A little update. Well, we did some listening today, it was quite enlightening. Setup was a new Planar 3 / Elys 2 into the Rega Brio, into Quad Z4s. I wanted the most revealing speakers for the purpose of evaluating the amp. First record on was John McLaughlin, the B side of My Goals Beyond. The bass skipped along reasonably well, deep enough, fairly solid, nothing too out of order. Top end seemed reasonable. Slightly sweet, easy on the ear, a little harsh when turned up. Midband was where the real problems started. No real separation or placing of instruments and vast amounts of missing detail and texture like a veil over the heart of this delicate work. Switch to David Sylvian's "Brilliant Trees" album, "The Ink in The Well". Sylvian's voice is robbed of much of its tonality and texture in what is otherwise a pretty sparse mix. Next up, Peter Gabriel's Passion soundtrack, track 3 "Of These Hope". The track starts with a rolling cacophony of instruments which should pull beautifully into their respective strands as the bass and drums come in. Not on the Brio they don't. The whole midband is almost mush as the track comes on song, regardless of listening volume. So the plan to shoe in a Brio is most definitely not cutting it. I was disappointed to say the least. The GF was deeply unimpressed in less than 20 seconds too.
Next thing to try was the Rega Elex R. Immediately and obviously a huge improvement in midrange detail. The three aforementioned albums back on the turntable, the midband was immediately more detailed, more able to define the things that where going on. So I'm taking an Elex R home at the weekend for a listen in my system. However, it is not all plain sailing for the Elex R. Most definitely is hugely superior to the Brio, the price vs performance difference renders the Brio irrelevant IMO.We worked our way through quite a few tracks with the Elex R and the music was enjoyable. Maybe it was the Quads, maybe my memory is playing tricks, but the musicality of this amp, the way it works the midrange and conveys the music, it all just seems to be much more cluttered, lacking in life, imaging and vibrancy, when compared to the A1. The GF reckoned the same. We'll give it a go in our system and see what happens, but realistically, I'm thinking more than ever, that rebuilding the A1 is going to give me a much more pleasing sound.
The Rega Planar 3 turntable (the new one) is an odd beast. Yes, it pushes pace into the music and delivers detail. However, Rega make much of keeping the plinth light and rigid. Now low mass does equal less preservation of vibration, but also reduces inertia and jeeezus, does it pick up on airborne vibration at moderate to high listening levels. The opening track of Courtney Pine's "Within the Realms of Our Dreams" was feeding back horrendously. A finger on the plinth showed why, the thing was buzzing away like a drum skin. Now the listening room had the turntable very close to the Z4s but I've never heard anything like it before. I am considering a new Planar 3, but this has me worried. One of these is coming home with me at the weekend too where it will be located well away from my speakers (which convey far more weight and punch than the Quads).
The plan appears to be changing at the moment. Most likely path is rebuilt A1 and spend some money upgrading my front end instead.
