I've had my AVA amp and preamp for a couple of months now, but only very recently have I been able to get the speaker tuning and tube selection just right for my room and system. Tonight I am enjoying the best reproduction of solo violin I have ever heard. I am in awe of how good a moderately priced system can sound (my whole system cost about what a pair of Wilson Sophia's cost). And it is built entirely from 3 vendors here on the forum (VMPS, AVA, and Bolder). Talk about bang for the $$, you guys all rule. So, Thank you.
Having said that, I want to point out something that is now obvious to me that I haven't experienced before I got the AVA Transcendance 7 and the FetValve 550ex. That is that the assumption that only tube gear really gets the emotion of a piece "right", that you get that emotional "rightness" at the expense (usually) of a bit of euphony and a somewhat 'rounded' sound. In other words tube amps and preamps give a beautiful, and smooth, rounded sound. Well, the AVA equipment gets that emotional truth across in spades, and is very smooth, but is not rounded off sounding in any way. With a lot of tube gear, you can end up with the violin sounding more like a viola, and even in the better tube gear, you don't quite get the incisiveness, the sharp attack that is needed for the reproduction to sound real. A lot of solid state gear gets this one area right, but the solid state equipment tends to miss out on the sweetness that is also part of the violin's character, and even worse tends to impart a fine (or not so fine in some cases) grain to the sound, which just doesn't exist in real life.
But what I'm hearing right now transcends that (sorry, couldn't pass it up
) Smooth with NO grain, emotionally right on, and the notes just flashing off the bow like super smooth crystal.
So how does it sound on a more complex instrument, like a piano? Well, listening the List's Piano Sonata earlier, I was struck how not only is each note properly delineated (including the resonance of the sounding board), but that each note "hung" in the air, and as each successive note was played, they also would "hang" in the air, and at the faster/more furious moments, there was literally a sea of notes suspended, a sea of different colors, tones, and moods, all floating and gently decaying. I've heard something close to this before with some very good tube equipment, but where the AVA really pulls away is that at the same time it gets the attack of each forcefully struck piano key dead on and keeps each strike seperated, so you hear a series of stacato discreet events each blending and sliding into a legato line.
Anyway, I'm enjoying my evening of music listening immensely and just want to say thanks for making something I can afford this good.
