In the last few years I have witnessed a very strong trend towards simplification in this great hobby of ours. People want far fewer boxes, less wires, less clutter and a system that just takes up a much smaller amount of real estate. The reason ? Well I suspect it’s partly because the way we live is fundamentally changing. In 2016 the lounge is for many, a veritable feast of entertainment, 50” plasmas, bluray collections, netflix, ipads, Xboxes, Call of Duty multiplayer; the age of the dedicated listening room is now no longer quite so appropriate .
The other major force at play is stratospheric house prices and the inevitable advance from large family home into the smaller ‘grandparent’ abode. Many of us now live in smaller houses or we have sold up the 4 bed detached and downsized in favour of a retirement area or in quite a few cases, a compact residence abroad. As for younger people, these days they are lucky even to be homeowners, let alone owning somewhere with a dedicated reception room reserved purely for audio replay.
This demand for cleaner, simpler systems has also meant a shift in the basic design topology of our equipment. Flagship Integrated amps that will outperform large and cumbersome pre powers are hugely popular right now, as are units where the linestage, preamp, phonostage, DAC, streamer and server are combined in as few boxes as possible. Many people also want compact floorstanders or standmounts which are ‘small room’ friendly yet still able to produce a grandiose soundstage that completely leaves the cabinet. Even the die-hard hobbyists who grew up in the classic age of British vacuum tube equipment are giving up on their gargantuan 50kg 240 Watt push pull monoblocks and moving over to highend solid state and a slightly higher central heating bill to compensate.
There is a small conundrum to all this of course. People want simpler rigs that are less conspicuous but at the same time, not many of them wish to experience a drop in performance. They want to give up their elaborate 4 box digital sources and their 3 box phono/step-up/linestage arrangements but seeing as they are spending money and probably realising a chunk of depreciation, they rightly want an overall upgrade in terms of the sound of the system and a few sonic treats to look forward to.
Well if I may be so bold, I’ve been doing all of this pretty successfully for the past 2-3 years mainly with Vitus Audio who are very much into combining boxes and creating products that have the current consumer trends at heart. The good news is that my latest flagship brand, Tidal Audio from Germany, is equally potent when it comes to simplification and also delivering a sound well beyond customer’s expectations. With this all in mind, I thought it might be useful to illustrate the Tidal approach a little further with specific reference to a longstanding Lotus customer.
John is typical of many of my customers. He adores his music, has been on a hifi journey most of his adult life and enjoys spending a good chunk of money on roughly a yearly basis. When he first came to me 4 years ago or so looking for improvement he was running the flagship Naim 500 series amplifiers with a high spec Linn LP12 turntable and a Wadia CD player into a set of Wilson Duettes. We initially helped his front end hugely with the addition of an Allnic H3000 phonostage which literally opened the floodgates in terms of information that was being fed into the amps vis a vis his existing Linn Urika. Some time after this we had a few more demos and were very close into getting John into a Vitus SS-102 power amplifier and an Allnic L5000 linestage but sadly logistics got in the way on that occasion and John ended up being tempted into a set of Dan D’Agostino Momentum pre and power at a different dealer.
No bother though, the next year he moved into a pair of wonderful Avalon Indra (the Duettes are a great speaker and need something that good to constitute an upgrade) and we also helped him get his cables sorted with a full complement of Entreq interconnects, a Silver Tellus grounding box and also a generous helping of Stillpoints for speakers and all equipment boxes. By this stage his system was operating at a very high level of performance and the well chosen accessories and wires had really made for a very open, even handed and well balanced setup.
My memory goes a little hazy but I think it was the year after that when John swapped his LP12 with me for a preloved SME20 and a Transfiguration Proteus cartridge and also added the Allnic HA3000 head amp for a further boost to the vinyl side of things. I think he sat with that system for quite some time and enjoyed it immensely. It represented the result of many years of successive investment and at new prices, probably approaching a £150,000 setup.
It wasn’t until the summer of this year when I heard from John again and he felt he wanted to improve the digital source to stack up better against his listening sessions with Vinyl. Initially we looked at changing his Wadia S7i for a Vitus Masterpiece DAC to really go for broke but John was also interested in the idea of reducing box count if possible and simplifying things a little. This is when we began to look at the Tidal option of the Preos linestage/phono/dac and Impulse Power amp and changing the bulk of the system in the process. As a Vinyl and Digital user and with a fairly heady set of amps already in his possession, the Tidal route seemed to make perfect sense. The Preos would replace no less than 6 existing boxes (albeit small shoebox ones in the case of the Allnic power supplies) and the number of interconnects would also fall down to just 3 and John could have some of his living room back. I also sourced a keenly priced preloved DCS Paganini transport for John to partner his Aurender W20 for spinning discs.
At first he was sceptical about £50,000 worth of Tidal even matching his existing system in terms of performance but I told him to trust me and think back to all the other changes we’d done and how I’d never let him down with any one thing I’d ever sold him, whether that be a simple set of metal feet or a wooden Entreq box full of minerals and crystals !
This then, is the beauty of the Tidal Preos + Impulse. Two boxes, just add a streamer and/or Turntable, two mains leads and one XLR interconnect. Extreme performance, clean inconspicuous Teutonic lines and build and craftsmanship that will undoubtedly induce conversations and subtle “wow” mouth shapes from passing visitors.
Did John waste time and money on his previous route with separate phonostages, head amps, power supplies, only to decide he didn’t eventually want that level of complexity and system dressing ? Absolutely not. Hifi is a journey and each tributary is there to be discovered and enjoyed and what we wish for one year may be something else the next. In addition, John got some very attractive trade in prices from me so his experience with Allnic’s best phono amplification for example, cost him very little over the 2 or 3 years that he enjoyed it.
Many people might assume that the life of a hifi dealer is all a bed of roses. The truth is like many professions it’s a lot of hard work, a lot of time spent on blind alleyways and no end of paperwork and logistical problems to solve. Customers like John who come back again and again for good service and who express their pleasure and gratitude make it all worthwhile. A short while after install and bedding in, he sent me the following 100% unsolicited note about his new setup:
“Hi Richard, well I overhauled the turntable and the phono lead was a faulty connection, well now we have a really spectacular system.
Stellar performance all round from TIDAL, never have I heard such combinations of clarity, depth and silky delivery, yet with loads of musical pace & excitement when appropriate, other systems do not convey the musical emotion compared to the TIDAL delivery. Imagery and separation is just mind blowing and I am coming from a background of very competent systems.
The analogue and digital are both equally accomplished showing that the Preos combination DAC, pre amp and phono stage really are complimentary to each other nothing is a weak link. Best system I have ever heard, even in specialized dealer listening rooms with £500k plus equipment. Thanks, John”
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