Grannyring and Lissnr: Thank you for the support and encouragement. "Natural presentation" is indeed the best description so far.
A temptation as a tube-roller is to try other tubes but the result here with the stock tubes is truly wonderful. This is not the typical purchase of a line stage or phono stage loaded with crappy Sovtek or EH tubes that immediately need to be changed. But it has been suggested that I try another tube type for the audio stage. So I will try that out next week when it arrives and report back.
My experience with Counterpoint/Aria products has been that the Rectifier tube has a major influence on the performance. So one day when I am truly without anything to do, I will look into trying other rectifier tubes on the L6 as well. But this unit really does not have me itchy to try other tubes like virtually every other tube product has in the past. It's great to get something magical right out of the box.
A temptation as a tube-roller is to try other tubes but the result here with the stock tubes is truly wonderful. This is not the typical purchase of a line stage or phono stage loaded with crappy Sovtek or EH tubes that immediately need to be changed. But it has been suggested that I try another tube type for the audio stage. So I will try that out next week when it arrives and report back.
My experience with Counterpoint/Aria products has been that the Rectifier tube has a major influence on the performance. So one day when I am truly without anything to do, I will look into trying other rectifier tubes on the L6 as well. But this unit really does not have me itchy to try other tubes like virtually every other tube product has in the past. It's great to get something magical right out of the box.