Audiophilepure

Read Here

“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.”

READ HERE

“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.”