I've had the Purist in my system for an hour now and here's my initial review:
[Adopting a Cartman voice] It's HELLA good!
My system is comprised of Anthem MCA 50 amp and Anthem AVM 20 pre/pro, Revel M20 speaks. RS Audio (not RatShack) silver ICs and speaker cable. CD player is the Rega Jupiter 2000.
I played a good number of tracks from Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing, Radiohead's OK Computer, Mapleshade's Kendra Shank's Afterglow.
The Anthem AVM 20 has an excellent preamp stage, and running in direct mode (where everything is defeated that's not needed for 2-channel playback) I have not been able to find a better pre/pro for music reproduction. So, it's not exactly comparing apples to apples when you bring in a dedicated two-channel preamp.
That being said, the Purist is great. It weighs a ton, nice to look at (I totally dig the elegance of purely functional and simple), and sounds marvelous. I'm no golden ear, that's for sure. I just know what I like. I doubt I can hear all the suble nuances that people [say they] hear. That's not meant to be a dig. And I'm not saying all cables sound the same, or all gear is the same, etc. I just think that when you get to a certain level of quality, it all sounds pretty damn good to my ears. Sure, if you're llistening to something that you bought from Good Guys, it's probably going to sound like ass. However, [to my ears] good kit is good kit and it becomes hard for me to discern differences.
Also, my ear retention is probably poor. I try to switch the cables out as fast as I can, but I swear it's just about damn near impossible for me recall subtle differences between passages of music without taking notes. Maybe this is normal. Who knows.
On to my notes.
On Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing, track 2 is I Love You. It opens with some seriously low bass notes. I mean way low. The kind that sets the cat's ears back and gets them scooting from the room. Sarah's voice on track 5, Do What You Have To, is velvety and oh-so smooth.
Radiohead's Ok Computer has some great production, too. Track 11, Lucky, has excellent detail on the cymbals. Thom's voice really soars; the emotion is his voice never fails to give me goosebumps.
Mapleshade has some of the better sonics for redbook CDs, and Kendra Shank's disc is no exception. Her voice and Larry Willlis' piano are marvelously recorded--full of rich luster and detail. You are in the room with them!
Blah, blah, blah. How does the Purist compare? It's excellent. That's about as succinct as I can be. When I get the space to set up a dedicated two-channel system, I will buy the Purist without thinking twice. All the detail is there. Grain free. I listened exclusively on gain setting 1, which I understand to be essentially pass through. I did try for a second or two of the other gain settings and heard nothing to complain about (no differences really, just louder--again, those ears of mine).
Tomorrow I'll clean some vinyl and spin some LPs. I have a Technics SL-1200 MK5 SE, Groovemaster II AE cart, and a Modwright Monolithic PS-1 phono stage.
I'm going to enjoy the rest of the week I have with the Purist. I want to thank Curt for the opportunity to audition this excellent preamp. How cool is it to participate in something like this. I might be lucky to borrow a piece from an LA audio store for a few days, but a week? No way.
Alright, enough of my blather. Back to the boss tunage!
