I stopped in the local HT dealer today for a quick listen to these. They are well broken in, having been there for a few years. They power Canton's biggest Karat speakers, I forget which model. MTM with 6" mids and side firing 12" woofer. Their website says efficiency of about 89dB. Source was stock Denon 5900, digital out to Parasound C2 controller. Speaker cables were biwire "silver helix" something, didn't catch the brand. Same for ICs.
The theater setup of the room had the center chair off center to the right by 18 inches. I tried sitting on the arm of the chair to be centered, but soundstage was tilted to the left. So I sat down in the off center seat and everything popped into place.
Hmm, how do you pull off that trick - and what's it doing to the rest of the sound? Thereafter I ignored whatever imaging there was. I was more concerned with the tonality and feeling of ease and power that set this amp's reputation.
I couldn't judge the tone through these speakers and cables. I assume the Denon and C2 preamp are relatively transparent, but the end result was bright on top and a little muddy in the bottom. Body and thickness of midrange tones was very good. Midrange instruments sounded realistic. Treble being hot was a good sign for me, most ss amps I seem to have them rolled off a little. It will be interesting to hear the amps high freq performance through tweeters I am familiar with.
Power is what I wanted to hear, and it was obvious even through this weird German version of high end speakers. The reviews describe the amp as playing anything with ease, never sounding stressed. That was true, but it was misleading me. I expected it to be Levinson like lazy and smooth. It was not. It is incredibly dynamic, ballsy, unlimited feeling of power at one extreme, and extremely delicate and reserved on quiet material. All music sounds effortless, but not lazy and smooth. If the music is aggressive, the amp played it. Dynamic power was instant and severe, at times it sounded like a brute, but that's what the music called for, and it was fun to here it played completely for a change. I can see how my Snappers are not as fast on the attack as these. Bass was not even the slightest bit loose, on organ music in a totally dead HT demo room with 89dB speakers. Tight as a drum. The tonal details of the low organ pedal tones was easily heard. I tried to listen for decay of the amps, but the tone was too rough to gage it, and the speakers' low sensitivity makes hearing delicate decay less obvious, IMO. Flourescent lights, AC and customers talking in the hall made any close listening impossible. Not a great demo, but it is much improved from last year when it was very dull.
After 15 minutes turned on I reached in to feel the heat sinks, they were not terribly hot, and didn't get hotter while I was there despite running in class A. He had them stuffed into a Salamander low boy rack, so maybe he had them turned down to 10w class A, instead of the full boil setting. The amps were probably in standby when I arrived, triggered to on by the C2. I have read they need a long time to warm up from off, but standby is not bad.
I was very impressed with the amps and hope I can hear them again in a system up to the challenge.
When I came home I put on some of the music I listened to on the JC1. The system sounded so much clearer than the demo room that I couldn't really make a comparison. The dealer's policy is no take home demos and I will not be buying them new, so no home audition for these. I will go back and listen again.
Rich
