Audiophilepure

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As for power conditioning, PS Audio naturally recommend a P10 conditioner just for the amps. Worse, they tell me that one P10 per mono is optimal. Yikes! I use a P5 for my front end and find it an important contributor to my rig’s sound. I never power my amps from it since I found it whitewashed the bass out of my Spectrons and anyway, PS Audio suggest the P5 would not quite cut it powering these monos. I do routinely use a two socket Audience Adept Response for my mono amps, and it has proved excellent with every amp I’ve tried. However, I am hard pushed to tell if it has any real benefits with the BHK 300s which seem to sound very similar plugged into it or not, particularly with the Wireworlds. What this tells you about the reaction of these amps to other conditioners, I can’t say, but it does suggest the PS Audio BHK 300s are able to deal with the vagaries of typical house wiring quite well”

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“Comparative listening also highlighted how the Hegel Röst couldn’t match the Audio Note in fluidity and palpable presence. Through the tubed amp, harmonically rich and complex instruments, such as John Roney’s piano, or Bobby Hutcherson’s vibraphone on Eric Dolphy’s “Out to Lunch (LP, Blue Note/Music Matters MMBST-84163), sounded organically smooth, liquid, and whole, with full harmonic development and believable attack, sustain, and decay. The Hegel’s harmonic envelope seemed smaller in comparison, particularly in terms of sustain and decay, which resulted in a mildly coarser sound. But again, this was audible only in a head-to-head comparison with the twice-the-price Audio Note; the Hegel outdid many other good solid-state amps in listenability, tone, and texture.”

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“Perhaps the most startling sound I heard was that of the immortal Miles Davis’s Harmon-muted trumpet in “Basin Street Blues” from his Seven Steps to Heaven (CD, Columbia/Legacy CK 48827). It was explosive and piercing in a pleasant way, the notes lingering a bit in the air, a ghostly presence in my listening room. Every note was clear, tactile, evolving in time, plaintive and dynamic. The detail was such that notes bloomed as Davis played them, from attack impact to a subtle gathering in volume or a fading in aching diminuendo in long, sustained legatos and portamentos. There was a fabulous sense of touch and liveliness, the trumpet’s aural image solid and center-forward. It was as if Davis were there in front of me. The other players of his quartet were spread across the soundstage: Frank Butler’s drums deep at left, Ron Carter’s double bass near the center and noticeably behind Davis, and Victor Feldman’s piano at right. ”

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“The VA910 midrange had lovely, emotionally significant accuracy, but it was not as magical as that of a a SET amp, nor did the VA910s bring out the inner harmonic structure of music in the way triodes or OTL amplifiers can. I had no complaints with their bass, which was full and nimble. The upper end of the frequency spectrum, however, was not quite as extended as it could be, with a little less airiness or openness in the upper reaches than I would preferred.”

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“If your emphasis is on functionality and you don’t need a ton of output power, the Atom is a killer choice. You’d spend more than $2,995 just buying power cords and interconnect cables for a preamp, power amp, and headphone amp. Stay tuned for part two, where we concentrate on all of the different options and functions.”