Today was a vey good day for me as I got to compare the sound of preamps from Audio Research, Shindo & Soulution. The findings were quite startling.
My first port of call was to Grahams, also known here as audiot servant. His system consists of macbook, Chord Qute dac, Shindo Aurieges-L preamp, Sanders Magtech amp, Magnepan 20.7 speakers. Remember here, we are comparing a preamp of around 3k to one with a rrp of 25k, but this is a character of sound comparison. Grahams system is very musical with lovely warmth & detail as he has been very deliberate with selecting isolation etc to enhance the quality of sound in his system so it wasn't that surprising to sit in the sweet spot to be bathed in the rich sound from those Maggies, a very lovely & enjoyable experience that I would have been happy with in my own home.
When the time came to swap preamps it was definitely a very surprising comparison in sound signatures of the two, they weren't that far removed from each other as most would think. Sure one was a tube preamp & the other solid state, but where the Shindo had that rich tube sound the Soulution also had some of it's midrange musicality going on too, but more refined without as much bloom. It was a comparison that quite frankly surprised both Graham & myself, this Soulution had some very good things going on to the point of it being a very surprising & enjoyable time with the s/s showing no harsh traits & as expected transforming the system to another level.
Our next move was to Bills hi-fi place to compare the Audio Research Reference 5SE to the Soulution 520. The system was macbook, Lampizator 4 dac, Audio Reference 5SE preamp,Audio Research Reference 150 amp, Magnepan 20.7 speakers. With this system I didn't think the 150 had enough juice to really grab the Maggies & comparing it to the Sanders Magtech amp get the best out of them with power in reserve, I also thought that after this realisation that it may have prevented the 5SE from really showing it's true nature. From there we swapped the two preamps & the Soulution again raised the bar, this time with the figures being around the 18k & 25k, a touch more even on the scale of comparison.The Soulution once again was a delightful sound that just seemed right & very easy to listen to. The three of us also knew something wasn't quite right, the Audio Research Reference gear should be sounding better than it was as each component had 180 hrs on them. To solve this problem Graham wanted the Maggies changed out with the DeVore Orangutans 0/96. Well that certainly worked & the true magic of the ARC gear just leapt out of those efficient speakers, what a lovely & musical bit of gear you ARC owners have.
With all said & done, we all agreed that the choice was easy. If you wanted tubes then it was ARC or Shindo, but if you wanted solid state the new Soulution 5 series has narrowed the gap between the 2 to such a small difference that either is totally liveable with.
This new preamp that Soulution has given us is truly an exceptional piece of gear that blurs the line between what we think is a sound trait of either type of preamp. Of one thing I am sure, this is a very good preamp with zero fatigue & a nature about it that very, very few, could fault! It gets my high five!
