A nice write up about the Aries Cerat Essentia power amplifiers by KlangLoft’s customer. “I am really impressed and did not imagine that the improvement is that enormous. Against Concero 25 it is a large increase in speed, transparency, detail resolution, bass extension, width, and depth of stage. In the beginning, I was a bit missing 845 magic, but I discovered I was just used to it. The Essentia is so much more like the real thing. I did do almost all the listening with Phono/Talos signature.”
“I just 3 min ago switched back to the Conceros … oh my god – that‘s tough. The Essentia have so much more color (!!!), naturalness, speed, punch, … . I tend to turn up the volume with Concero 25 to compensate for what is missing against Essentia. The sound is also more „fragile“ with Concero. With Essentia everything seems to be more full-bodied and solid. As if John Coltrane on the sax would have an extra 15 kilo. More gravitas of the instruments. The Essentia draw a full-colored picture, the Concero is a bit more of an aquarelle (a bit exaggerating). Some more examples of what I recognized the Essentia does very well:
– On „Fanfare for the common man“ the huge drums were powerful like never before. The bass seemed effortless and I didn‘t know the speaker could do this. At the beginning of the track, the sound is coming from way behind, very nice depth of the stage
– Original jazz pressings like „The Art of pepper“ or „Ray Brown/Soular Energy“ had an enormous „be there“, speed, and incredible transparency and detail without being tiring, on „mistreated and undefeated blues“ the drums had this nice „smack“ and the sax sounds a bit „nasty“ like it should, on „that‘s all“ the piano is really „sparkling“
– On „Mercy, Max Richter, Hillary Hahn“ the piano has a rock-solid base, you really can imagine the entire pianoforte in the room, the decay is wonderful, the violin is extremely natural and the vibrato is extremely realistic, you hear her move the violin
– On „Asturias/Suite Espangnola“ the attack is incredible and you can nicely hear the decay of the large drum membranes
– On „Kind of Blue/Miles Davis“ (45rpm, MFSL, one of best sounding records I have) it seems the sax and trumpet have more nuances in their sound, the stage is a bit wider, you can better pinpoint instruments, …
I listened with bias setting 30/100 and the two tubes in. Changed the percentage to 120 once. On feedback most of the time level 3 out of 4. I prefer to have the „control“ the feedback gives.
This is a really big thing! Congrats – a fantastic amp. Fascinating! I hope I can get one pair soon! 😜 next days and weeks will be tough – once you have heard this you don‘t get it out of your head.