Hi Albert,
Interesting comment:
"I only swap equipment for superior performance and/or reliability."
I guess that means you are suggesting that the Alnico is better in some ways that the IO did not do it for you. And this was after you had both power supply options, the Signature upgrade and extensive tube rolling on the IO to boot. I guess that means you were really wowed by the Alnico.
Ciao,
Audioquest4life
I had Aesthetix when it was not recognized by the audio community, it's been available since 1994. Early on it had some issues but I liked what it offered and walked through all the upgrades and tube swaps for over a decade and have absolutely no regrets.
Aesthetix was absolutely remarkable when it was introduced, no equal anywhere on earth in my opinion. It took nearly 15 years for other product to catch up and there are still only a few pieces out there that are equal or better.
In all fairness the Aesthetix pieces have the same circuit board and basic parts as their first model. Upgrades are significant with new caps, resistors and other parts but the original design is intact.
I think in a time when companies throw away their design every few years Aesthetix has a world class record and still provides performance that's in the very top tier.
Allnic is better in several ways and does that out of the box against Aesthetix Io and Callisto, even if you outfit the Aesthetix with thousands of dollars worth of NOS tubes (and these tubes are a must in my opinion).
The Allnic remote is excellent, no extra charge and the Allnic chassis takes half (or less) the shelf my Aesthetix required. Allnic runs cooler, requires less maintenance, has longer tube life, has better signal to noise, produces music with lower distortion, higher resolution and far more precise placement of voices and individual instruments in complex musical passages.
Last, the Allnic cost less than half and has a better warranty. Like I said, I tend to stay with what works but if something proves itself in enough ways I will make the jump.
