Audiophilepure

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1319-spec-rsa-ex1000-integrated-amplifier

Just now I mixed things up. I described bass guitar in the same paragraph as sizzling electric guitar. I don’t usually do that. Instead, my standard manner of describing a component splits everything up—how it handles bass, midrange, and treble, then imaging, then dynamics. Maybe I’ll play a bit with the sequence, but we’re not animals; we live in a society and need order. The RSA‑EX1000 made it difficult to focus on these properties in a linear manner. Each album I played exhibited facets, characteristic qualities, that pulled me in all sorts of different directions. A case in point: I hadn’t listened to Duke Ellington’s Ellington Indigos (LP, Columbia CS 8053 / Impex IMP6010) for a year or so, but the Spec seemed to guide me to the “E” cube of my record rack. Ellington Indigos is brilliant music, all about the space between the notes, the dynamic shadings, the creation of an introspective mood. The RSA‑EX1000 blew open the front of my room, expanding it into a massive, reverberant hall.

While playing “Prelude to a Kiss,” the RSA‑EX1000 exhibited some contradictory yet complementary attributes. The upper midrange, specifically Johnny Hodges’s sax, was incisive and crisp—as it should be—but at the same time, I was intimately aware of the spit, the granular nature of his syrupy tone. The inner light, that sense of an actual reed vibrating, of air reverberating through brass, was palpable. Same with Shorty Baker’s trumpet on “Willow Weep for Me,” which possessed extended highs with harmonics that could pierce the clouds, but at the same time retained an almost pillow-like feeling of ease. At times I’d wonder to myself if there wasn’t just a tiny bit too much emphasis on the top end of Baker’s upper registers, but then I’d find myself sinking back into the experience. Why? Because that emphasis easily dissolved into an effervescent liquidity, kinda like how expensive champagne (which I don’t think is worth the money, but still) aerosolizes off the tongue.