Win / Win
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The other side of the coin is that voting in our lively space sometimes gets a bit spicier. La Thorn always sounds a bit fierce of course, play ‘Protection’ from Massive Attack, but still. With the Atoll as a preamplifier, you get a transparent ‘window’ on the music and errors in the recording are inexorably punished. Problems with reflections in our space become even more apparent. We’re working on it..
In addition, the preamp in the ST200 adds little extra coloring so the Audio Vectors miss a little foundation in the lower regions. This is not so much due to the preamplifier but rather to our speakers and our power amplifier. The QR1 is a bit limited in the layer and the Bryston has many qualities but a ‘bass-head’ it is not. That’s why we connect a set of Monitor Audio Silver 300. With this fine floorstander in the game we hear the best of both worlds. A pure signal from the Atoll combined with the fast, tight beats from the Bryston. Not wrong at all!
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If we look at our reference streamer, there are of course a number of things that stand out. Our NAD M50 has been on the counter for many years now, but still provides a lot of listening pleasure on a daily basis. He is a friendly player who, because of his friendly nature, makes a lot of recordings sound good to excellent. With the delicious Metrum Acoustics Onyx in the ranks, we got the NAD M50 to a very high level. In addition, the M50 can also rip and play CDs, a nice extra. As if that wasn’t enough, Roon and MQA are also possible.