![]() There was a better sense of the orchestra's back row-the percussion on La Mer, for example-and of the stage walls behind and beside them. With the Power 3s, the rear corners were pushed farther back and a bit better illuminated. The other amps' soundstages were deeper, but their shapes were slightly trapezoidal, perhaps even concave on the rear edge, with more depth in the center than at the edges. The Power 3s' soundstage didn't have quite the depth of the other amps', but the depth it did have was more consistent from side to side. The soundstage was very wide, extending well out beyond the Maggies' outer edges, and the space between the images gave it an open, airy feel. Images were tightly focused as well, with excellent edge definition and a very clear sense of the space between them. I've mentioned the speed and precision of the dynamic transients. At the bottom end, a lot of the subtle microdynamic information was noticeably reduced, and in some cases gone altogether.īacking up a step, however, there is no doubt that the Power 3s did do an excellent job of controlling the speakers. With the Power 3, the crescendos didn't have as much power as with the VTL. The second movement of La Mer runs the gamut from delicate woodwind passages with barely perceptible microdynamic shadings to all-out crescendos. At any volume level and with any speaker I threw at it, the Sonic Frontiers' dynamics were genuinely smaller across the board, from micro- to macrodynamics. That may be part of it, but I'm convinced that it's not the whole story. I wrestled with this a bit, playing with different preamp gain settings, carefully matching levels, and wondering if what I was really hearing was the Power 3's superior control of the speaker. The character was correct, the sound was detailed, and the leading and trailing edges were sharp-but they just didn't have the snap-your-head-around sort of impact that the other amps did, and that makes the sound seem a bit more alive. Rim shots had a crisp, clean initial impact. The transients were clean and fast, and the dynamic swings were very well controlled, but just not as big. Compared to the Levinson, VAC, or VTL, the Power 3's deltas-the differences between loud and soft-simply weren't as big. Recent visits to concert halls and jazz clubs suggest that reality-and true neutrality-fall somewhere between the two.Īnother immediately obvious component of the Power 3's sound, and one that contributed strongly to its character, was a reduction in the size of dynamic gradients. Similarly, the VTL had a bit more midrange and upper-midrange bloom than the SF, so Emily Remler's guitar and Red Holloway's sax were tonally richer and more vivid. On the vinyl version of the Ray Brown Trio's Soular Energy (Concord Jazz LELP 111, Bellaphon 180gm half-speed-mastered version), Brown's bass sounded a little more prominent with the VTL, but more consistent across its range with the Power 3. Its overall character was slightly cool, dry, and distant-exactly the opposite of the VTL's slightly warm, liquid, immediate personality. The Power 3 didn't sound perfectly neutral, however.
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