Excellent review. And what did the Ekstatik replace and how does it compare?Out of the box it already plays well, but after 35 to 50 h it is about played in and definitely gives pleasure.
It possesses an almost irrepressible joy of playing pop/rock especially from the 80s is a lot of fun, the arrangement of the sound engineers is reproduced wonderfully without the music falling apart. The complexity can be grasped at any time. Everything plays together without disintegrating into an unpleasant analytics. I would compare it to a fabric woven in a sophisticated pattern. It does not disintegrate into warp and weft threads, but remains a coherent fabric that unfolds a sculptural effect.
Classical music appears light-footed and elegant. Strings sound wonderfully stress-free and yet filigree and powerful, but above all clean and distortion-free. Small ensembles are reproduced intimately. As a listener, you take part in the familiar interplay.
It is impressive how a sound is created, sustained and fades away again. Without any compression effects, the sound image always remains open and audible. Individual musical voices are brought out in a wonderful way and can be heard separately, without the sensuality of the sound being lost. context of their playing is lost. On the contrary, it is precisely through this precision that the musical reproduction gains a new depth and intelligibility.
The sound seems three-dimensional and detaches itself from the loudspeakers. A bas-relief becomes a sculpture. I mean this in a figurative sense, since spatiality is not important to me, I can assign the sound to a musician. The individual musician becomes more tangible and can be experienced as part of the whole.
The system plays in a finely graduated dynamic and seems very sovereign. It never seems strained or stressful, but also never boring or soft, always lively and at the height of the action. Fine differentiations in the beat, which were not so obvious before, now result in a new understanding of the complexity of what is happening in the music.
It's all great! Or?
Not quite, in the low bass it seems restless and bloated. That disturbs the overall impression. Especially more modern recordings, which are mixed a bit richer in the bass, almost slay you.
Although the accompaniment and the main voice can be followed at any time, the hierarchy between them is missing. They always play at eye level. This is irritating because changes and dialogues between voices are not always clear.
The timbres just seem a little too garish.
One loses a little of the joy of listening to music.
And is the VTA correct? For example, Lyras sit lower by design--if that's what you replaced. Your hearing might be sensitive to this.