Audiophilepure

The Vitus Audio SIA-25 Integrated

If you can, try some tracks that you’ve played hundreds of times. The more you listen, the more you’ll hear. It may be old, but I always go back to the title track from Michael Hedges Aerial Boundaries (if you have this on vinyl, even better) or Al DiMeola’s Friday Night in San Francisco. There are plenty of great others, yet these are burned into my memory, not only because I’ve used them to evaluate so many components, I’ve heard them both live more than once.

Another area the SIA-25 really excels in in its ability to render size and scale. Some amplifiers just sound big, others just sound small. Not all amplifiers have the ability to expand and contract with the source fed. I consider this another aspect of resolution. If you love chamber music, listen to selections that feature violin and viola together. On lesser quality playback gear, a string quartet just sounds like four of the same stringed instruments. I really enjoy Luigi Gatti’s Six Sonatas for Violin and Viola, to illustrate this. The viola, being about 20% larger than a violin and plays a bit lower, and more mellow than a violin, so this is a great test of resolution and behavior on the top end of the frequency scale.

Even if your taste in music falls to the completely electronic, I suspect you’ll get excited (or really freak out) about when the SIA-25 is in your system. First, the level of bass extension and control is incredible, and feels like a much larger amplifier. Jean-Michel Jarre’s Zoolook is usually the go to here, but his latest release, Amazonia, serves up a massive soundscape, full of guttural sounds, deep bass tracks, and plenty of signature Jarre tinkly bits all over the room. While none of this music has a “real” component to it, there is again a degree of liveliness that mega components bring to this kind of music. Again, the SIA-25 aces the test.

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With less dramatic recordings, or those without extravagant low-end heft, the C 298 did sound more pedestrian, although its knack for creating a spacious, unmuddied soundstage, and emphasising musical detail, was still in evidence. I kicked back with Patsy Cline’s gentle country ballad ‘I Fall To Pieces’ [The Complete Releases 1955-62; Acrobat Music ACTRCD9064] and the experience was way more than pleasant – the C 298 brought a plump feel to the walking bassline and the clear, transparent nature of its sound allowed me to focus on Cline’s despondent lyrics.

I’ll not fall into the ‘but it’s a Class D amplifier’ trap. There’s no elephant in the room here, just a relatively compact black box sat on a kit rack. Yes, NAD’s C 298 might not bring the mug-of-cocoa warmth and smoothness one might expect (or demand) from a hot-running transistor or tube amp but that’s because it’s voiced for a very direct sound, presenting the music without gloss. In this instance there’s no fear the experience becomes clinical or dry, turning listening from a relaxed pleasure into something more demanding. There’s so much excitement to be had from its exuberance, power and rhythmic ability that any craving for something mellower doesn’t last for long.

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This is made clear when we listen to the Olafur Arnalds set, which relies on the system having a high degree of subtlety. It’s easy for an amplifier to sound ham-fisted when playing this recording, but it’s a trap that the Cambridge avoids. Instead it is confident and composed, but never overplays its hand.

This Cambridge is a rhythmic performer too, delivering Prince’s 3121 with verve. There’s plenty of entertainment to be had here from thumping basslines to intricately shifting rhythms with Prince’s distinctive vocals at the centre. The CXA61 ticks all the hi-fi boxes without forgetting that all the detail and tonal neutrality in the world doesn’t matter if the emotional content of the music is ignored.

A reviewer’s job is to trip products up, but the best products trip us up instead. When this happens, we play music that we think will show limitations in a device, and they end up highlighting their strengths instead. So it was with the Klimax DSM; I played the Overture to The Pirates of Penzance [D’Oyly Carte, Decca] which is a great test for imaging, but ended up being so musically bouncy and fun (as it should be) I felt like I should have mutton-chops and be wearing a smoking jacket. I played ‘Back In Black’ by AC/DC [Atlantic] on Tidal and air-guitared my way to dislocating a shoulder and I played some Miles Davis to check on that complex interplay on Shhh/Peaceful [In A Silent Way, Columbia] and now I have a $1,000 per day coke habit. And that’s the big thing about the Linn Klimax DSM; you feel rolling out the same old terms for audio performance when you are dealing with a product that is so very much about the music isn’t just wrong, it’s positively asinine. Of course, it ticks all the audiophile boxes of good soundstaging, outstanding levels of detail, excellent vocal articulation, superb image solidity and dynamic range and fluidity of sound that could give a turntable a run for its money, but that’s just par for the course in high-end streaming. What this gives over and above that is a sense of being as one with the musical intentions of the composer or musicians.

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Meanwhile, if you have two turntables, or play older pre-RIAA records, you can set the Kula up for those too. You can even add polarity inversion of one or both channels, mono summing and just about anything else you’d need to play even the most arcane of recordings.

A wide range of adjustments are also available for other inputs, from renaming, adjusting relative level, designating an input as ‘direct’, or bypassing the volume control if the Kula is used with a preamp or AV processor. The digital option here is slightly unusual – yes, it has optical, AES/EBU and asynchronous USB, and can handle datastreams at up to 384kHz/32-bit and DSD512 via the last of these, but there’s no coaxial digital input, and the Ethernet connection allows the Kula to function as a Roon endpoint, a brief it fulfils rather well.

As far as control of the overall system goes, the BluOS control app proves about as capable and reliable as any alternative that doesn’t say ‘Sonos’. It looks clean and reasonably uncluttered, and the ability to integrate any number of streaming services and internet radio services is very welcome. It’s not the most intuitive, it’s true, and it’s possible to flummox it by switching inputs much more easily than it really should be – anyone who (like me) is disproportionately annoyed by electronics not doing what they really ought to is going to find themselves frustrated on occasion. But as far as organising and operating a wireless multiroom audio system goes, BluOS is one of the very best of the rest. Even if you decide your system should feature 64 players.

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Enchanted by their sound, we rounded up our last session with two favourite test tracks. The first was the dense and richly detailed performance of ‘The Carousel Waltz’ from The John Wilson Orchestra’s Rodgers & Hammerstein At The Movies [Warner Classics 3193012], which utterly delighted with its propulsive detail and the sense of conductor and orchestra having an absolute ball.

The other? ‘The Dance’, from the London Chamber Orchestra’s 1989 recording of Nick Bicat’s Under The Eye Of Heaven [Virgin Classics LCOCD 1], which can sound thin or even tinny on some systems. Here the bass weight and insight ensured a real sense of punch in Christopher Warren-Green’s solo amplified violin, the sparkling percussion and the deep, hard-hitting bass and drums.

The pounding yet very clean sound brought back the thrill of hearing the piece performed live at Hammersmith Odeon back in 1990, and the poster simply saying ‘Classical Music Bloody Loud’. And, yes, that’s just what these Engström flagships delivered!