11-Mar-2019, 20:48
@Sailor4W
There are some threads, now a few years old, in which many posted their impressions of the Pro and CI upgrades. I'm not able to recall clearly what my own impressions were for the two separate upgrades, but I did have a time, after the Pro work, I think, where I had a 'brightness' issue. I traced it to having power cables crossing over coiled speaker cables. A gentle but important improvement came from getting the wire bits cleaned up and organized. I think that sometime in that upgrade era I also changed speaker cables, and that helped.
Brightness may be something to be aware of with these amps, as the highs are certainly not rolled off. But AS puts it in the review, it is something that needs to be considered as part of the normal matching of components, including amps, speakers, cables, sources, power quality. I do believe that the Pro and CI amps are much more revealing of all the associated parts of the system as well as the wide variation in recording quality.
There are some threads, now a few years old, in which many posted their impressions of the Pro and CI upgrades. I'm not able to recall clearly what my own impressions were for the two separate upgrades, but I did have a time, after the Pro work, I think, where I had a 'brightness' issue. I traced it to having power cables crossing over coiled speaker cables. A gentle but important improvement came from getting the wire bits cleaned up and organized. I think that sometime in that upgrade era I also changed speaker cables, and that helped.
Brightness may be something to be aware of with these amps, as the highs are certainly not rolled off. But AS puts it in the review, it is something that needs to be considered as part of the normal matching of components, including amps, speakers, cables, sources, power quality. I do believe that the Pro and CI amps are much more revealing of all the associated parts of the system as well as the wide variation in recording quality.
Damon
Powernode, NAD M32, Cambridge CD transport, Analysis Plus, Nordost, iFi Nova, CSS Criton 1TDX, KEF C62
Vancouver, Canada
