New Rowland Criterion 2-chassis battery pre

Did UPS extenze his signature pad or twas Bruno with his silver codpiece and knit legerhosen? No ohmygosh it's JRDG rounding the corner.

If it hasn't arrived yet, look at the bright side.

It gives you and Dave more time to finish the review.

So you won't have to write your "honest" and "objective" analysis later.

Some clouds have a silver lining.

Oooh. AudioFail, you just glow with a supremely bright shade of Green!

Guido, From your posts I know that you hold much of your impressions and judgement until a component is thoroughly broken in, but can't you send us some intial impression tidbits?

Hope your Criterion came today and you are enjoying it! Congrats!

Phil

Thank you Phil and all. It looks like. . . The Criterion has landed!

UPS delivered it over the noon hour and I hawled the 54Lbs box 17 steps upstairs to my listening loft. I am delighted to report that I did not drop it. The unit was delivered complete of remote control transmitter and remote control receiver station. The latter connects to the Criterion's control chassis via a custom 2m wire. The control chassis sits on top of the audio chassis and locks into place with 4 Delrin ball bearings that fit into dimples milled into the bottom of the control chassis and into the top of the audio chassis.
I was kindly assisted by Babybear during the setup.

Criterion has been playing for approximately 3 hours now on a tuner and my X-01 player. I have been playing mostly from a piano CD with M. Uchida performing the Mozart 'Twinkle' variations.

So far so good. I was expecting Criterion to sound totally hideaous right out of the box, but it did not.

Being the unit so new it is very difficult to report on its sound. . . just 20 more minutes of playing time can yield perceivable changes. Nevertheless, I have the very preliminary impression that the harmonic exposure in the treble may have already exceeded the Capri, which is no harmonic slouch to start with. This of course does not mean a great deal yet, as for the 1st few hundred hours the device is likely to expose and reabsorbe a number of prowess and anomalies alike.

I have tried both the AC power supply and the battery power supply. On battery operation, the difference seems subtle. . . but Criterion seems to increase further harmonic content, sound even more open, and perhaps extract even a little more ambient cues. Expectedly, if the recording contains low level tape hiss, like the Mozart/Uchida analog remaster I am playing right now, the background tape hiss is slightly magnified by Criterion on bbattery operation.

Interestingly, when I bring a new component into the listening room I can take its sound only minutes at a time for the 1st couple of weeks. Conversely, I had to take a very deliberate decision to come down from the listening room and write this post.

G.