It is hard if not impossible to find silver linings to these times, but if there was one it might be my local First Watt dealer's change of heart to let go of his precious pair of SIT-1 demos, prompted by both a need to whip up some business and cull his equipment closet. He was gracious enough to let me first audition them, providing white-gloved delivery to my doorstep, then giving the boxes an alcohol wipe down before waving goodbye from a more than acceptable social distance.
Into my listening cave I carried these surprisingly heavy and legendary monos. I gave them an hour to warm up and then sat down and by a gradual accumulation of degrees proceeded to be overwhelmed. I had expected from Srajan's Nenuphar review that the SIT-1 would come out swinging with more speed and light than the SIT-3, but what I hadn't expected was how completely different the 1's presentation was. It was a different sound altogether, larger, wider, deeper, more detailed, more intense tonal colors, livelier tempo and beyond everything, more engrossing. In fact, as I listened through my Roon album file named Sound Check, I was emotionally pulled into music I had simply put there as a test of say instrument separation and had played hundreds of times. This amp performs that rare magic trick of illuminating every nuance of recording space and technique, while at the same time bringing music to life in a way you can resist. Don't even think about having these play some harmless tune in the background while you do your taxes: you'd have to turn it way down so as not to be sucked in completely. (I know you're thinking this smacks of euphonics, that I must have had the bias set to pull in second harmonic distortion. But not so, I preferred the needle straight up in neutral.)
I think Srajan downplayed the SIT-1's superiority over every other amp he tried with the Nenuphars because he felt it unfair to tease with the unobtainable. My hunch is the same synergy is attainable with the best of the no feedback, low damping factor, low powered SET's that several people here drive their lotuses with. A/B ing the 1's against my LTA Ultralinear showed how close Berning's ZOTL design comes to Nirvana, but the SIT-1 poked through the clouds to a performance peak I have not experienced with the Nenuphars--or any other speaker for that matter. Long live Nelson Pass.
