After waiting about 10 months, My Encores arrived earlier this month and I've been listening to them for the past two weeks. I had followed jcarpopo's excellent recommendation using a Pass Labs XA25 as a power amp (I was afraid of quickly getting the upgrade bug if I started with a cheaper power amp), and am using a Chord Dave as a DAC for PC audio (music), and a Yamaha AVR 3070 as a preamp in Pure Direct mode (mode that shuts off video circuitry for less noise) for input switching, volume control, and as a DAC for my home theater sources that use HDMI (unfortunately, no HDMI input for the Chord Dave).
For music, even with my high frequency hearing loss, the Encores sound spectacular--lush and with a full and integrated sound. Midrange is wonderful (particularly with female vocals--KD Lang, Sade, Shelby Lynne--all sound lush and live). Base is tremendous--almost too much base for music--before receiving the Encores I was considering adding one of the Tekton subwoofers to this setup, but after hearing the Encores, I don't think a subwoofer is needed at all, at least for music. Highs don't particularly stand out as good or bad, though that is almost certain due to my high frequency hearing loss. The Encores are massive--my wife is convinced and accepts this purchase as a mid-life crisis, but my teenage son who usually is content to listen to music on his small bluetooth streaming speaker or worse, his speakerphone, now enjoys regular listening sessions with me with all kinds of music (his tastes in music differ from mine, but almost everything sounds great in this set-up)--discovering new music in our listening sessions--even if it is sometimes music following my son's eclectic music tastes :( -- is a wonderful new father son activity that brings us closer together.
No complaints with home theater usage of the Encores either. Soundtracks for movies and TV shows sound much more live and impactful than the SEAS Pendragons I had been using previously for my music setup and are now in my home theater.
As the Chord Dave has a digital volume control and can serve as a digital preamp (but not for HDMI sources), I tried bypassing the Yamaha and hooked up the Chord Dave directly to the XA25 power amp for music listening. The resulting sound is somewhat leaner and cleaner, so the Yamaha AVR, even in pure direct mode, appears to be adding some noise to the sound which my brain is interpreting as fullness. I don't mind this added noise/fullness for most types of music (and for acoustic music the additional fullness is actually more pleasing to my ears), but for louder and more congested music (e.g., hard rock, metal, electronica) the added noise/fullness is a bit of a detriment. Regularly switching the wiring between source direct and using the Yamaha as a preamp is too much of a pain to do, so after the Encores' sound has settled, I will probably investigate getting an actual preamplifier instead of the AVR which can accept the SEL or balanced outputs from my Chord Dave and the output from my Yamaha AVR for HDMI sources. I had been thinking of the Schiit Freya+ as a reasonably priced preamp which can alternate between tube mode and solid state model,
but additional suggestions for a preamp (particularly any suggestions known to play well with the Chord Dave and/or XA25)
would be welcome.
