Reviews

6moons audio reviews: Supratek Cabernet "Dual"

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/supratek3/dualcabernet.html

  " The Supratek is the big one. All the usual things are better. But that's not it, really. The major thing is that the Supratek opens a new dimension of participatory intensity. "

" Rest assured that if a higher level of musical intensity is what you're after -- which includes improving all the usual attributes (but they're secondary to this!) -- the Supratek Cabernet Dual makes more of a difference than anything I've come across in I-can't-remember how long."

"  All the other preamps in-house are out of their depths by comparison. It's unfair to even go there. dirt. A premium valve preamp like the Supratek shifts your system into some kind of hyper drive - hyper not for speed but to indicate that you're not traveling in a linear fashion but entering an altogether different zone. All the familiar elements are in that zone but the colors are more intense, the lighting is more dramatic, the differences between small and large are bigger and, most importantly, how you feel about it all is similar to when you first fell in love. Intense. And new . "

Supratek Chardonnay

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/supratek/chardonnay.html

Supratek Sauvignon

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/supratek2/sauvignon.html

Mark Bucksath wrote this review for Ultimate Audio magazine- it was due to go in the next issue and then the mag went into oblivion! Oh well- Mark was kind enough to allow me to use it here. I was flattered by his review and I hope you enjoy his style of writing as much as I did. Mark has reviewed for TAS, Ultimate Audio and other reputable mags.

The Syrah has been replaced by the Chenin.

" The SUPRATEK Triode Syrah Preamplifier

Or subtitled, oh-so-subtly, “Now you have absolutely no excuses…”

OK, here’s my story, my audio story. You can call me a snob, but I don’t like junk, or even quasi-junk, and especially junk in emperor’s clothes. Like many of you, I’m way past the posturing gurus and pseudo-journals and, well, its all become more of an unmediated … quest. Oh, golly gee, I know, romantic idealist dreck, but there you have it.

So, my MO is a bit scattered these days, or so it would seem. As Myles Astor can attest (through clenched teeth) I’m not the most prolific writer around, but I have my reasons. I want to be drawn to a component, feel it in my gut, pulled towards the sublime.

About four months ago, I get a call from my friend Craig, no slouch when it comes to ears. “You’ve gotta see this,” he says. “Yea, yea,” I say, but Craig is no BS-er. I go to the Supratek Triode website (www.cantech.net.au/~supra) and spy something that feels right: Australian Michael “Mick” Maloney has designed an all-tube, hardwired beauty of a preamp. You can look at the picture and get a rough idea, but it goes deeper than that.

Maloney says of his work, “All of my products are truly handmade. While using printed circuit boards and hiring others to do the work results in greater short term profits, the result is simply a piece of electronics, rather than a musical instrument. A component made by a music lover (while listening to music) always sounds more real and alive than a factory produced article assembled by someone who would rather be somewhere else.”

Craig snarfs up a Syrah faster than you can say Audiophilicus neuroticus, we drop it in his system – Acoustat 1+1 electrostatic speakers, VTL 175 Signature mono amps with 805 output tubes, Well Tempered turntable – listen for a half hour in complete silence, turn to each other without a word and leave, our jaws on the floor. To be honest, though, it only took five minutes.

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef – Tom Robbins.

Being the audio-dog that I am, a month later the Syrah ensconced itself in the gorgeous Rix Rax stand – and looked like it was born there. Aesthetically, there is something about this piece: sensuous curves and top-mounted tubes that subtly glow in the dark like candles in a cathedral, yet grounded by the rich, Jara wood base; the organic juxtaposed against metal capturing the delicate light of the tubes and the deep solidity of the wood at once. A perfect integration of retro and modern; of masculine and feminine.

But in handling it – not just seeing a picture – there is something more. In rare instances, there can be something ineffable about a component’s feel, its tactile presence in your hands, in your eyes, in its use, that tells you about its construction. Somebody made this who loved it. As the big magazines get bigger, the medium sized companies want to, and we all say I-told-you-so about home theatre, this simple truth of invention should not be forgotten: the love of the inventor for beauty creates the instrument. Every component is a reflection of that desire.

Looking inside the separate, tube regulated, choked power supply, you find a HUGE transformer. Bigger than you would find in many amplifiers. In the main transformer-coupled chassis there exist many high quality parts like Solen caps and silver wire, but not a gaggle of designer names designed only to make you certain that you must, just must, be getting state-o-the-art. There are sixteen gold-plated RCA connectors on the back panel, but this is no parts list piece; the parts have been carefully selected, endlessly tuned against each other, all the way down to the New-Old-Stock (NOS) Toshiba input tubes. Its ultra-purist in philosophy, through and through, with no apologies. This is a mature creation.

Welcome to the Real World – Morpheus, from “The Matrix”

There are those exceedingly rare components that just sound “correct” in some deep, natural way – even from the other room, just as with live music. When I write – almost every night – I keep the stereo low in the next room and it is very hard to pull me away. With the Supratek, I got up numerous times simply to confirm the realism – and this was the line-stage, of which I always have lessened expectations. Bill Evans’ piano on Conversations with Myself (Verve V6-8526) prompts all of the audio buzz words – the sounds possessed detail in both initial transient, core harmonics and decay that was neither too warm nor too cool; no mechanical artifacts or murky euphonics and only a continuous, vibrant tonal palette against a silence that was neither too lush nor sterile in its absence, blah, blah, blah. And, that’s the frustration that arises when you attempt to describe this piece, because what it is doing, or not-doing, occurs somewhere below the place of words.

Yes, the action of the piano keys are fully revealed, the decay sweet and ethereal, but there is something more: you can hear – no, simply experience before even thinking about it – a relation between the fingers and the piano. There is a melodious relationship, an intra-relationship, if you will, only experienced when you are deeply into the music. Again, on Nanci Griffith’s charming 1988 live recording One Fair Summer Evening (MCAD 42255), her breath before the words is apparent, even moist, but at no time does one stand up from listening and say “Wow, listen to that integrated breath transient!” With the Syrah this is no longer a concern.

So many times our concerns over resolution create a sound field where the artists play as if in their own worlds, their individual performances disconnected from the whole. With the Syrah, the players are playing together, the sounds moving through air together. And this is part of the magic: the Syrah allows sounds to arise and intermingle like they do in real space. Call it intra-harmonic correctness, or whatever, but this trait is very rare in a stereo piece.

But, what caught me by surprise were the dynamics and pace. Normally, we associate beautiful liquidity with the trade-off of subtly compressed dynamics (or worse) and grudgingly accept that barter, or vacillate back to dynamic concerns and harmonic leanness, only to vacillate back again six months later. Not so with the Syrah. For the first time with an immensely musical preamp, I can play rock with gusto while maintaining all of the above traits. Frankly, I’m still getting used to this fact. Out came Los Lobos’ Kiko (WB 26786-2), the Doors’ L.A. Woman (Elektra 75011-2), Pretenders, Nirvana, spilling from the shelf and cranked. REM’s Chronic Town (-------) cut “Box Cars” – by the way, the only REM release and only good on vinyl – was downright raw, but, and here’s the shocker, spatially liquid. The bass was no longer punching out from the space on its own to impart that impact, but the snap and thud in my chest was wholly infused with air. Its fast and dynamic without ever falling into that trap of making you rise up to say, “Wow, that’s fast.” The dynamics never took over because they always remained integrated with the liquid space. The Syrah re-opened musical vistas for me.

And now, gentlemen, the dessert.

But I’ve saved the best for last: the phono stage. Shunt regulated, hand matched RIAA components, 6SN7 transformer coupled, lithium battery bias to the two 417A tubes to reduce microphonics – it makes the mind reel. Well, let me tell you, with only three little tubes – not rows of tubes to obtain gain at the expense of a progressive noise at the frequency extremes, nor solid state to obtain silent gain, but clearly at the expense of harmonic complexity – the Syrah is dead quiet with tons of gain (600 ohm output impedance). It never flinched with a .25 mv Monster Alpha Genesis MkII cartridge mounted to test it, and, frankly, I never could find the noise floor. And, here’s the kicker: it does this with the liquidity described above and holds firm as volume increases.

Bringing out audio geek-ness in its glory, I compared the Classic Records’ pressing of Offenbach: Gaite Parisienne (Classic LSC 1817) to an original mono version (RCA LM 1817, a 3S/3S pressing, if it matters). The Classic is all you’d expect: big sound staging, detail slightly loaded at the transient, dynamic, dynamic with the Syrah reveling in the sharp swing of contrasts. But the mono, clearly compressed, sounded like an orchestra playing together. Moreover, as you listened to the mono, the issue of dynamic compression faded in importance as the silent noise floor allowed the richer harmonics and nuanced details to eventually arise in your mind – if you only waited long enough to let yourself sink into the music. The mono transported you to a place that occurred in another time. With that said, detail in an objective sense was never lacking: Cat Stevens floated in air (Tea for the Tillerman, Mobile Fidelity MFQR 1-035), his fabric of voice everything that any SE adherent could envision – natural detail, so relaxed.

Men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after – Thoreau

During the listening, I commented to friends that the phono noise floor reminded me of the digital noise floor, yet it was clearly different. For a long while, the Syrah had me shaking my head. But what I was hearing was not only a noise floor that approached the digital rendition in terms of noise, but a “something” lent to both the phono and line stages beyond mere quietness, something so deep in the listening experience that it took me months to articulate.

With the Syrah – below the details, below the harmonics, below the perception of pressurized air – there exists a simulacrum of dimension, my dimension, our dimension. Some commentators have said it’s a “parallel dimension” that they seek, but that’s not it at all. The Syrah approximates our dimension to the point where, in the deepest spaces of our minds where we differentiate these existential cues, we intuit that our dimension and the music’s are congruent. It is not a parallel dimension out there and separate that we seek, but one that is here, in the present, in this very listening space. I kept getting up from my writing to confirm the “realism,” somewhat perplexed, not because the dimension was different, but because the dimensional rendition of the stereo melded with my own. I stood there thinking about it, but its truth had whispered away because I had experienced “it” in a place deep below my thoughts.

I will leave to ears more experienced than mine to determine if the phono stage is the best in objective terms, but concerning deep realism without the usual compromises in dynamics, harmonics, detail, etc., it is the best that I’ve heard, and by a comfortable margin. As a friend said, “It is what analog is supposed to be.”

I look at my notes in hopes of offering you more direction, but it is the same all the way down the page: tonally liquid, dynamically liquid, harmonically liquid, spatially liquid – and underlying this pervasive liquidity, a ground of dimensional congruency. When you factor in the lack of a need for an interconnect between the phono and line stage, the fact that the Syrah loved the $100 Discovery power cord over my $2000 Electraglide, the fact that the phono is a relative pittance over the line cost, which itself is ridiculously low, the fact that the Syrah never hiccup’d even once, I just want to take you all by the collective shoulders and shake that never-ending audio psycho-pathology right out of you! One of the best audio components that I’ve heard in the past fifteen years. Extraordinarily impressive.

Mark Bucksath

MSRP: $2500 (line only $2100).

Tube complement: 5881 (2), 6SN7 (2), 6GK5 (2), 5842 (2); and 5AR4 (1) on PS.