Husk, nothing new on M925. On the other hand.....
For the last 2.5 weeks, I have been breaking in an M625 in my system with surprising results.... The device has now approximately 300 hours of operations.
For the first couple of hours right out of the box, M625 was very pleasing, if somewhat 'skinny' sounding, with not too much resolution, and the stage it created was no more than 60% in width and height of M312.
After that it entered a funk of about 100 hours, where it sounded closed in and not terribly resolving, with transients tending to sound harsh.... I confess that I was temporarily underwhelmed.
Between 100 and 150 hours it oscillated between darkness and peakiness. During this time, the stage proceeded to broaden and rise in hight, to about 80% of what M312 does.... Stage started to become deeper, and resolution started to creep in.
Things really get interesting after about 150 hours.... performance oscillations start to abate rather rapidly, and what I think to be the character of the device begins to emerge....
Width and height of the stage end up comparable if not larger than on 312, but stage is MUCH deeper and layered. This goes with a much more precise virtual location of various instruments/performers. As a result what I perceive now is a significantly greater sense of 'reality' of the virtual stage than on M312.... even more of the sense of the stage being recreated rather than 'depicted'. This also means that depending on the recording or the radio broadcast, I get much more a sense of the instrument being relatively close, or far from me, and surrounded by 'real' space, including audience and walls. This also means that while the performance have considerable 'presence', the sound is never forward, and the frontmost instruments hardly ever seem to emerge from positions more than a foot forward from the front of the speakers. A sideeffect of the positional accuracy is however that recordings where the engineered has fiddled with montages of sorts (like on some SACD remasters) become much more prone than usual to reveal solo orchestral instruments being suddenly shifted to the front of the stage.... (I still do not think that orchestral players are in fact encouraged or even allowed to zip about the stage on chairs with casters (grins!)).
I always thought that M312 was a champion at reproducing bass accurately and musically, but I discovered that M625 runs circles around it..... Bass is significantly more present than on M312, but in a more pitched, accurate, and harmonically rich way. This gives an impression of bass being paradoxically stronger, earthier, and lighter at the same time.
Midrange is textured and harmonically complex in the Rowland tradition, but even more so than on 312..... and the treble is extremely open, detailed, and 'feathery', without a seeming trace of brickwalling the upper harmonic series. Interestingly, M625 reabsorbs certain small treble intermodulations that were still detectable with m312 on complex passages of sostenuto multivoice treble.... rather than the typical coalescing 'jarries', what I hear is distinct instruments that play distinct melodic lines in slightly different positions in space.
The result in orchestral pieces is an unexpected sense of expansive grandness combined with a chamber-like pinpoint location accuracy. Anyone concerned about M625 transient authority? Well... dont be concerned.... I am probably getting greater authority and transient from M625 than from M312.... I suspect that this may be because, as distortions are lower on m625, much more of the correct musical signal is getting to my ears, and as a consequence higher SPL levels are possible without ill effect.
2 more issues are worth mentioning:
Heat dissipation.... Machine right out of the box operates relatively cooly for a couple of days, then gradually warms up to a hefty toastiness, just shy of feeling uncomfortable to the touch. It seems though that past the 250 hours mark, the operating temperature may have dropped a couple of degrees, to what I would consider 'pleasantly toasty'.... No problem at all keeping my hands/fingers on the unit.... and temperature appears to be the same no matter where I touch the amp.
Last but not least, the only thing I hear when I turn on the amp is a soft delayed click from internal relay switches with no audible pop from the speakers... but when I turn the amp off, a very moderate pop is produced on each speaker.
If anyone were still wondering if I thought M625 were at least 'as good' as M312, or it were shy of it, my current impression is that the new device constitutes a very significant step forward in musicality, resolution, staging, imaging, and.... yes, authority. I can only wonder at what is expecting us with M925.... whenever it shows up, that is (sighs).
I am not at all sure if M625 has completed breakin yet.... and I suspect it has not. I'll post more impressions in the next few weeks.
G.
