Musicality, that's the Grail, isn't it? And how do we get there without sacrificing all the audiophile shivers and twitches? In my experience there are two roads to nirvana. One involves saying, "To hell with the audiophile stuff - I want toe-tapping involvement, and I don't care about imaging and gnat's-whisker resolution." The other involves searching out all the audiophile stuff first, then moving through it (either through planning or luck) to where the musical intent of the artists appears within all the bells and whistles. The first is certainly cheaper, the latter gives you a system that does "Holy Cow!" on a few more levels, but at a much higher price.
The Fab Model 1's are firmly in that second camp. They have enough resolution, transparency and dynamics to easily turn into a standard "audiophile" system. All you need is a well-reviewed solid-state amp, an oversampling CD player and some Valhalla wire and hey presto, you're there. On the other hand, if you treat them nicely all the music that comes down the chain will make it out into the room.
One intrinsic advantage the Fabs have is that their efficiency will prompt most buyers to mate them with SET amps. This will automatically start them off on the right foot. Put a good turntable or a musically valid CD system in front of that, and you're pretty much there.
On the question about all Audio Note systems - the only reason I haven't gone that direction is circumstance. I started building this system about three years ago, and I didn't know about Qvortrup and company back then. I did know about Coincident, so when I was looking for a statement speaker to anchor the system, I bought Israel's Total Victories. Then I was smitten by a KR integrated amp, and then I started buying a lot of stuff off the net, based on web reviews. That approach doesn't lead you into a full AN system - for that you need a dealer who can demonstrate one to you.
While my dealer does sell AN and is very conscientious about helping his clients build good systems, he never had enough high end AN gear on hand to really show me the magic. I'm not that upset though, because the system (most of which came from his shop in the end) turned out all right anyway, and my experience with PX25 amps has been more positive than with 300Bs.
I do suspect that if he'd played me a system with a 3.1x Balanced DAC, an M5, Conqueror amps and a pair of high end AN-E speakers, I'd have been a dead duck...
The Fab Model 1's are firmly in that second camp. They have enough resolution, transparency and dynamics to easily turn into a standard "audiophile" system. All you need is a well-reviewed solid-state amp, an oversampling CD player and some Valhalla wire and hey presto, you're there. On the other hand, if you treat them nicely all the music that comes down the chain will make it out into the room.
One intrinsic advantage the Fabs have is that their efficiency will prompt most buyers to mate them with SET amps. This will automatically start them off on the right foot. Put a good turntable or a musically valid CD system in front of that, and you're pretty much there.
On the question about all Audio Note systems - the only reason I haven't gone that direction is circumstance. I started building this system about three years ago, and I didn't know about Qvortrup and company back then. I did know about Coincident, so when I was looking for a statement speaker to anchor the system, I bought Israel's Total Victories. Then I was smitten by a KR integrated amp, and then I started buying a lot of stuff off the net, based on web reviews. That approach doesn't lead you into a full AN system - for that you need a dealer who can demonstrate one to you.
While my dealer does sell AN and is very conscientious about helping his clients build good systems, he never had enough high end AN gear on hand to really show me the magic. I'm not that upset though, because the system (most of which came from his shop in the end) turned out all right anyway, and my experience with PX25 amps has been more positive than with 300Bs.
I do suspect that if he'd played me a system with a 3.1x Balanced DAC, an M5, Conqueror amps and a pair of high end AN-E speakers, I'd have been a dead duck...