Hello,
Here my three cents to the topic.
For the question how much is on the aesthetic side and how much on performance side my answer is 30% for aesthetic 70% for performance.
The aesthetic side of the Jadis is not as good as it looks like. Honestly the aesthetic details are quite poor in Jadis considering the price. They developed they house design many years ago and they hold them It is not cheap especially polished chirurgic chassis steel, but if you decide to go with Jadis you have lo live with many aesthetic flaws. For example:
- did you ever seen the remote control for their preamplifiers? It is so ugly that can be dangerous for your eyes. Also all remote controlled preamplifiers have ugly red square window in the middle of beautiful gold front panel for IR signals. It does not look good, believe me.
- remote controls for CD players have only basic functions working. They still cannot resolve problem with good quality remote control for their CD. I do not know why, because their CD players were manufactured with cooperation with other French manufactory Metronome Technologie and MT have very high quality and fully working remotes.
- other bugs you have to live with Jadis are tarnishing gold plated plates on their equipment.
- also you should consider that higher level preamplifiers like for example JP80 in their basic version has the most sophisticated volume level regulations with resistor ladder. If you decide to go with remote controlled version even with these higher level preamplifiers you have not only to swallow surcharge for RC, but you get unit with Alps potentiometers instead of resistors ladder for volume controll.
So aesthetic is important in Jadis but it is not as good quality as some other high-end manufactures like Burmester, MBL, Mark Levinson or Wadia.
If you can swallow hand manufactured quality (almost garage) of their cabinets, you receive the most musical, the most enjoyable sounding equipment in the market.
