you might want to revisit just what a few of the right watts per channel can do. This is the best of the best.

The Whammerdyne DGA 1

MSRP:  $3,000

www.whammerdyne.com

Analog Source Grand Prix Audio Parabolica /TriPlanar arm/Koetsu Jade Platinum

Digital Source dCS Vivaldi ONE

Preamplifier Nagra Classic w/Nagra VPS power supply

Speakers Focal Stella Utopia EM

Cable Cardas Clear

There used to be a restaurant nearby that offered small portions fantastic deserts. You could have a large shot glass full of whatever deserts were on the main menu for a couple of bucks. It wasn’t about saving on the bill; there are times you really crave desert but don’t need a giant helping of chocolate mousse. The INT-60 from Pass Labs is kind of like that.

Their XS level components are some of the world’s finest. Ask nearly anyone that’s owned or reviewed them. Many of us with that level of appreciation for musical excellence don’t necessarily have the budget, or perhaps have a smaller room, or very sensitive speakers. At that point, a full XS system isn’t a fit. Introducing the INT-60.

Many readers have asked about the difference between their new XA25, which we reviewed here, and the new INT-60. On one level, they are different beasts, because the XA25 is only a power amplifier – yet the XA25 offers some nuances that even the mighty XS300s or my current reference, the XA200.8s don’t, due to a simpler circuit topology. Mr. Pass often praises the simple approach and the XA25 is incredible in that respect. But you still need a preamplifier, so by the time you find a worthy preamplifier and purchase the necessary cables, you’ll still most likely exceed the $9,000 price tag of the INT-60.

For those that need it, the INT-60 does allow separate inputs and outputs, that will let you use the power or preamplifier sections by themselves. Just in case you decide to bi-amp, or who knows?

Heavy metal

Don’t let the lower power figure fool you. Though the INT-60 is only rated at 60 watts per channel, where the larger INT-250 is rated 250 per, this amplifier stays biased in class-A mode longer, all the way to 30 watts per channel. At 93 pounds, it’s only about 15 pounds lighter than the INT-250 as well. The INT-60 is still fairly dense for a single chassis box.

Utilizing a smaller, yet stylistically similar blue meter to the one in the big Pass amps, the INT-60 features a similar visual architecture to all of the other Pass products. While this may seem like a minor point, it’s very thoughtful of the creative braintrust at Pass to allow the INT-60 to work with the same remote as their other preamplifiers. A small, but helpful feature. The rest of the INT-60s physical layout is also identical to the rest of the lineup, so if you are building a second system around your INT-60, or trading up from something else in the family, you will feel right at home.

The INT-60 is highly versatile, offering four line-level inputs, with one of them a balanced XLR input, while the other three are single ended RCA inputs. A pair of big Furutech speaker output terminals, much like the ones on all the other Pass amplifiers make it easy to connect any type of speaker cable. Bonus points here for being able to use the INT-60 as a preamplifier or power amplifier separately, so in case you decide to upgrade to a bigger amplifier, use a multiple amp setup, or just want to try something else for a while, balanced XLR and single ended RCA inputs and outputs are available, making the INT-60 incredibly flexible.

An equal measure of sound and simplicity

Like every other Pass amplifier I’ve used, the INT-60 needs a few solid days of play to break in, but not really any more – 100 hours will do the trick. Equally so for warmup, if you turn it off at the end of the day – expect about 1 full hour for the slight fog to clear when you power it up. Considering the INT-60 isn’t a full – blown class-A amplifier and it draws about 375 watts, it’s up to you whether you’ll just be leaving it on all the time.

Using the INT-60 with a handful of fairly efficient loudspeakers from Focal and Pure Audio Project, I doubt it ever ran hard enough to escape from class-A mode. Only when I connected the vintage Magnepan Tympani IVs, was I able to budge the meter from its center position, revealing that the amplifier is moving out of class A operation. It’s worth mentioning what a splendid job this amplifier did driving these speakers, that are normally thought of as needing tons of power to drive.

Bouncing between the XSPre/XA200.8 combination and the INT-60 at modest volume levels, it is clear just how much of the top range Pass performance is captured here. Of course, the flagship models resolve more information at all volume levels, but the core sonic picture that all Pass amplifiers portray is present in the INT-60. This amplifier is voiced a few small clicks to the warmer, more tonally saturated side of neutral. That’s how Mr. Pass likes his amplifiers to sound, and I agree. As he’s fond of saying, “it’s the tube sound without the hassle.”

If you’ve ever been a tube lover that is tired of the tube game, the INT-60 is your ticket to paradise. Leave it on all day, and never worry about scrounging for NOS tubes again. Sure the best tube gear might reveal a few more molecules of music here or there, but most won’t. And most won’t offer the level of quiet, dynamics and bass grip that the INT-60 does.

A high level of tonal and timbral accuracy also makes the INT-60 tough to ignore. Pianos, violins, and other acoustic instruments sound incredibly right, and with a pair of speakers in the 87-90db/1-watt sensitivity range, you will have to push the INT-60 very hard to get it to clip.

Rounding out the picture, the INT-60 paints a very engaging, three-dimensional musical landscape, with rock-solid pace. Listening to the Stones’ “Low Down” (from Bridges to Babylon), the INT-60 keeps Charlie Watts drumming solidly anchored through the melody, while Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood sneak up behind Jagger’s lead vocals, going “woo, woo” during the chorus, as if they were up on stage together. Pure acoustic performances delight, and the level that this amplifier unfolds densely packed music is truly world class.

100% fun, zero fatigue

A bottom end that will put you back in the listening chair when the music warrants it, and smooth, yet defined and delicate rendition of the mids and highs, makes for an amplifier you can listen to all day long.

As many music lovers gravitate more towards simpler setups in the home, a high quality integrated amplifier makes perfect sense. If your sensibilities call for this approach, we suggest the Pass Labs INT-60 very highly. This is a fantastic amplifier.

The Pass Labs INT-60

MSRP:  $9,000

www.passlabs.com

If you are a lover of single ended triode amplifiers, no doubt you are familiar with the mighty 300B.

The mightiest of them all are the vintage Western Electric 300Bs, and then if you can find them, the reissued WE 300Bs that came out around 2005 or so. Only a few pairs of these were made and then the “new Western Electric” fell back into obscurity. I had a pair of those and they were pretty incredible, and I did spend some time with the NOS models when I had my WAVAC monoblocks. Never should have gotten rid of those. Oh well.

Today, the 300B amps have had a bit of a resurgence (and to some, they never went away – just like vinyl) but there are no incredible tubes to power them with. Having listened to more than my share of the current 300Bs, most manufacturers have settled on Electro Harmonix or JJ, because they are available. But don’t expect the 50,000-hour tube life of the NOS WE’s. Nope, these are 5,000 hour tubes on a good day. Most manufacturers have voiced around the current tubes, but that only goes so far. If you have the chance to experience the vintage 300Bs, you’ll freak out.

The vintage WE’s are so smooth, extended, and dynamic, you’ll swear you’re listening to an entirely different amplifier. However, with these tubes going as high as $6,000 a pair for an amazing set. And being 60-80 years old, there’s still a chance you can pull them out of the box and have them croak. I’m just not that much of a gambler.

Enter EAT

The European Audio Team has their own factory in the Czech Republic, and recently, they’ve started production on the famed 300B, providing tubes that are a clear cut above the mass-produced items that are available, bridging the gap between NOS and NEW. With no WAVAC on hand, they were kind enough to send me a matched set of four for my Nagra 300B amplifier that is a push/pull design, delivering about 25 watts per channel.

The EAT 300B also bridges the price gap, tipping the scale at $1,695 per matched pair. Not so bad if you have SET monoblocks, but it gets a bit spendy if you need four of em. Regardless, this is still way less cash out of pocket that the 2004 vintage WE’s or the really old originals.

The Sound

Going past the afford/not afford, will my partner kill me/will they not notice part of the decision tree, the EAT tubes provide a substantial increase in performance than the current offerings in the $500-$900 pair tubes from “the other guys.” And by increase, I mean that the EAT tubes are more neutral sounding than the other current tubes, honestly more extended at both ends of the frequency range.

Where the Nagra has exceptional bass control, due to its massive, tight tolerance output transformers that are wound in-house, the EAT tubes bring a nearly solid state like grip to the lowest frequencies. Using our 96db/1-watt sensitive Pure Audio Project HORN 15 speakers, it’s almost as if I’ve added a subwoofer. Whether listening to EDM/electronica tracks, or Led Zeppelin, the bass line is hitting me more in the chest than the Nagra does with the stock JJ tubes.

An equal level of excitement is had on the upper register as well. Stringed instruments take on a more three-dimensional quality, with more texture. Pick your favorite acoustic guitar piece that you know well, and you will be surprised at how much more real the strings sound while being played, as well as the overtones that hang in the air after the strings have been struck. This is the stuff we all love 300B amplifiers for in the first place and the EAT tubes give you more of it.

In the end

At first the price tag might seem a bit prohibitive, but considering the care in manufacturing that goes into these tubes, I’m going to stick my neck out and bet that the EAT 300Bs will probably last a lot longer than the others. If that’s the case, then these are not so much more money out the door in the long run. And if you hate swapping tubes as much as I do, once you’ve settled on a sound, this will be indeed welcome.

There are so few 300B enthusiasts out in the field that have jumped off the cliff on these tubes, I can’t say that anyone’s experience backs up my own, yet. I highly recommend their 300Bs, and hope to give the KT88s a spin sooner than later.

North American Distributor:
vanaltd.com

Factory:

Europeanaudioteam.com

A very cool video on EAT’s tube production facility:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd2jMzErw9I