this should be titled Northern Audio part trois...as we visited a few weeks back during a premiere showing of the new offerings from Rogue Audio by their marketing VP & a demo of Nordost cables from one of their senior marketing executives.
the Rogue equipment was nice with totally reasonable performance at the price.
iow, a good value to my ear for brand new equipment at the msrp.
the Nordost demo (performed on the same Rogue system) was quite surprising to us all, too.
but i will not address cables in this particulate post.
what we did hear on Saturday eve was the new VPI integrated
sadly, the demo was limited to an assortment of Harbeth speakers.
regardless of which pair we heard, the Harbeths just could not cut the mustard, with all musical selections coming out in plain, dull yellow.
even voices, which are considered one of the Harbeth's greatest strengths, did not compare to any of our reference systems when playing V familiar cuts from our Mapleshade's CD Various Artists: Mapleshade's Music Festival (Sampler)
we did not get a chance to evaluate the VPI's phono pre, either, which was a grand disappointment to me, also.
from what we could tell the VPI is a strong entry in its class.
a fairly sparse class with a nice feature-set that includes selectable triod & ultra linear output modes, a MM Phono Preamp, 3 sets of RCA inputs along with a tape loop, a tone control (for those who remember how to use one) & even a Headphone Amp.
i hope to hear this this unit again mated with speakers more to my personal preference along with some pure analog signal input, but Mark, the owner of NA, may not have it much longer based on the price & how it performed during this V limited demo.
the Rogue equipment was nice with totally reasonable performance at the price.
iow, a good value to my ear for brand new equipment at the msrp.
the Nordost demo (performed on the same Rogue system) was quite surprising to us all, too.
but i will not address cables in this particulate post.
what we did hear on Saturday eve was the new VPI integrated
sadly, the demo was limited to an assortment of Harbeth speakers.
regardless of which pair we heard, the Harbeths just could not cut the mustard, with all musical selections coming out in plain, dull yellow.
even voices, which are considered one of the Harbeth's greatest strengths, did not compare to any of our reference systems when playing V familiar cuts from our Mapleshade's CD Various Artists: Mapleshade's Music Festival (Sampler)
we did not get a chance to evaluate the VPI's phono pre, either, which was a grand disappointment to me, also.
from what we could tell the VPI is a strong entry in its class.
a fairly sparse class with a nice feature-set that includes selectable triod & ultra linear output modes, a MM Phono Preamp, 3 sets of RCA inputs along with a tape loop, a tone control (for those who remember how to use one) & even a Headphone Amp.
i hope to hear this this unit again mated with speakers more to my personal preference along with some pure analog signal input, but Mark, the owner of NA, may not have it much longer based on the price & how it performed during this V limited demo.
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