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Thrax Ares anyone?

freddiekaberman

freddiekaberman

pfm Member
Not such a regular poster, but a serial lurker and a straight-up Naim man of 30 years or so, with NDS/555/252/300 all DR, into Neat XL6. Having tweaked my rig, room, mains and network to within an inch of its life, I have realised that the sonic qualities I am looking for are starting to move outside of Naim's sound signature and rather than climbing into 500 series Naim, it's time to investigate some alternatives based on "super integrateds".

I have had some initial demos with the usual suspects of Vitus, Luxman and Gryphon, but these options are well documented all over the interweb and I won't repeat anything here. What was interesting was an encounter with the Thrax Ares with built in streaming dac, courtesy of Richard over at Lotus. As an alternative to the Vitus RD101 (also with built in streaming dac) in the same system, it offered a more transparent, open and even more detailed sound with excellent large-scale soundstaging and depth. I didn't want to like it, because the brand was unknown to me, but it was genuinely very impressive and more than worthy as an option to the Vitus, less expensive too. I have no affliliation with Lotus, nor have I reached any conclusions just yet, but would be interested if others had heard the Ares against other amps and had any thoughts?
 
My hifi dealer let me demo the incredible thrax enyo valve amp with some tannoy eaton legacy .it was just spellbinding .if they had been british i might have bought it .i didnt fancy sending it to bulgaria for repair
That was before lotus took on the brand

Exceptional hifi and would love to hear some more
 
Ah didnt know they had the enyo mark 2 .at about 13k new it hasnt gone up much since i tried the mark one in 2018 .pretty heavy though to lug about but probably one of the best amps i have ever tried
 
I could never understand Naim devotees moving over to Vitus since their flavour is so different, maybe completely fed up with the Naim sound and wanting to get away completely. Nice that you have enjoyed the Thrax, I did read an excellent review of the Ares and am sure it is excellent. I can recommend Audionet as a brand you may find enjoyable, would have loved to have had one of their amplifiers driving my Obelisks, more powerful and refined than my 135's, but had never heard of the brand at the time.
 
For my own part, I could happily live with the Naim sound for good and the ownership / ease of service / ease of upgrade path has been excellent over many years. In my case, I haven't swapped any black boxes in several years and instead became a bit of a tinkerer around all the ancilliaries, power, network, room acoustics, resonance control, cables to an extent. All these things have kept me occupied at the hobby level, and all have got me that bit closer to my music and enhanced my enjoyment. Now I think it's time for a change, but that is just for personal reasons rather than any impulsive box swapping. These big integrateds do sound very different and present huge soundstages which might attract some listeners as long as the musicality is there. The Thrax was hugely transparent and the Vitus had a more obvious sound signature, but still very nice. The Vitus in particular does seem very refined next to the Naim sound, and I can well understand some people might find it relatively unexciting, whilst others will sigh with relief as they relax into it. I guess it all comes down to personal tastes, rooms and partnering equipment, but it keeps the hobby interesting I think.
 
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