Pro 220 or D400

[Antoine]

There is no right or wrong in upgrading or sticking with what you have. I heard the 440 at the Whittlebury show but was difficult to assess in such a large room with unfamiliar Vivid speakers. What does the upgrade bring ? We are all different i like to be challenged when i listen with plenty of snap (the 250 was too refined for my ears) There are so many variables in all our systems. I can change the presentation of my sound in so many ways without spending a penny.....moving my Sasha's a few inches closer to my listening chair reduces the bass output and increases treble attack. In fact I recently had a mains block specially made for my Shunyata power cables and this has tightened up the bass in a way many of the new pro owners have described.

It's a bit hard to explain but it's surely not all about tonal change, dynamics etc. That's just part of the story. The Pro is more transparant so gets out of the way more, there's simply lower analog/digital distortion added. There's no way to tune such an intrinsic value into ones system except through removing/replacing a device that adds that distortion or in digital through means like re-clocking for example.

My list of things I changed and experimented with in 2016 is almost longer than I'd like to admit but there's little that -on it's own- comes close to the improvements I got from the Pro upgrade. The combined changes I made in the 'source part' of my system (microRendu/Mutec/cables/PSU's) do though.

People really need to hear it in their own system/a familiar setting to be able to judge this upgrade.