Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

RFI = Radio Frequency Interference

EMI = Electromagnetic Interference (includes magnetic fields)

15.75 kHz (or close to it) is the horizontal scanning rate of 525/60 NTSC (color or monochrome) analog television. The 625/50 PAL or SECAM rates are similar. Analog television environments were notorious for high interference levels, as well as electrical noise from early SCR light dimmers for on-set illumination.

Modern television is digital from camera, to signal processing, to transmission or storage, to decoding and display. No more sync noise, just computer hash at MHz frequencies.

My Raven preamplifier from Spatial Audio Labs arrived today and I thought I would post initial impressions.  More folks should be receiving theirs any day now so additional comments from them will be helpful.  The packaging was first rate and the box itself looked like it had been hand carried from the next town over.  Everything was pristine inside the double box and the finish on the preamp was perfect.  The only change in my system today was swapping my Ayre K-1xe preamp for the new Raven.  Everything else is the same.  The Raven has a cherry base and I upgraded the standard 6SN7 tubes to the Linlai elite version.  I let the preamp idle for an hour before listening to female vocals, then instrumental, then male vocals, female, etc... After only a few minutes listening the word that struck me first was REFINEMENT. There was no grain as one might expect with only one hour burn in.  Initially, I was pleasantly surprised how similar the Raven was to the Ayre; clearly better but not by a wide margin.  However, the gap began to widen over the next several hours.  Music was fluid, clear (like a sense of zero distortion), natural, well balanced top to bottom, and became more beautiful and emotionally engaging with every song I played.  I am astounded how good this thing is after only 3 hours.  I will provide more detail next week after spending more time listening but there is no question in my mind that this is an amazing preamp and I will be keeping mine.  I look forward to getting 20+ hours on it and reading the impressions of other new owners.

@jc4659  Glad it arrived safely and fired right up.  Thanks for your initial impressions!  It will become more 3D, with more sound stage depth and pinpoint imaging as it runs in for another 50-100 hours.  Tone colours will become more vivid as well.  I am sure the Ayre is a very nice preamp, but it should sound a little flat and two dimensional compared to the Raven, once it has run in.  That eery sense of space will develop on the Raven over the next week or two.  We call it the "trippy" sound:)

@donsachs Soundstage depth, image depth and pinpoint imaging is already better than the Ayre which itself was an improvement over the K-5xeMP in these qualities. 

@jc4659  I know Spatial runs the tubes at least 20 hours before they send things out, just to weed out any failures.   A 6SN7 is pretty well run in by 20 hours.  Yes, there are subtle changes in them out to 50-100 hours, but most of the sound is there in 20 or so.  What you will hear is the cathode bypass caps running in.   They are very large film caps and they are idling along at literally about 2% of their voltage rating.  So they take a while to settle down.  When they do you get that last 10-20%.   Where the real magic lives if the rest of your system can present it.