Very Soon!Lovely. Now to post pictures of the newly acquired amp and the Quads.
Trying it out with the Evos right now.
Somehow, the pairing is far from stellar. And that's surprising since I thought the distinct treble on the CXA81 would add some character to the rather safe treble and some dynamic punch to the warm and laidback nature of the Evos.
My initial gripe with the Evo + Marantz pairing was that it was too much of a good thing i.e. a warm amplifier with a warm speaker lacked the getup and go needed during certain tracks.
However, while the warmth has been toned down by the CXA81 as it is ever so slightly on the cooler side, the Evos are still lacking in dynamics and the treble sounds a bit more prominent but not necessarily nicer.
Out of curiosity, when i switched the speaker cables to the DAC Silverstreak, the result was a rather shrill and screechy higher frequencies which i couldn't listen to for too long. Never thought I'd ever say that about the Evos. At first, I thought it was my imagination because when i powered the KEF Q350s through the Silverstreak, they sounded snappy, detailed, and remained smooth throughout on the same tracks without every being harsh. To confirm, I switched back to the Mogami cables and that surely reigned in the hot top end which resulted from the silverstreak+evo combination.
To my ears so far, the Evo 4.2 sound better with the Marantz PM6006 and SR6013 than the CXA81 so far.
Next on the list is to introduce a tube buffer and gauge the results. Fingers crossed!
Last edited:
… GT1030 taking charge of duties till then.
