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?
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?