Audiophilepure

Imagine a photo you’ve taken of a landscape blanketed in a light fog. From your view, objects’ colors are more and more desaturated the farther they sit from the lens, the deeper they sit within the image. The edges are softer, details are blurred, and the image depth is flattened somewhat. And, while our favorite components are often well-designed, and with particular focus around the power supply circuits, this noise remains. It colors what we hear through our loudspeakers and headphones. By removing the fog, we reveal the objects in their full color; their shapes stand out in bold relief, and image depth and scale expand. This, combined with the decompression of the overall image and the PQ-707’s ability to deliver additional current on demand, makes for a more engaging experience. Timing is everything. Music, like humans, only exists in time. To recreate (or approximate) the flow of any one performance, our systems require clean, stable power. To my ears, this heightened dynamic expression is the most remarkable and desirable result of installing a product like this in my system. It is not only about the big swings; it’s the smallest transients that bring music reproduction to life. The PowerQuest 707 (or perhaps another here that better meets your needs) should be on your list for audition.

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/soulution-717-monoblock-power-amplifier

The amplifier that pulled this trick off was the aforementioned Soulution 710, the brainchild of Cyrill Hammer, the founder of the Swiss high-end audio firm Soulution, and the late Christoph Schürmann, formerly of the German company Audiolabor and at the time working for Cyrill. It took the pair better than half a decade to perfect their circuitry, but perfect it they did. The result was astounding. As I said at the time, “with a transparent-enough speaker and source, the Soulution 710 simply isn’t audible in most of the usual ways that solid-state or tube amps are audible. It isn’t dark, and it isn’t light; it isn’t warm, and it isn’t cool; it isn’t liquid, and it isn’t dry; it isn’t fat, and it isn’t lean; it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t sour; it isn’t great at the frequency extremes but less lifelike in the midband; it isn’t flat or airless, and it isn’t bloated or overly bloomy; it isn’t terrific on starting transients and AWOL on stopping ones; it isn’t too tightly focused, and it isn’t too loosely defocused; it just isn’t. And since it isn’t, speakers (at least those capable of high levels of transparency and neutrality) aren’t, either.”

https://www.hifinews.com/content/michell-gyro-turntablearm

This was a performance of remarkable low-end precision, the taut, focused impact making the most of the track’s production. At the same time, I noted an occasional touch of splashiness to the cymbals, as the new Gyro/TecnoArm 2 system fully uncovered the character of this early 1990s digital recording. Michell’s tonearm is a fine partner for the turntable but it has an incisive edge, which can occasionally creep into over-exuberance.

Still, the TecnoArm 2 contributes to this deck’s low-end prowess, so the drum strikes on the Eagles’ ‘One Of These Nights’, from the album One Of These Nights [Asylum K53014], thundered from my speakers with punch and immediacy. And when a more measured hand was required to capture the faster and more intricate bass on the title track of Jessie Ware’s 2026 Superbloom LP [EMI Records EMIV 2152], the Gyro skipped along with delicacy and insight. Additionally, the high-frequency information here was crisp, detailed and sparkling.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/burson-audio-timekeeper-voyager-v-400-max-power-amplifier

This assured sound was much to the fore in classical guitarist Sean Shibe’s Vesper recital [Pentatone PTC5187518; 192kHz/24-bit download]. Every note in James Dillon’s ‘12 Caprices’ landed with real impact before fading into the acoustic, resonant and yet with no blurring. And even with the longish silences here there was not a hint of the Voyagers’ fans running – instead, all the focus was on the image of fingers on strings, and the thrilling effect of thoughtful, totally concentrated musicianship.

Wrapping up with some good old-fashioned rock swagger, The Who’s ‘Baba O’Riley’, from Who’s Next: Life House [UMC 96kHz/24-bit download], sounded as dramatic as ever, The Ox’s grumbling subterranean bass and Keith Moon’s thundering drums underpinning Daltrey’s raw vocals and that familiar windmilling guitar. Meanwhile, The Rolling Stones’ skanking, slinking ‘Fingerprint File’ from It’s Only Rock ’N Roll [Polydor download] saw Keef’s guitar cannoning out from the speakers, Charlie Watts’ drumming as restrained and effective as ever, and Bill Wyman’s bass and synths driving it all along. It was a performance so captivating you could even forgive Jagger’s cod vocal theatrics. Burson’s Voyager Timekeeper amplifiers have it sorted – and in some style.

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/allnic-h-7000-phono-preamp

\\

While listening to “Bismillahi ‘Rrahmani ‘Rrahim” from Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams, a Brian Eno–produced minimalist classic released in 1981, the interplay between Richard Bernas’s celeste and Marion Brown’s alto saxophone was rendered in ultrahigh resolution, the instrumental halos and reverberant trails sounding palpable enough to touch. And on the next track, “Two Songs: 1. Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord / 2. Butterfly Sunday,” adapted from compositions by Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, respectively, Linda Richardson’s mezzo-soprano and Maggie Thomas’s harp sounded so vividly detailed and present that they nearly startled me out of my seat.

The H-7000 also turned out to be remarkably, consistently quiet. Given the unusually high number of transformers inside, this didn’t surprise me, but it lent the copious sonic detail extracted from my records a suitably serene backdrop against which to unfold. Transient response was also superb, portraying music in a quicksilver manner that never impeded its flow. And the soundstage was finely layered and, when called for, both wide and de