Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Tom's Gift to Creation

Eric, your post also rightfully compliments the M80s. I couldn't believe how much capability they had in them until I ran them with the A1400-8.

Please don't forget to do a 1 watt, double blind, randomized, prospective, placebo-controlled, and 0.1dB level-matched testing from the same seating position to verify your impressions,....just in case.

J

It's nice to see another person's thoughts on the amplifier. I'm also interested in what Mojo has to say.

I'm also curious when we're going to see more professional reviews. Isn't Audioholics supposed to be doing one? Also, Peter Aczel of The Audio Critic should get a review unit. Being such a revolutionary design, I'm sure he'd love to put it through its paces.

Great to hear that the A1400 has met all of your expectations, and thanks for your observations.

A few additional tid bits that I forgot yesterday.

1) Players' breathing noises are now less anoying. By sounding more realistic, they are more easily filtered out by my brain. Unexpected benifit.

2) Voice (the human instrument) is also greatly more natural sounding.

3) I also listened to about 10 minutes of the train station scene in TrueHD of Bourne Ultimatum. For that, it "sounded" better, but I would not have been able to say why. It's quite a difference from noticing the improved attack of a violon to picking up improved ash-hitting-an-ashtray background noise! So I'll have to get back to you on HT improvements (My music/HT ratio is terms of time is 40/60, but in terms of importance to me it's 98/2--max 97/3--so guess what has priority right now!)

Can't wait to finish this day and be back home! And I am taking tomorrow off!!!!

Nice report Eric. Its amazing how this amp brings out the detail and nuances in the music when driving a great pair of speakers. It ranks right up there with the finest amps on the market today.

Have you done SPL readings? What are your average SPL and peak SPL?

I am listening to the same volume as before (2db less, actually). When my neighbors are not there, volume calibrated such that fortissimo is between 98-102db (depends on recording), pianissimo is a little under 60db, and piano-forte/forte ("regular" volume) is around 85db.

I do not live in a church, so my needs for high-SPL is not that big. But gotta have the accuracy!

I did listen to some solo violin and then a minute or two of a string quartet at +10db (both SACDs), which was probably frequently hitting (sustain) 106db. String attacks are usually way higher than that, but they are hard to measure with cheap SPL meters meant for calibration.

I'm torn when I read these kind of reviews. Part of me want to believe it so that I can have the possiblility of a great upgrade somewhere waaaayyy down the road when I can afford it (or when the wife will let me...).

On the other hand I want to believe all the people who say that all amps sound the same as long as they aren't over-driven. It would be nice to know that I can keep buying inexpensive receivers and still get the best sound possible as long as the volume stays reasonable.

So whom to believe? Well, it's probably not a matter of "belief", I'm sure neither side is lying about what they think but dammit, somebody's gotta be wrong...... right?

I'm not trying to start the old fight again, I but I would love it if some of you Axiomites on each side of the debate could get together and do a blind a/b test and prove or disprove all of this.

I'm very happy for you, Eric. And I appreciate your review.

I am considering using this as my signature now...

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