For company, I had three big i.e. powerful transistor amps even though only the ModWright KWA-150 was also physically over dimensioned to ooze machismo. The other two were integrateds with bypass inputs (what used to be called main ins) to convert them into power amps: Hegel's H-100 from Norway and April Music's sleek new Ai500 from South Korea. The HL2.2 is a deceptively attractive and small time-aligned 1st-order floorstander around two ceramic Accuton drivers. The 5-inch mid/woofer loads into a transmission line strategically tapered in a 3:1 compression ratio to be tuned to 50Hz despite being shy of one meter short while multiple internal Helmholtz resonators linearize this Helmholine's action. The napoleonic HL2.2 thrives on power. It thus became the focus of my MRE-130 investigations. I could have used my Mark & Daniel Maximus Monitor and did on a tangent just to collect additional data but the Albedo proved the altogether more refined operator - as it should be for its steeper sticker.

At its most basic, the Octave monos display all the expected transistor virtues of control, bass crunch, dynamic scaling, impact and imperturbility. There's no added sweetness, no euphonic soft focus, no sag on either end of the frequency response. Neither is there the randomized intelligence of certain SETs which hone in on voices and solo instruments to peel them out from surrounding thickets in that peculiar relief of selected holography they're known for. There is however deep layering in the soundstage and capacious width.

This litany still mirrors superior transistors. The added aspect Octave's valves bring to the table is a combination of interrelated texture and action. The second is harder to describe. It's a certain viscosity that connects sounds with their surroundings instead of placing them in black blank space. Associated mental imagery deals in slow motion to show how a ball bouncing off concrete compresses to 'hug' the surface before it ricochets back and reforms. The audibility of the tone balls hugging space is the tubular action. As texture, it has more give or elasticity than the harder transistors. Mind you, this neither makes the -- good -- transistors hard nor the Octaves softies. It's simply where language fails. To circle the wagon, here's a few other ways of hinting at this quality. For one, it sounds more interesting. For another, it's as though the tone balls, rather than being shiny and polished glass marbles, had a finely textured surface like perhaps superfine suede. The image outline is still the image outline. Nothing goes blurry or fuzzy there. Figuratively speaking, this is about what's on the notes. It's about textures.

All this is very easy to hear and it makes quite the difference. The degree of difference naturally varied with whatever transistor amp I juxtaposed the Octaves against. Here's how it worked out specifically.