LSA Voyager GAN Amplifier

Thank you for that detailed comparison.  No doubt, the Voyager will have much more purity, air, speed and palpability once modded.  Should be an interesting A/B at that point.

Notes from Walter re the LSA Voyager and hard loads - 

The 350 is 2 ohm stable so will have no issue with the Thiels. Our amp is similar to the Peachtree but we use far superior inputs and binding posts and the amps comes with our $150.00 internal cable upgrade. Both very good but we feel ours is $5-10% better as these upgrades do make a difference. Yes, 15% restock charge but that includes the freight to you. You just return it to us.

Guess I'll wait and see what W4S comes out with.

yyz glad the Discovery sounds great with your 3.7s!  Fun times in hifi continue.  

Last night I listened to Alison Krauss + Union Station New Favorite. Listened to this disc at least 50-100 times. It was always entertaining, but I simply wasn't prepared for how everything sounded so clear, so focused and natural. Not even thinking about it, when the banjo played I was floored, as I never noticed it before, because it never had its own space or sounded so natural. Ditto all the musicians and singers.

I remind anyone interested in this amp to read the Absolute Sounds Technics review in Jul 2021 issue. As I read it the other day, he nailed everything Im hearing, which should help you decipher my scribblings on how the Voyager sounds

So my guest came over today for abut 3 hours and we did a deep dive into my gear. I am helping him setup some software for a show he is doing and what we did today with the demoing was related to the upcoming show.

He is a musician, builds recording studios, build microphones, and a audio hardware vendor. We focused on Alison Krauss PAPER AIRPLANE because it was the first album that he recognized on my ROON. He is a personal friend of Alison so he knows her voice very well. He is also friends with some of the singers in the album so he knows how they should sound. He also built the recording studio mics that Alison uses, though I am not sure if it was used on the PAPER AIRPLANE album. So this guy was perfect person to evaluate my gear.

We tested my gear out via ROON, with and without Convolution DSP.

- Thiel CS3.7 + RAAL SR1a
- Benchmark AHB2 mono | CODA #8 | KRELL K-300i | Voyager
- Benchmark DAC3B | Gustard X26 Pro (both via ROON)
- Sony SCD-1 Modified by Vacuum State Level 5+ (no ROON)

He commented that his experience with Class D was not extensive other than some good subwoofers but he had never heard a good Class D on speakers.

We learned a lot of things with our tests but I will only summarize what is important to this thread.

He was easily able to hear things in the my music collection that I heard and a lot more because he had context of how the musicians (his friends) and instruments actually sounded. So I have a very high level of confidence in his observations.

1) He hated my Benchmark AHB2 monos though we only listened on the RAAL SR1a. He said the sound was not realistic and forced. I do not see it that way. I think it sounds the most realistic but I agree it is troublesome on the SR1a (much better on the Thiel which we did not try).

2) We then listened to the PAPER AIRPLANE via ROON on the Voyager. He was extremely impressed. He noticed it was detailed, non-fatiguing but also that it was reproducing the recording, he knew personally, as it was supposed to sound. The Voyager did sound great today to me too. I am at about 220 hours now. We did things with ROON software that made him comment that the sound became compressed and not realistic. Those things I did not notice before because I do not have his personal context to the music.

3) We then put on the CODA #8 and he was not as impressed as with the Voyager. He found it was not as detailed as the Voyager. The SINFF test I did earlier in the thread proved that to be true. He liked the CODA #8 but not as much as I do. He preferred the Voyager over the CODA.

4) We then tried the KRELL with the SRA1. I did not want to put it on the Thiel because of the hassles. He was shocked by the KRELL. He loved it and is thinking of buying one. He said that the Voyager was not as good as on the SR1a as on the Thiel (again something I also said previously)

I am going to re-evaluate my usage of some software based on the comments I heard today. The Voyager was a home run as far as my guest was concerned.

SO in the end the results in order of preference:

1) KRELL K-300i
2) Voyager
3) CODA #8
4) Very far behind Benchmark AHB2 (I like this one the best)

BTW - we did most of the Voyager listening on the Thiel with my Sony SCD-1. I played him my highest quality SACD, Dark Side of the Moon. He was very impressed by the sound. He wanted to buy the SCD-1. It was interesting that he is a friend of the recording engineer on DSOTM, Alan Parsons, and Parsons lives very close to my house (I never knew).