It’s not just that we could hear every single element in the mix of whatever we listened to. What does it sound like? It sounds like a gift from God. The sheer joy of realising what it did to our music collection, having to wait for it to heat up, sliding on the headphones knowing - knowing - that we were going to hear something special, was just a revelation. But this is one of the few pieces of gear which we were actually sneaking off to listen to on the weekends, or late at night. There’s a constant train of gear trundling in and out of our offices. We listen to a lot of audio equipment here at TMS. And there was no denying that soundstage transparency bettered that of any tube preamp I’ve auditioned under $5k. Bass response was spectacularly solid, extended, and pitch-perfect. And as it turned out, it was far from being a one-trick pony. That made the microZOTL2.0’s presentation visceral and involving, impossible to ignore. The range from soft to loud was negotiated with a world-class startle factor that exceeded the performance of the Audible Illusions 元A line preamp, and if memory serves me right, actually equaled the performance of the much-more-expensive Pass Labs XP-30 preamp in this regard. In this context I could only marvel at its explosive dynamics. This is not true with this amazing little amp. I had come to believe that in order to get certain of these qualities in an amp, I had to sacrifice the others.
Maybe the biggest surprise was its ability to portray tonal accuracy and purity with instruments and voices, and at the same time, it had the most detail, speed, and micro-dynamics of any amp I have ever heard in my system. The bass is rhythmic so that my system sounded very lifelike, but it didn’t add any extra warmth to the bass. Music just seemed to float effortlessly in space without ever seeming forced or strained. The Audio Beatnik ( Review #1 & Review #2 ) Get your ears on this one if you’re in the market for a really balanced tube amp. In the case of Linear Tube Audio’s MZ2 I think we have a real sweetspot product. The MZ2 isn’t cheap, but I feel that it represents an excellent piece of gear for the asking price, and it’s’ something I would contemplate purchasing if I were in the market for a tube amp at the price.įinds like this are rare in the tube world, where parts can be expensive and engineering tradeoffs abound – everyone is looking for that sweetspot of performance and price, and generally, only time, testing and listening will tell. Where the MicroZOTL excels is in its truthfulness and its value for the money. There are only a few amps I’ve heard that pull this off, and the ZOTL is the newest member of that list. I tend to like tube amps that lean to the neutral and fast side of things, but I still appreciate the liveliness and richness they bring. Linear Tube Audio has something quite special on their hands in my opinion.
0 kommentar(er)
