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Between 300 and 500 hours something rather unsubtle happened. Suddenly I had too much bass. That and a concomitant fleshing out all around signaled that the Gold had finally arrived. Having really cheated with my biamp scenario to sweeten the Break-in Blues—though making the same power into 8 ohms, the bass amp delivers thrice the power of the treble amp into 4 ohms whilst having 5dB lower overall circuit gain—it was time to get serious and single. Out with the FirstWatt duo, in with the ModWright KWA 100SE.

Zodiac+ vs. Zodiac Gold, both with stock SMPS: Preventing a completely even comparison was the mini USB port on the Plus. I didn't have an exact equivalent for that to my usual Entreq Challenger 2010 leash. Here I used an upscale red WireWorld Starlight flat cable instead. Despite the deliberate psych setup of the preceding pages, the two Antelope converters did not sound identical (and the nature of these differences suggested that they went beyond USB cable offsets).

Take Javier Limón's Mujeres de Agua album to stand in for many others. Its twelve Flamenco tracks generously list a who's who of incendiary leading ladies from inside and outside the genre. Think Aynur, La Susi, Estrella Morente, Mariza, Carmen Linares, Buika, Montse Cortés, Sandra Carrasca, La Shica, Yasmin Levy, Eleftheria Arvanitaki and Genara Cortés. Then add surprise appearances by Turkish clarinet sensation Hüsnü Senlendiriçi and singer/oudist Dhafer Youssef. Cante jondo (deep Flamenco song) is about transmitting duende as though it were a descending Voudoun Lwa deity. Voices come unglued. They warble, break up, get hoarse, raspy and guttural. With the ladies this obviously happens in the higher registers. Put 1 + 1 together—i.e. account for typical hifi limitations—and you'll appreciate here the narrowness of walking the path of righteousness.


You want the wild rawness uncut. The emotional contact high shouldn't diminish. But you don't want reminders of artifice. Those come by way of stridency, hash and grain. If components play it safe and gloss over recorded edge, it creates a center fold photoshopped to death by plastic. If components mix in artificial grit, it creates fake pain or playback rust. Deciding on what's real vs artificial edge can be tricky. Here the Zodiac+ was clearly the edgier operator. At first glance this could have suggested truthier rawness. But it was also thinner and leaner. This wasn't by way of tonal balance shifts. It came from the inside out, from the domain of tone density. The Gold was smoother. But instead of rounding over edges it achieved this agreeable smoothness with greater harmonic fullness of tone. Recorded angularity, that fire/metal in the throat which gypsy singers prize over prettiness, wasn't impacted. There simply was more body fill. This observation was consistent across different genres and recordings. Could this be duplicated by adding Voltikus to Zodiac+?

Yes and no. The Voltikus-fitted Plus did gain in smoothness but simultaneously suffered reductions in bass slam/impact and general transient sharpness. I viewed it as an injection of warmth at the expense of grittiness. It thus became a matter of preference rather than clear-cut upgrade. Comparing Zodiac+/SMPS vs. Gold/Voltikus showed echoes thereof in the latter but more faintly so. Here the progress on density and mass outweighed the small backward step on bass striatedness and general wiriness. The upshot is a very significant maturation process from break-in. Its effects are larger in scope than the power supply upgrade. A break-in preview of sorts can be had by leashing the Voltikus to a virgin Gold. Yet a cooked Gold with SMPS outperforms the former in no uncertain terms.

The Voltikus contributions point at the bathroom scale. Put plainly, things gain weight. The side effect is a subjective reduction in speed or edge. That's exactly what's usually equated with tube-derived warmth aka analogue. Think of the SMPS as 'digital' then and the Voltikus as 'analogue'. Though it deals in deplorable generalities and preconceptions, it'll have your expectations properly calibrated. The more important issue is, don't judge the converter prematurely. Decide on your power supply of choice only after the machine has settled in. The 500 hours are no myth but frustrating and rewarding reality. Also true is that beyond its leathered-up feature set the Gold is sonically slightly superior to the Plus. I didn't expect it nor do I understand what makes it so but there it was to be noted and acknowledged.
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