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Frisell’s lean guitar lines were brilliantly tracked, fleet footed, feathery and imbued with an involving inner tension. Percussive garnishes by way of tambourine or shaker weren’t just somehow there but elemental musical accents even during denser passages. Likewise for Robert Wyatt’s rhythmically charged "Blues in Bob Minor" from his 1997 release Shleep. It crackled with such energy and love of play when piped through today’s Bochum combo that I questioned whether I’d previously heard this fluffy and loose rather than thunderous groove over my Thiels with such a compelling vibe. Naturally this included resolution. Micro detail and microdynamic finesse are near bedfellows after all. Even so the term resolution seemed nearly profane when applied to the magical teamwork between Audionet PRE1 G3, EPS and the two AMPs.

So often this term suggests a subtraction of musical satisfaction by way of analytical bean counting. And no question that in matters of raw magnification power the Audionet kit was amongst the keenest I’ve yet hosted. Descriptors like 'softening', 'rounding over' or 'prettification' were related to it only by way of taboos. Yet these weren’t crass listening tools by which to dissect the music. It’s certainly a near given that highly resolving hifi even amidst dense sonic melée will distinguish the harmonically rich traits of a snare drum from those of a tom. It'll separate out friskily struck chords of an acoustic guitar as individual events rather than monolithic sonic clumps. Ditto for the powdered dust, purity and lucidity of softly feathered long decaying cymbals as they appear toward the end of "Blues in Bob Minor". When it comes to the realism of a small cough however which grabs us involuntarily with a near double take— and transmitting micro transients as believable counts amongst the virtues of top hifi and a declared strength of my Thiel CS3.7—the usual adjectives of 'precise' or 'clean' seem quite insufficient.

While it bordered on amateur psychology, I did feel compelled to think that the Audionet team wanted to spare us mental interpolation during listening sessions. No subconscious reality calculations would be the bumper sticker. My equally keen Accuphase P-5000 amp for example can veer into dry analysis or unemotional sterility. Endowed with the very same love of detail, the Audionet gear turned this focus into greater listenability however. It seemed to subtract hindrances and related efforts to overcome them. The upshot was more involvement.

While this was supported by superlative soundstaging whose localization focus, scaling, freedom from apparent acoustic origins and depth layering were beyond criticism (as well should be expected for this price), another special quality was harder to concretise. Individual events and instruments became particularly tangible and materially defined. This went beyond cleanly sorted, precisely localized and properly surrounded by air. It seemed a function of generally low distortion, very accurate phase coherence and high transient fidelity.

Accordingly challenged mastering jobs like Joy Division’s 1980 Closer with its "Means to an End" became appealing with far less stress even over my CS3.7s. And those certainly are not known to enhance and beautify. A very forward mixed aggressively dry and hissy hit-hat drilled directly into the brain without getting painful. Ian Curtis seemed strangely uninvolved and distanced—apparently very much by design—but avoided getting lean or desaturated. This generated just the properly disturbing effect. Bass drum and bass played in the pocket. The thin but penetrating guitar sound sawed and distorted to conjure a real live atmosphere while the projected ambiance suggested a small club or practice room. Most of all vocalist Ian Curtis became a physical experience.
On bass the above ought to have painted the picture already. To simply reiterate it was potent, elastic, articulate and supremely intelligible. Like the remainder of the audible spectrum, it walked that narrow but righteous path of unassailable neutrality. Enter extreme music like Skinny Puppy’s "Death" [1996, The Process] at happy-hour levels. To render something this loud and overloaded with heavy/fat guitar riffs neither too ponderous and thick nor too brutally hard whilst bass beats didn’t vanish inside the aural inferno but retained their rhythmic urgency… well, this became an art form that seemingly eludes most hifi components.