Audiophilepure

This was my first hands-on experience with products from the UK manufacturer, QUAD. I was not disappointed. The look and feel of these products showed that they spent a lot of time and effort to get them right, both in aesthetics and in sound quality. They worked well together and performed excellently, even when I hooked them up to my personal equipment. If you are in the market for a killer streamer and preamp, this combo should be on your very short list. Well done, guys!

Dynaudio’s Contour 20 Black Edition is far more than a cosmetic refresh. It’s a meaningful reengineering effort that elevates the already excellent Contour 20i into a different performance tier. The Esotar 3 tweeter is a revelation; smooth, extended, and effortlessly detailed, and the updated NeoTec mid/woofer delivers impressive control, neutrality, and bass authority. Imaging is precise, dispersion is wide and consistent, and the overall tonal balance is as honest as anything I’ve yet had the pleasure of reviewing. No, the Black Edition won’t replace a fullrange tower or a subwoofer for true 20–40 Hz content but within its intended bandwidth, it performs with a level of refinement, dynamic capability, and transparency that is simply superb. If you truly crave that bottom octave of bass, just add a high-quality subwoofer and you’ll be all set.

I did also notice a few other things using the Strata that might be of interest. First, surface noise on clean modern discs seems a bit quieter and lower in subjective frequency, but the opposite can be true with older discs, depending on prior use/abuse, vinyl hygiene, or pressing defects. Pops and tics are instantaneous, with minimal overhang. I was also more aware than usual of low level pre-echoes from the following groove. I don’t play much rock, so will offer no opinion on undistorted guitar distortion.

I have played all sorts of LPs atop the Strata with nary an instance where I thought anything musical was left in the grooves. Cliche or not, I was hearing musical information on familiar records I’d not noticed before. Over the years I’ve improved my analog playback with turntables, tonearms, cartridges, and phono stages – each retailing for far more than the Origin Live Strata. Yet it turns out it’s this innovative platter mat that actually makes all those other upgrades absolutely worth the expense.

So who (besides your humble correspondent) will be buying a Strata mat? Current or future Origin Live turntable owners might opt instead for a newly available platter which includes Strata tech bonded to an acrylic sub-platter (now standard on their top turntables). That still leaves a lot of audiophiles with decent to extravagant analog rigs, yet still open to real improvement. OK, some might rather spend 500 bucks on 10-12 audiophile reissues. Sigh.

A key feature of the preamp is its two chrome-plated, ball-bearing rotary controls, which feel solid, heavy, and precise during use. The step size of the volume change depends on the rotation speed. Slow rotation changes the level in 0.5 dB steps, while fast rotation changes the volume in 2 dB steps. Unusually for a high-end product, the preamp includes Bass, Treble, and Loudness controls that can also be fully bypassed. Even though there are valid arguments against using EQ, there are times when it can be beneficial. Thus, I always welcome the inclusion of this almost forgotten feature.

The preamp, presumably mandated by law, has an Auto-Standby feature that switches to standby after 15 minutes of inactivity, which can be quite annoying for a tube product with a warm-up period. Fortunately, the function can be defeated in the Personal Setup menu. The manual indicates that “the menu button on the right under the display” must be pressed before waking the unit from standby. To be fair, it says “on the right”, but confusingly, the middle button has a ‘Menu’ label, while the other buttons are unlabeled. As it turns out, the unlabeled button on the far right opens the Personal Setup menu, not the Menu button. With that addressed, I left the preamp powered on for most of the day before starting my listening tests.

Even within their given size constraints, it is quite an achievement to embody as much of the music’s energy as they can and to follow what is given, overlaying and forming an above-expected level of acoustical nodes and focal points, creating an enticing atmosphere.This is undoubtedly due to what Bloom stands for and how everything is combined, starting with the selection of drivers, fitting enclosure, and a potent, fluidly tuned crossover.

The Blooms are an exemplary execution of the bonding of three key elements, and as proven during the evaluation, they were designed to be an important partner to the matching electronics