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Now let’s leave concepts at the door and get the Colorado brothers into the rack. First up will be the amplifier, then the CD player. Connections were XLR exclusively. This review followed the Fonel Renaissance whose performance with the Audionet AMP monos and other preamps was still firmly to mind. Now I was curious how downgrading from 5-figure luxo muscle to a 2x60-watt integrated would translate. It was no surprise that the Ayre developed noticeably less shove. It also pushed the virtual stage backwards a bit to eject the musical action less energetically out of my Thiel CS3.7. Relative to bass—say The Young Gods’ "Speed of Night" from 1995’s Only Heaven with its tight gauntlet of bass drum beats preferably sampled at high SPL—the Ayre produced less displacement and impulsiveness.


Since we’re in the midst of an unfair comparison, it’s equally interesting to determine where David just might perform at the same eye height (or perchance a tad higher even). On the former and whilst the uncompromised neutral Funk MTX Monitor/Audionet AMP combo extended obviously a tad lower, the Ayre AX-7e belonged to the same perfectly balanced group of amps which exhibit no preference for any specific band. Ditto soundstaging. Save for percussion, energetically handled guitar riffs or the occasional voice which the far costlier gear handled more directly and present for greater localization contrast whilst moving the stage action closer to the listener, given its price the AX-7e did a surprisingly fine job with spaciousness and a concrete though not mechanical but airy tactile plasticity of individual performers.


On spare inches for David over Goliath, my personal preferences detected a few extra but very welcome traits. Those were of an arguably more subtle nature but a direct A/B against Fonel’s €4.699 Emotion integrated amp will detail them out. For starters, on macrodynamics the 200wpc/8Ω German/Ukrainian slammed a bit harder with Can’s dry but driven "Halleluwah" from Tago Mago. It also dispatched—and this was more matter of taste or speaker matching than better or worse—a somewhat crisper wirier flair.
Very impressive meanwhile and not really audible over any of my on-hand competitors was how particularly defined, contrasted and simultaneously loose, elastic, organic and free of hardness the Ayre managed the admittedly rougher recording quality of Joy Division’s 1980 Closer album with "Isolation" and its whipper-snap drum beats with their snare-type longer decay trails; and the synth and percussive attacks which like e-guitar transients trigger microphones very steeply. While the Ayre AX-7e developed less attack impact with the snare noise to slap a little less hard than Fonel’s Emotion, it was noticeably purer, more relaxed, less hissy and less overlaid by gray. This made for a more realistic and pleasant listening impression.


It also assigned the usually overlooked guitar knocking an easier identifiable role. This wasn’t because the Ayre elevated its output. I simply sensed that its utterly calm very low-distortion behavior caused fundamentally clearer insight for a more sensible yet accurate encounter with fine detail.

Both amp and CD player arrive with a remote that can control the other machine.
Those wanting metal can opt for a €350 optional wand.
The big Xilinx chip works
the minimum-phase MP digital filter coefficients.


A real forté were tone colors, say with the soprano sax and piano of Øystein Sevåg’s "Hanging Gardens" from 1997’s Bridge so full of density, contrast, purity and convincing realness. This begs a few fundamental comments on timbre. Practically it's simply a function of overtone distribution which transforms raw sine waves into complex but instantly recognizable instruments or voices. On one hand the intrinsic tonality of a component impacts its presentation of tone colors directly. Lack of upper bass warmth will render an acoustic guitar too light and cold. Emphasized treble turns a hi-hat or cymbal too silvery or shrill. But timbre is further differentiated between otherwise equal tonal balance. Transient-focused ‘fast’ components which neglect the sustain/bloom portion will bleach out the tonal palette.


More subtle is the absence of self noise which creates undisturbed purity in which authentic tone colors can arise. Subliminal grizzle in the treble can subtract some bronze realism from cymbals or inject a greyish tinge on vocals. Color-strong components have better instrumental differentiation and feel fatter/fuller. Though the latter could suggest greater warmth, it’s really completely separate from elevated bass response.