Audiophilepure

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“The Rega io is so good, one is tempted to summon up a cauldron full of well-worn audiophile clichés. While it is excellent at first listen, the toughest part of reviewing a component offering such a high level of performance is that it begs being connected to much more expensive ancillaries to experience the depth of its true capabilities. You could grab a pair of budget speakers and a thrift shop turntable and live happily ever after with the io, but like that other legend from the UK, don’t be surprised to see this one in the company of much more expensive components. Watch for the audio forums of 2050 to speak of this amplifier in hushed reverence.

Of course, the io is worthy of our Exceptional Value Awards for 2020, but that doesn’t truly explain a product that gets the essence of the music so right. Audiophiles beginning their journey here may be spoiled for a very long time.”

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“The question on people’s lips will always be ‘which one is best?’ but in fact it’s a false dichotomy at best. The ART300 and ART27A play to different strengths, work with different systems (especially in terms of loudspeakers and room, even if there is a lot of wiggle room on the part of the ART27A). The simple answer to the question is ‘yes’ or ‘they are both better than each other’. There is no set answer here. Both are outstanding in their own different ways and while there is a lot of crossover in terms of tonality and frequency extension. It’s much more than one has authority, the other has a sense of musical grace, just as it’s wrong to think one is for rock listeners and the other is for jazz fans. The truth is, you should listen to both, and then decide.”

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“The Rega io is so good, one is tempted to summon up a cauldron full of well-worn audiophile clichés. While it is excellent at first listen, the toughest part of reviewing a component offering such a high level of performance is that it begs being connected to much more expensive ancillaries to experience the depth of its true capabilities. You could grab a pair of budget speakers and a thrift shop turntable and live happily ever after with the io, but like that other legend from the UK, don’t be surprised to see this one in the company of much more expensive components. Watch for the audio forums of 2050 to speak of this amplifier in hushed reverence.

Of course, the io is worthy of our Exceptional Value Awards for 2020, but that doesn’t truly explain a product that gets the essence of the music so right. Audiophiles beginning their journey here may be spoiled for a very long time.”

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“Talking of subtlety, there’s as much fine detail as you could wish for, including those vital ambience cues. It’s not a smooth, airbrushed presentation – any beauty is entirely down to the music. Unlike some more analytical amplifiers, detail isn’t pushed at you for its own sake; it is layered but not separated or highlighted, so the Accuphase seems to trigger the ‘music appreciation’ part of my brain more than the ‘music analytical’ part. You perceive the music as a gestalt rather than as a collection of elements, which is closer to what happens in a live experience. It’s that ‘rightness’ thing again. Key musical touch points: timing, pitch, tonal colour, dynamics, and no doubt a myriad of other parameters such as phase relationships, all rendered just a little bit more convincingly, so the brain has less work to do in maintaining a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. So, I now find I have the capacity to notice that when Tord Gustavsen plays piano on ‘At Home’ from Being There [ECM], while this is unquestionably jazz, his precision of touch has much in common with classical technique, for example V.kingur .lafsson’s exquisite rendering of Philip Glass Piano Pieces [DG]. And that’s not me getting all analytical again, it’s just the sort of thing I’d notice in a live gig, when I’m engrossed and not having to process the signal just to make sense of it. Dave Brubeck, ‘Unsquare Dance’ from Time Further Out [Columbia] and the little miracle of how everything comes to an end ‘just so’, is even more miraculous when you can hear how the quartet plays with the timing without ever letting it get away from them.”

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“Of all things, I wrapped up my review by listening to some digital music from my computer—a brave new world for me. I’m working on an informational piece about Yarlung Records, a small company with which some of you may be familiar. Yarlung takes that bold step beyond reissuing older recordings: they make new recordings of interesting music with outstanding musicians. They are to be applauded for the effort alone. I have been to a few of their recording sessions and can report that along with the quality of the performance, they take recording and sound quality as their highest priorities. Many of their recordings are available on vinyl and CD, while all of them are available as high-resolution digital downloads. I downloaded many of their recordings to my computer, but for now I listened primarily to a new recording provided to me by Yarlung called Lifeline. Lifeline is a collection of beautiful spirituals recorded by Yarlung at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, California. The songs are performed by the Lifeline Quartet and feature spirituals from the Civil War era and earlier. The singers are spectacular; in particular, the power and range of Michelle Mayne-Graves will give you goosebumps. On this recording, the Atlas Eclipse monos were able to reproduce the full dynamic range of the singers, each in their individual space, with power and finesse and with no sense of strain or compression. On my Maggie 20.7s, the only other amplifiers that have exhibited the same effortless ability have been much larger all-tube amplifiers, at considerably greater cost than the Atlas. ”

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“Their naturalness of tone extended to the brass and woodwind sections of an orchestra as well. Brass instruments had bite and dynamics, but never lost correct timbre. Woodwinds displayed a natural texture, but were clean and airy. I did hear a slight thinness in the upper mids through lower treble through my ProAcs, but I put the blame on the speakers. When I switched to the Soliloquy 6.3s I heard no such thing. In fact, the pairing of the Soliloquy 6.3s—or the stand-mounted 5.0s—with the Monarchy amps made for a very synergistic match. Compared to the big Clayton mono blocks, the Monarchys do sound a smidgen thin, but as I said in my review of the Claytons, look at the price difference. While we are on the subject of matching components, a pairing that I would advise against (at least in my system) is the Monarchy amps and the Nordost Blue Heaven interconnects. This was especially true with the ProAc speakers. The sound was slightly thin and too bright for my tastes. An all-JPS set of cabling proved to be a great match in my system.”

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“As you’d expect from a pair of monoblocks, the Delta Monos’ stereo imaging was superbly stable and well-defined. When I recorded male-voice choir Cantus performing Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” in Indiana’s Goshen College in June 2007—it was released on While You Are Alive (CD Baby 5637240534)—the nine singers were positioned in an arc in front of the array of six microphones. Before I started capturing the performance, I got each singer in turn to say his name. That way, when I prepared the mixdown, I could make sure that I wasn’t distorting the stereo image. However, I accepted a slight broadening of the images of the singers at the edges of the soundstage in order to preserve enough of the bloom of the hall’s glorious ambience. Listening to the MQA-encoded 24-bit, 88.2kHz master file of “Lux Aurumque” with the Classé-driven Vimbergs, that is exactly what I heard: tightly focused images of the singers in the center and slightly more diffuse images to the sides, with excellent soundstage depth overall. To draw a photographic analogy, the Delta Monos offer superb image acuity.

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“The bass guitar and kickdrum were reproduced with appropriate force and definition, though I felt I needed to remove the plugs from the Minos’ upper ports to optimize the system’s low-frequency reproduction. Mark Knopfler’s vocalizing sounded clean and appropriately husky. But what really enthralled me about this atmospheric track was the depth of the soundstage. Some of the instruments had been mixed with various amounts of reverb. The piano that accompanies the acoustic guitar at the beginning before the verse, for example, was set way back in the soundstage, behind the voice and marimba. The tunnel of reverb behind the guitar power chords in the interlude stretched way back behind the speakers. The Parasounds nicely separated the soundstage’s layers.”