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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: RE: Considering Getting Accuphase DP-720 (Long) posted by fantja on April 27, 2015 at 20:04:16:
Here's an impression of the Aesthetix Romulus vs Accuphase DP-510; it isn't a formal evaluation as they were heard in different systems, so use the info with care and don't base any purchase decision on this.
However, the Astin Trew was present and forms a good benchmark.
The system with the Romulus was all Aesthetix with hybrid monobloc amps and large Dynaudio speakers; £100k's worth in all. My system is valve pre (using excellent 27 triodes) and SET amp (2 45's parallel per channel) with sensitive MTM speakers. Surprisingly similar sounds! Mine has better tonality, delicacy, emotion, the other has more bass and drive but similarities are greater than the differences. By the way, my DIY pre and phono stage were better than the Aesthetix equivalents.
I'll compare both the Romulus and Accuphase in turn to the AT3500 'benchmark':
In the Aesthetix system: The AT3500 sounded good, lovely vocals as ever; the Romulus brought out more details, especially in terms of instruments and musical threads - quite a lot more of these things! Vocals on the Romulus were slightly more resolved with similar tonality and slightly better quality overall. Very good - but not more spine tingly or 'delicious' or compelling than the AT.
Rhythms and instrumental 'musicality' were definitely better on the Romulus. CD used was 'Breathe with Me' by Athena - *highly* recommended if you like subtle female vocals.
In my system, the Accuphase gave very similar results in terms of differences over the AT3500; the extra details in terms of instruments and musical threads; but the Accuphase gave more improvements eg tonality, focus, definition of individual things. Similar results re rhythms and 'musicality', with Accuphase again giving a touch more improvement than the Romulus over the AT. But on vocals ... I'd say the Accuphase is delicious and compelling, definitely more so than the AT3500 and hence more so than the Romulus. There are extra subtleties, delicate touches, things about 'how' things are sung, tonality, and above all realism and transparency. I notice these things on both the main system and the headphone system, so I don't think it's just due to differences in the systems used for the demos.
IMO the Romulus is a really fine player; very few players at any price do female vocals better than the AT3500! I'm confident I prefer the Romulus to the MSB Analog even though I didn't try them head to head.
All in my personal, biased, opinion.
As I type, Clair Marlo 'Let it Go' is playing via Accuphase and headphones, all sounding gorgeous and track 'Let it Go' is so lively, rhythmic, enagaging, foot-tapping, just great (mentioned in case my concentration on vocals suggests it's lacking in this musicality ... it isn't!).
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Follow Ups
- Aesthetix - Mike C 16:05:40 04/28/15 (1)
- RE: Aesthetix - fantja 16:48:09 04/28/15 (0)
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