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Being utterly unfamiliar with the 7591A pentode Emillé had so specifically chosen for the Ara, I knew that a comparison to my 30-watt pentode-drive EL84 Kaivalya monos would turn into a useful personal education. While the Trafomatic amps are €5.500/pr and don't include a linestage or DAC, the purpose here wasn't a shootout but dégustation. I meant to sample sonic flavors. The Burson DAC with precision stepped attenuator doubled as volume control for the white amps while the Ara of course connected directly to the iMac via Entreq USB cord. The first album to spin was 21 Strings by Oregon's Al-Andalus ensemble. If you've fretted over a guaranteed gift for a finicky music lover, I've thus far booked a 100% hit rate with the strings. Everyone loves its music and the sound quality is sterling.
The EL84s manifested more spatial depth and recorded acoustics but also less physical mass. Their perspective aligned more to the 'we're there' credo and their top-end response was more modern and extended. The 7591s had the more burnished golden hue which imbued Charlie Bisharat's violin with viola undertones and Tarik Banzi's oud with more ravishment. While those attributes injected certain 300B attributes, they were far too robust to demonstrate any of their usual sweetness.
I deliberately mispoke just now. I can't with complete surety assign those qualities—or their full extent—to just the output tubes. From inference and the triangulation between converters, I'm inclined to accord Emillé's DAC a good part of responsiblity. At the very least it's rather counter-intuitive to associate this deeply saturated character to push/pull pentodes with negative feedback.
Be that as it may—only the designers know—the upshot is a surprising dose of 300B-reminiscent aroma wedded to far grippier potent bass and the lateral expansion one often gets from good push/pull circuits. This particular confluence of aspects ('deep triode' tone with analog density/mass which refuse to get slow or cloying) caused quickly growing enthusiasm. Without the expense or possible noise of designer triodes and with more power and drive, here was a fairly priced if big amplifier with all the necessary amenities to be a 21st-century proposition that could build bridges not just with the headfi and PC audio crowds but also between tube heads of otherwise opposing priorities.
