[jimtranr]

Thanks, Stephen.

I'd barely concluded a two-week project ripping the approximately 250 SACDs in my silver-disc collection to computer-stored DSF files when the Venom NR arrived. During the ripping cycle I'd spent more than a few hours listening to the results to make sure that all was going well (it was, and, with a few minor tweaks, everything came off without a hitch). So I included a few of the rips in my auditioning of the Venom. One of them was Leonard Bernstein's composer-conducted suite of themes from his film score for "On the Waterfront".

The initial 1961 LP release of the suite was produced by Howard Scott. My curmudgeonly take is that had Columbia had Scott produce more of their classical albums, the label's reputation would have fared much better than it has in subsequent evaluations of its "Golden Age" recordings. In short, the recording has sonic chops, and the SACD reissue didn't bury them. Bernstein's score ranges from the brash and clangy to the sublimely "I could've been a con..." tender. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) So there's a lot of runup from ppp to fff and back again several times over packed into very dense and dynamically "heavy" orchestration.

The bedroom system had acquitted itself quite well in outputting that rip's contents with the Venom NR's predecessor in the power-delivery chain. With the Venom in place, however, the presentation blossomed out more than subtly, and the rhythmic complexity Bernstein had micro-shoehorned into the score's passages revealed itself more eyebrow-elevating fully. So I'm not surprised at what you hear with your Dyns.

As an aside, I think that Grant has it right with his power-isolation-acoustic treatment trifecta.