Audiophilepure

As a review tool, the XS Pre is without peer. It is effortless in its delivery and consistent in sound quality, providing a similar sonic picture with balanced or single ended connections. Even if you don’t review hifi gear, this kind of flexibility offers a much wider range of options as your system and tastes change. With the XS Pre offering such a neutral rendition, it is a perfect system anchor, letting you mix, match and experiment elsewhere.

Because the XS Pre doesn’t manipulate or alter the tonal character of the music it delivers, the usual list of tracks to describe bass, treble, and imaging are almost irrelevant. Laurie Anderson once said, “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.” That’s the XS Pre. It’s much, much better. Add the concept of never having to retube, along with the headache that a new set of tubes can cause, makes it a component you can just leave powered up and forget about it. Matter of fact, there is no power switch

https://www.headfonia.com/audioquest-dragonfly-copper-review

The left-right balance and stereo imaging are very nice, as is the overall timbre. The Copper DF is a very musically tuned DAC/AMP. It’s rich sounding, and the presentation is on the smoother side. The DF Copper will never sound aggressive or sharp, it’s all about effortlessness, musical enjoyment and easiness to the ear.

To me the DragonFly Copper performance wise mostly shines in the mids section, with a nice airy presentation, excellent separation and – again – a lovely timbre/tonality. Vocals sound natural and blend in perfectly and realistically.  Nothing here feels pushed or moved to the front and you get a natural presentation.

Bass is quite present and sounds full and weighty. Bass has a good punch and the impact is impressive; its speed isn’t the highlight, however. Bass layering is quite good, especially if your ear and -headphones are up to the task (try the UM Multiverse Mentor). If you like a lighter kind of bass presentation, the Copper might be a bit more challenging for longer sessions, but for most listeners and especially the “regular consumer”, bass will be spot on and to me a second highlight of the DF Copper’s tuning.

https://www.enjoythemusic.com/superioraudio/equipment/0726/Merrill_Audio_Element_116MX_Review.htm

If one is considering these $30,000 Merrill Audio MX116MX monoblocks, one should obviously discuss spending this kind of cash with one’s partner. I also suggest, depending on where one lives, auditioning them. I also encourage that both of you read about these monoblocks on Merrill Audio’s excellent website.

As a bonus to the extraordinary sound quality of the Merrill Audio Element 116MX monoblocks is their stunning exterior. If one does not have a dedicated listening room, anyone considering their appropriateness to one’s home decor can rest easy. They will suit even the most extravagantly designed homes.

The phase tells the same story of agreement. It holds at zero through the bass and lower midband, the region where the magnitude is flat, and turns upward only as the roll-off engages through the treble, the two captures advancing along the same trajectory to the edge of the plotted band.

Two points deserve to be drawn out. First, the phase of the 192 kHz and 384 kHz measurements coincides as independent confirmation of the magnitude result: not merely the amplitude but the full audio-band transfer function is the same at both rates. Second, a word of caution about how to read the steep phase rise toward the top of the band. It is tempting to treat that large rotation as the converter’s own behavior, but it is not: where the magnitude is still flat, a well-behaved reconstruction filter contributes almost no phase, so the bulk of what climbs here is the residual time reference of the impulse-response measurement rather than a property of the DAC. The filter’s genuine in-band phase is small, and it tracks the magnitude roll-off as it should.

https://www.hifichoice.com/content/pmc-twenty523i-active

Interestingly, something I’ve long regarded as a slight shortcoming of the 23i might also have been dealt with too. Pushing the speaker at high levels with bass-heavy music can result in the bass taking on a quality that isn’t so much the port becoming audible, but there being a sense of air moving to help achieve it. I had felt that this was a baked-in element of the performance and something that’s an acceptable trade-off for the sheer heft that the 23i delivers. The presence of the Bluesound NODE ICON on test at the same time – able to function as a preamp with Dirac room optimisation – demonstrates that this need not be the case. It tightens up the low-end of the PMC considerably, keeping the impact but tightening up everything to be even cleaner and more potent. I suspect that the same can also be achieved with a little room treatment if you’re invested in extracting the most from the PMC.

I reckon quite a few people will want to put that effort in too. This is in its own way every bit as clever and modern a solution as the self-contained wireless active speakers because the nature of its control point – be it classic analogue preamplifier or modern streaming preamp – can be chosen in the context of what you need in your home.