PT's ranking takes into business orientation into account. The Da Vinci and Dalby are "highly" toxical stuff. Just like woman, but these are women that catch your soul even without make up or minimal makeup.
Tidal Prescenio has no makeup, not even minimal makeup. And if you know what you are listening and is perfectly aware of the background of the recording and the deficiencies of your room acoustics, I still rank the Tidal Prescenio is best of the best. But people will start attacking me that I belong to the "analytical" group. Whatever! I am able to enjoy music on my ipod during daytime as well.
The K10 was voted as the best product last year because the "you pay less for what it offers - and that is rarely seen in present day". The cost effectiveness quotient is extremely high. You can see how many K10 were sold and everyone is happy.
What PT highlighted up there are "cost no object" design. Evaluation criteria strips out the "price" angle. When the price factor is taken into the account, I believe the rank is the following:
I believe either the Takumi K10 or the Da Vinci Nifty should rank number 1 in terms of biggest bang for the buck preamp ever made giving ultra high end performance in most circumstances.
Trinity preamp certainly redefines what is called speed and slam attack, because of this, I rank it over my old Takumi K10. If we set the benchmark point at K10, Trinity would appear a bit clinical, on the contrary, K10 would appear slow from mid to low bass if Trinity is used as a reference. Both do everything extremely well but considering the tiny box of Trinity compared to the 'tanky' chasis of K10, my amusement on Trinity delivering such extraordinary performance drives me to believe the circuit design is really something out of the box! Is this an endless chase on infinity? I have no idea, but all these top class preamps are coming very very close each cannot genuinely have all edges over the other. It would leave to those capable hands to make each one of them shine out....
Yes, I did....cannot imagine Strauss belongs to any kind of horn speaker I have heard before! Trinity produces musical note like aerodynamically shaped bullet piercing through the air without any loss of energy and speed....k10 appears slow in this regard.
From the description of those big brothers, the alignment would be:
Transparent/Colorless
> Musical
Tidal Prescenio -> Trinity -> K-10 -> Da Vinci Nifty -> Da Vinci Virtu
.
Is it a correct understanding ?
Your can definitely think this way. But it is much more complicated than that. The Da Vinci Virtu mono is developed with the Strauss Master Reference speakers - this is the most tonally correct speakers in the world. It beats all other reference monitors in the world in Sony Studio. The Da Vinci Virtu series is definitely belong to the neutral camp nowadays, no more imparted warmth in the mid-range, fast rise time, excellent transient characteristics, and this is what makes better musicality. Tonal resolution is immense. If you are serious about vocal, test your electronics and speakers by mezzo soprano and soprano. Can you tell who is who? Sometimes it is not your fault but your speakers and electronics are incapable of differentiating certain range due to coloration. But damn it, audiophiles like coloration, right? Particularly in HK/China, coloration is important to get sales moving. Both Da Vinci and Dalby D7 are totally capable of differentiating soprano/mezzo soprano even at high pitch notes with varying energy intensity. There is no breakup there.
It is better to think of the categorization of top preamp by speed as opposed to resolution/musiclaity because they do not make any sense to me anymore. Resolution must not preclude musicality and vice versa.
The Da Vinci Gabriel Mark 2 turntable has won the Golden ear award from Absolue Sound for 4 straight years since 2009. Ot won again this year! No other turntables enjoy such sustainable accolates Ever! Da Vinci definitely makes history! The review of Virtu arm by Jonathan Valin says it is "cutting edge". That explains why we are constantly out of stock. Even the only Virtu arm resided in AE was sold because customers do not want to wait!
Comments
PT's ranking takes into business orientation into account. The Da Vinci and Dalby are "highly" toxical stuff. Just like woman, but these are women that catch your soul even without make up or minimal makeup.
Tidal Prescenio has no makeup, not even minimal makeup. And if you know what you are listening and is perfectly aware of the background of the recording and the deficiencies of your room acoustics, I still rank the Tidal Prescenio is best of the best. But people will start attacking me that I belong to the "analytical" group. Whatever! I am able to enjoy music on my ipod during daytime as well.
The K10 was voted as the best product last year because the "you pay less for what it offers - and that is rarely seen in present day". The cost effectiveness quotient is extremely high. You can see how many K10 were sold and everyone is happy.
What PT highlighted up there are "cost no object" design. Evaluation criteria strips out the "price" angle. When the price factor is taken into the account, I believe the rank is the following:
1. Trinity
2. Da Vinci Nifty
3. Takumi K10
Ray.
Trinity preamp certainly redefines what is called speed and slam attack, because of this, I rank it over my old Takumi K10. If we set the benchmark point at K10, Trinity would appear a bit clinical, on the contrary, K10 would appear slow from mid to low bass if Trinity is used as a reference. Both do everything extremely well but considering the tiny box of Trinity compared to the 'tanky' chasis of K10, my amusement on Trinity delivering such extraordinary performance drives me to believe the circuit design is really something out of the box! Is this an endless chase on infinity? I have no idea, but all these top class preamps are coming very very close each cannot genuinely have all edges over the other. It would leave to those capable hands to make each one of them shine out....
Marvel
Transparent/Colorless
> Musical
Tidal Prescenio -> Trinity -> K-10 -> Da Vinci Nifty -> Da Vinci Virtu
.
Is it a correct understanding ?
Your can definitely think this way. But it is much more complicated than that. The Da Vinci Virtu mono is developed with the Strauss Master Reference speakers - this is the most tonally correct speakers in the world. It beats all other reference monitors in the world in Sony Studio. The Da Vinci Virtu series is definitely belong to the neutral camp nowadays, no more imparted warmth in the mid-range, fast rise time, excellent transient characteristics, and this is what makes better musicality. Tonal resolution is immense. If you are serious about vocal, test your electronics and speakers by mezzo soprano and soprano. Can you tell who is who? Sometimes it is not your fault but your speakers and electronics are incapable of differentiating certain range due to coloration. But damn it, audiophiles like coloration, right? Particularly in HK/China, coloration is important to get sales moving. Both Da Vinci and Dalby D7 are totally capable of differentiating soprano/mezzo soprano even at high pitch notes with varying energy intensity. There is no breakup there.
It is better to think of the categorization of top preamp by speed as opposed to resolution/musiclaity because they do not make any sense to me anymore. Resolution must not preclude musicality and vice versa.
From a speed perspective, here is my judgment:
Trinity -> Da Vinci Virtu Mono -> Dalby D7 -> Tidal Prescenio -> Takumi K10 -> Nifty
This is by no means definitive as there are other evaluation parameters. But speed entails both tranient response at the micro level and macrodynamic.
In terms of sounstage resolution: It looks very different:
Dalby D7 -> Tidal Prescenio -> Trinity -> Da Vinci Virtu Mono -> Takumi K10 -> Nifty
Bravo to Peter Brem and Jolanda!