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Then putting the discs into light rotation over an evening, all the soggy clichés about the 300B tube I had read in so many audio articles hit me all at once. Yes the highs were slightly recessed though spring water clear. Yes the mids were fleshier, carnal though not blowsy. Yes bass control was not exemplary but tonally superb. The total effect could only be described—consider my shame at recycling this hackneyed blurb—as beguiling. Oh, and the organic flow thang too.
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Three brief examples. The interplay between EmmyLou Harris’ and Daniel Lanois’ voice-blended live takes and overdubbing was perfect. It never let reality intrude into the carefully fabricated artifice. The relentless crescendos in the succeeding Folias were naturally heart pounding while the homespun recording simplicity of Gould’s Variations translated into Modernist austerity.
I won’t describe changes in the soundstage as my room reflections are of no interest to anyone [they'd be the same for either amp to make a specious argument - Ed] but to a forewarned ear they were both pronounced and pleasing. Still, the final feeling was that of the same amplifier playing in perceptibly diverse but equally entrancing registers.
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Let’s say we’ve got a nominal tie on all parameters. What about the price/value ratio? This is where pros go on the one hand this and on the other that, hem and haw, while I’ll blurt it right out. No one who can afford to spend €16.300 list for the 300p should consider scrimping on the extra €5.000 or so for the VPAs even taking into account the enticing, expensive (over €1.500 list) and notionally effective VFS base obligatorily included with the smaller amp. Anything the 300p can do the VPA monoblocks can do as well or better. Power doesn’t come into it though the 845s certainly do give you greater speaker choice.
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The qualifying factors here are ultimate spatial authority (quite curiously more evident on Gould’s mono takes) and bass mastery (courtesy of the VPAs’ twinned output transformers and obvious when playing the Warren tribute), with low-level purity being separate but equal. Ergonomic considerations hardly intrude apart from the fierce 845 tube heat, the monoblocks being bigger and heavier but vertical while controls are nearly identical and ideally thought out in both amps (which most definitely is not the case with the ungodly CDC spinner and attendant Nagra remote). So size does matter in the end it seems. Even so the 300p/Harbeth combo was the audio experience of this boomer’s lifetime and it did not come cheap.
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Packing: Exemplary if super sized.
Instructions: Well illustrated, clear and exhaustive.
Website: Substandard.
Personal interaction: Swiss, that is to say charmless but consistently impeccable.
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