This is a tough crowd. Sheesh.
I figured my attempt to be humorous would get deleted but that was fast. I have had private requests to resurrect that post which I may do on another thread although I will revise it so that it is hopefully offensive to no one. It was designed to poke fun at the typical audiophile (myself included). It is indeed funny to see the lengths that audiophiles will go to for the sake of musical enjoyment and WCSS's journey is as extreme an example as any. Nonetheless, it has been enjoyable to tune in every so often when I have found the time.
Generally, when watching a movie, we're all rooting for the hero to "get the girl" at the end but with regards to WCSS's journey, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be rooting for since I don't know where WCSS is going with this. It seems the goal isn't for WCSS to find his end-game setup but just to keep the thread going as long as possible and try as much gear as possible. If this is the case, then so be it. Comparative evaluations are valuable and WCSS's blunt honesty has been refreshing to read.
I'd like to apologize to Viber6 as I meant no offense (although he makes himself an easy target, lol). I actually have much in common with his musical preferences (at least 75 percent of what I listen to is large orchestral or chamber music) although our priorities differ (and that's ok). It has been said that the most difficult thing for an electronic audio system to convincingly portray is an unamplified human voice. In any situation, if you close your eyes, you ALWAYS know when you're listening to a live human voice versus a recorded one. Not far behind is an unamplified acoustical instrument and so unamplified acoustical performances are the most difficult types of music for an electronic audio system to faithfully reproduce. If I listened to Adele or ColdPlay all day long (and I do enjoy listening to this music), I know I could get by with a much simpler setup and would probably have very satisfyingly reached my personal end game long ago.
Having said that, it's important for each of us to understand our priorities as we embark on our individual audio journeys since no one can have it all. The ideal amplifier would have infinite open loop gain, infinite input impedance, zero output impedance, infinite bandwidth, and zero offset voltage. Such an amplifier would be truly transparent (i.e. invisible) but unfortunately, such an amplifier doesn't exist. Likewise, an ideal cable would have zero resistance, zero inductance, and zero capacitance which would make it completely transparent and while superconductors approach this ideal, such cables do not exist in the audio world. Consequently, audio at any level is fraught with compromise and so audio wisdom is about knowing which compromises to value over others and this is a very personal thing. In my case, my priorities are very simply transparency and resolution.
I prefer to evaluate amps (and other gear) like the Olympics evaluates figure skaters. Each amp gets a "technical performance" score which includes all the performance characteristics that are generally objectifiable. Speed, dynamics, transient response, bass control, treble extension, midrange clarity...you name it. With regards to any one of these individual qualities such as speed or transient response, most of us can agree when we hear something that is fast or agile. If you use specific portions (10-15 seconds) of select tracks that you know well, it becomes fairly easy to test for these qualities even at audio shows under suboptimal conditions.
Like in figure skating, each amp also gets an "artistic" score and this can be more difficult to assess and ultimately, may be the more important score. This is obviously a more subjective quality and reflects our preferred proportions of all of an amp's qualities. This can take time to assess and, in my opinion, is the reason to try and bring the amp home so that you can hear it in your system. This is where "musicality" fits in although musicality means different things to different people which is why I am more inclined to know what WCSS means when he says his Constellation has excellent bass control than when he says that the Luxman sounds "musical" or "organic" or "natural." One man's "warm" is another man's "neutral."
My musical journey is nowhere as extensive as WCSS's but we share some things in common. In 2017, I owned a pair of Martin Logan Renaissance 15A hybrid electrostats. They were beautiful sounding and I enjoyed them but typical of line source speakers, they cast a giant ambient sound stage but they focused poorly. No matter how I positioned them in my room, the image always seemed unnaturally tall and overly diffuse. The transients were too soft for my liking and so I found myself spending tons of time, energy and resources trying to get them to image more succinctly. As I had easy access to Pass Labs gear, I went through a gamut of their gear (INT-60, INT-250, XA100.8, XA200.8, and X350.8) although I never tried anything in their xS line in my home. While Pass renders a beautifully rich tone with very satisfying bass weight, I found bass to be bloated and not well controlled and transients to sound too slow and soft for my liking and this is not something you realize until you start doing side by side A/B comparisons. Nonetheless, I found that a soft amp did not do favors for a soft sounding speaker, at least for my tastes. Transparency was not very good either. One test I have for transparency is upstream cabling and components. In my most transparent setup, if I change USB cables, it's very easy to hear differences and often, these differences are quite stark. When WCSS says he hears a greater difference between DACs with the Rowland than with the Constellation, I already know which amp I would prefer. When I had Pass Labs gear in my room, I could change cables, DACs, servers, etc., and hear differences, but they were considerably more subtle. On the one hand, with Pass, you could get away with less than stellar upstream gear and still get beautiful sound but for someone who values transparency and resolution, this just drove me nuts since I knew that a Mac Mini should not sound as good as a purpose-built server. Unfortunately, I had the same experience with McIntosh gear.
I also tried the Merrill Thors and very briefly the Veritas and while these amps sounded "clear" and "accurate" and were better resolved than the previous amps, they lacked the dimensionality of the very best amps that I auditioned and sounded flat and almost too damped where decays didn't linger as long as they should have. My experience was similar with Devialet but also with a pair of Kii Three speakers I had in house. To date, I have not tried anything from Rowland or Bel Canto but thus far, class D has not been my preference.
I then moved on to the Luxman M-900U/C-900U and I found it to have nearly the same harmonic richness as Pass but considerably greater performance resulting in greater transparency and resolution. This was the first time I heard my Martin Logans really come to life. I found even better transparency and resolution from D'Agostino, Soulution, and CH Precision and while I could have lived happily with any of these amps driving the Renaissance 15As, I found the best synergy with a pair of CH Precision M1 monoblocks. I think CH Precision and electrostats are a match made in heaven.
Ultimately, I came to realize that line source speakers aren't for me. From my Renaissance 15As to a good friend's Sound Labs to my brother's Maggies and most recently, with the Alsyvox Caravaggios that were playing in Munich 2 months ago, I struggled with an overly diffuse image and soft transients. I understand the appeal and love how you can recreate the ambience of Carnegie Hall with these kinds of speakers but they're just not for me.
And so I switched back to point source speakers and this time to stay. I had previously owned romantic sounding Sonus Fabers and I already owned single-driver, crossover-less Voxativs in my other listening room so I thought I might like Magicos in my large listening room to complement the Voxativs. I even took the Magico tour in Hayward, California and was thoroughly impressed by the tech that goes into these speakers. I auditioned a pair of S5 Mk2s in my home but preferred the subtle sweetness brought forth by the M3s. I tried Devialet with the M3s and I liked the dynamics but the pairing didn't sound natural to my ears and I felt the DAC used in the Devialet could be more resolving. The M3s powered by a Constellation Inspiration Stereo amp sounded underpowered but that was the best Constellation I could get my hands on at the time. I was very impressed with a D'Agostino Momentum Integrated driving the M3s but the best that I heard the M3s sound was with a Soulution 711 stereo amp and 725 preamp. I'm sure the 701 monoblocks would have been even better but I did not have access to these amps. Ultimately, however, I struggled with bass output from the M3s that I felt was too weak for my large room (I didn't have subs at the time) and a presentation that still sounded a touch too clinical for my tastes.
From the Magicos, I decided to try Wilsons and to cut to the chase, I have stopped looking. If I could afford them, I would buy a pair of Wilson WAMM Master Chronosonics and feel it would be money well spent because I have yet to hear Mahler's 8th so convincingly portrayed to scale than by these speakers powered by a pair of CH Precision M1.5 monoblocks. Instead, I have settled on the Alexia 2s and while they're not WAMMs, they have near the balance of transparency, resolution, and naturalness of the WAMMs that I find so appealing but at a much more affordable price point.
It should come as no surprise that while a great amp will always be a great amp, the best amp for one speaker is often not the best amp for another speaker and that is the whole point of this post. Beyond transparency and resolution, there is synergy to consider and synergy or lack thereof is difficult to predict. With the Alexias, I tried Pass Labs once again (X350.8 with XP-22 preamp) and it was not a great pairing. Same thing with a pair of McIntosh MC611s. Just too slow. I know the Luxman L-509X has received much love on this thread and so I bought one to try out and all I can say is don't waste your money on this intregated. It cannot do the Alexias justice. The Luxman C-900U/M-900U is an excellent combo with the Alexias and I actually prefer the M-900U in stereo form as opposed to monoblock form because I hear better subtlety and nuance with the stereo version, especially at low volumes. I thought the Hegel H30 fronted by a Soulution 520 preamp was very good. Even better is the Soulution 511/520 that I currently have in house but the very best pairing I have heard with my Alexias thus far have been the VTL Siegfried II monoblocks with 7.5 III preamp, D'Agostino Momentum Integrated (I have not yet tried D'Agostino separates), and CH Precision L1/M1 monoblocks. As previously stated, I have not tried anything from Rowland but I do have a Merrill Audio Christine and Element 114 coming my way shortly.
As for active preamps, I agree with WCSS on this one. As someone who values transparency, to insert another gain stage to the signal path is a step in the wrong direction but for certain speakers, I find them to be necessary evils especially since I only have one digital source and I don't spin vinyl. If you notice that with various manufacturers, whether it be VTL or Soulution, as you go up their line of preamps, what you typically gain is transparency. Active preamps can be very transparent but unfortunately, this transparency can be very expensive.
I apologize to WCSS for hijacking his thread with such a long post but not to worry, this will probably be my only post here (unless it gets deleted again, lol). Hopefully, the contribution is helpful.
I figured my attempt to be humorous would get deleted but that was fast. I have had private requests to resurrect that post which I may do on another thread although I will revise it so that it is hopefully offensive to no one. It was designed to poke fun at the typical audiophile (myself included). It is indeed funny to see the lengths that audiophiles will go to for the sake of musical enjoyment and WCSS's journey is as extreme an example as any. Nonetheless, it has been enjoyable to tune in every so often when I have found the time.
Generally, when watching a movie, we're all rooting for the hero to "get the girl" at the end but with regards to WCSS's journey, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be rooting for since I don't know where WCSS is going with this. It seems the goal isn't for WCSS to find his end-game setup but just to keep the thread going as long as possible and try as much gear as possible. If this is the case, then so be it. Comparative evaluations are valuable and WCSS's blunt honesty has been refreshing to read.
I'd like to apologize to Viber6 as I meant no offense (although he makes himself an easy target, lol). I actually have much in common with his musical preferences (at least 75 percent of what I listen to is large orchestral or chamber music) although our priorities differ (and that's ok). It has been said that the most difficult thing for an electronic audio system to convincingly portray is an unamplified human voice. In any situation, if you close your eyes, you ALWAYS know when you're listening to a live human voice versus a recorded one. Not far behind is an unamplified acoustical instrument and so unamplified acoustical performances are the most difficult types of music for an electronic audio system to faithfully reproduce. If I listened to Adele or ColdPlay all day long (and I do enjoy listening to this music), I know I could get by with a much simpler setup and would probably have very satisfyingly reached my personal end game long ago.
Having said that, it's important for each of us to understand our priorities as we embark on our individual audio journeys since no one can have it all. The ideal amplifier would have infinite open loop gain, infinite input impedance, zero output impedance, infinite bandwidth, and zero offset voltage. Such an amplifier would be truly transparent (i.e. invisible) but unfortunately, such an amplifier doesn't exist. Likewise, an ideal cable would have zero resistance, zero inductance, and zero capacitance which would make it completely transparent and while superconductors approach this ideal, such cables do not exist in the audio world. Consequently, audio at any level is fraught with compromise and so audio wisdom is about knowing which compromises to value over others and this is a very personal thing. In my case, my priorities are very simply transparency and resolution.
I prefer to evaluate amps (and other gear) like the Olympics evaluates figure skaters. Each amp gets a "technical performance" score which includes all the performance characteristics that are generally objectifiable. Speed, dynamics, transient response, bass control, treble extension, midrange clarity...you name it. With regards to any one of these individual qualities such as speed or transient response, most of us can agree when we hear something that is fast or agile. If you use specific portions (10-15 seconds) of select tracks that you know well, it becomes fairly easy to test for these qualities even at audio shows under suboptimal conditions.
Like in figure skating, each amp also gets an "artistic" score and this can be more difficult to assess and ultimately, may be the more important score. This is obviously a more subjective quality and reflects our preferred proportions of all of an amp's qualities. This can take time to assess and, in my opinion, is the reason to try and bring the amp home so that you can hear it in your system. This is where "musicality" fits in although musicality means different things to different people which is why I am more inclined to know what WCSS means when he says his Constellation has excellent bass control than when he says that the Luxman sounds "musical" or "organic" or "natural." One man's "warm" is another man's "neutral."
My musical journey is nowhere as extensive as WCSS's but we share some things in common. In 2017, I owned a pair of Martin Logan Renaissance 15A hybrid electrostats. They were beautiful sounding and I enjoyed them but typical of line source speakers, they cast a giant ambient sound stage but they focused poorly. No matter how I positioned them in my room, the image always seemed unnaturally tall and overly diffuse. The transients were too soft for my liking and so I found myself spending tons of time, energy and resources trying to get them to image more succinctly. As I had easy access to Pass Labs gear, I went through a gamut of their gear (INT-60, INT-250, XA100.8, XA200.8, and X350.8) although I never tried anything in their xS line in my home. While Pass renders a beautifully rich tone with very satisfying bass weight, I found bass to be bloated and not well controlled and transients to sound too slow and soft for my liking and this is not something you realize until you start doing side by side A/B comparisons. Nonetheless, I found that a soft amp did not do favors for a soft sounding speaker, at least for my tastes. Transparency was not very good either. One test I have for transparency is upstream cabling and components. In my most transparent setup, if I change USB cables, it's very easy to hear differences and often, these differences are quite stark. When WCSS says he hears a greater difference between DACs with the Rowland than with the Constellation, I already know which amp I would prefer. When I had Pass Labs gear in my room, I could change cables, DACs, servers, etc., and hear differences, but they were considerably more subtle. On the one hand, with Pass, you could get away with less than stellar upstream gear and still get beautiful sound but for someone who values transparency and resolution, this just drove me nuts since I knew that a Mac Mini should not sound as good as a purpose-built server. Unfortunately, I had the same experience with McIntosh gear.
I also tried the Merrill Thors and very briefly the Veritas and while these amps sounded "clear" and "accurate" and were better resolved than the previous amps, they lacked the dimensionality of the very best amps that I auditioned and sounded flat and almost too damped where decays didn't linger as long as they should have. My experience was similar with Devialet but also with a pair of Kii Three speakers I had in house. To date, I have not tried anything from Rowland or Bel Canto but thus far, class D has not been my preference.
I then moved on to the Luxman M-900U/C-900U and I found it to have nearly the same harmonic richness as Pass but considerably greater performance resulting in greater transparency and resolution. This was the first time I heard my Martin Logans really come to life. I found even better transparency and resolution from D'Agostino, Soulution, and CH Precision and while I could have lived happily with any of these amps driving the Renaissance 15As, I found the best synergy with a pair of CH Precision M1 monoblocks. I think CH Precision and electrostats are a match made in heaven.
Ultimately, I came to realize that line source speakers aren't for me. From my Renaissance 15As to a good friend's Sound Labs to my brother's Maggies and most recently, with the Alsyvox Caravaggios that were playing in Munich 2 months ago, I struggled with an overly diffuse image and soft transients. I understand the appeal and love how you can recreate the ambience of Carnegie Hall with these kinds of speakers but they're just not for me.
And so I switched back to point source speakers and this time to stay. I had previously owned romantic sounding Sonus Fabers and I already owned single-driver, crossover-less Voxativs in my other listening room so I thought I might like Magicos in my large listening room to complement the Voxativs. I even took the Magico tour in Hayward, California and was thoroughly impressed by the tech that goes into these speakers. I auditioned a pair of S5 Mk2s in my home but preferred the subtle sweetness brought forth by the M3s. I tried Devialet with the M3s and I liked the dynamics but the pairing didn't sound natural to my ears and I felt the DAC used in the Devialet could be more resolving. The M3s powered by a Constellation Inspiration Stereo amp sounded underpowered but that was the best Constellation I could get my hands on at the time. I was very impressed with a D'Agostino Momentum Integrated driving the M3s but the best that I heard the M3s sound was with a Soulution 711 stereo amp and 725 preamp. I'm sure the 701 monoblocks would have been even better but I did not have access to these amps. Ultimately, however, I struggled with bass output from the M3s that I felt was too weak for my large room (I didn't have subs at the time) and a presentation that still sounded a touch too clinical for my tastes.
From the Magicos, I decided to try Wilsons and to cut to the chase, I have stopped looking. If I could afford them, I would buy a pair of Wilson WAMM Master Chronosonics and feel it would be money well spent because I have yet to hear Mahler's 8th so convincingly portrayed to scale than by these speakers powered by a pair of CH Precision M1.5 monoblocks. Instead, I have settled on the Alexia 2s and while they're not WAMMs, they have near the balance of transparency, resolution, and naturalness of the WAMMs that I find so appealing but at a much more affordable price point.
It should come as no surprise that while a great amp will always be a great amp, the best amp for one speaker is often not the best amp for another speaker and that is the whole point of this post. Beyond transparency and resolution, there is synergy to consider and synergy or lack thereof is difficult to predict. With the Alexias, I tried Pass Labs once again (X350.8 with XP-22 preamp) and it was not a great pairing. Same thing with a pair of McIntosh MC611s. Just too slow. I know the Luxman L-509X has received much love on this thread and so I bought one to try out and all I can say is don't waste your money on this intregated. It cannot do the Alexias justice. The Luxman C-900U/M-900U is an excellent combo with the Alexias and I actually prefer the M-900U in stereo form as opposed to monoblock form because I hear better subtlety and nuance with the stereo version, especially at low volumes. I thought the Hegel H30 fronted by a Soulution 520 preamp was very good. Even better is the Soulution 511/520 that I currently have in house but the very best pairing I have heard with my Alexias thus far have been the VTL Siegfried II monoblocks with 7.5 III preamp, D'Agostino Momentum Integrated (I have not yet tried D'Agostino separates), and CH Precision L1/M1 monoblocks. As previously stated, I have not tried anything from Rowland but I do have a Merrill Audio Christine and Element 114 coming my way shortly.
As for active preamps, I agree with WCSS on this one. As someone who values transparency, to insert another gain stage to the signal path is a step in the wrong direction but for certain speakers, I find them to be necessary evils especially since I only have one digital source and I don't spin vinyl. If you notice that with various manufacturers, whether it be VTL or Soulution, as you go up their line of preamps, what you typically gain is transparency. Active preamps can be very transparent but unfortunately, this transparency can be very expensive.
I apologize to WCSS for hijacking his thread with such a long post but not to worry, this will probably be my only post here (unless it gets deleted again, lol). Hopefully, the contribution is helpful.