Soup's Adventures in Room Acoustics + Evolution Acoustics MM2

Yeah, after about a week with my A-3 this checks out. This sounds more capable at nuance/delicacy than how I remember the A-2. Not that it's a relaxed amp; it's still way livelier and more immediate-sounding than the Accuphase I just tried for a few months.

If I might be able to take a quick detour from Soup's thread to add some more context, one of the things that I didn't love about the A-2 was that, for my preferences, it didn't quite have enough sense of flow that lets me really connect with the music. That's why I sold it to try an Accuphase E-4000. The E-4000 is a bit rolled up top and has a 'liquid' japan-fi sound, which gave me the 'flow' I was looking for, but it was getting in the way of transparency/outright resolution. Going from the E-4000 to A-3 was like taking the window to the music out of the frame, like @sphinxvc put it when he heard the A-2 in my system after going through many other amps. The A-3 sounds more open, clear, vibrant, with sounds popping more out of the tapestry. It sounds easier to listen deeper into recordings because it sounds less smeared, overall, with better separation. Thankfully, it also has a better sense of flow than how I remember the A-2.

Hearing a rim shot, for example, on the Accu is one thing, but hearing it on the A-3 I can hear more 'around' the rim shot. The resonances of the snare drum, the air around the impact, the trailing decay of it. All more in focus and easier to follow. No parallel output devices (along with no negative feedback) seems to be the important for being able to render oodles of low level signals.

Bass definition, texture, tightness is much better on the A-3 vs E-4000. A big part of this is probably spiked feet vs the felt feet under the Accuphase. Kicks and bass lines much better delineated and clear. Also, I was recently reminded that all Soulnotes render quiet passages in an engaging way. It’s not lifeless or soft like some amps that need a certain level of volume to wake up.

I have to admit it took me about a day to get over the lack of pleasing liquid sheen the Accuphase brought to the table. Soulnote is a Japanese brand but doesn't have any Japan-Fi colorations. While it does have a smooth delivery, there's no real romantic sweetening or tonal tilting going on. It's also important to note that there's still probably too much liveliness for any Soulnote to be the tool for kicking your feet up to after a hard day and making sure you get a polite and relaxing aural massage from all genres of music. If a song has tension, drama, fury, etc. a Soulnote amp will give it to you.

 

Just checked out this amp. I like much about it but I hate the transformer placement, aiming the magnetic fields at the circuitry. I'm a fan of single pairs of output devices in a push pull arrangement. Efficient, no matching issues and often less bias required to connect the dots. Lots of goodness throughout.