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This Copland disc really helped me hone into three characteristics of the VRE-1 which I explored further in subsequent sessions. The first one pertains to dynamics still. Passive preamplifiers suffer from a certain lack of dynamic drive compared to their active brethren. The VRE-1 is active but does not add or subtract anything dynamically. Whatever the source conveys is what the VRE-1 passes on. This talks to the perfect respect of timing and transients even beyond its dynamic capabilities. The second is an increased sense of resolution, detail and texture. That should make no sense. Adding a component where there was none should not add any detail yet that's undoubtedly what I heard over and over again. And finally, an even grander sense of space, an almost 'surround' feeling to the music that I can't attribute to anything other than an absolute respect of phase and timing like the best passives.

Going back to dynamics, the VRE-1 allowed me to get a great feel for the range of performance of the various sources I had on hand. Although I could easily tell differences between the Esoteric D05, the Musical Fidelity A5, the Acoustic Arts Player MkIII and the Acoustic Solid turntable until now, those differences were partly hidden by the overriding performance of the preamplifier sections of my integrated amplifiers.


With the VRE-1, the sources instead took charge to set the pace of the system. The A5 was clearly biased towards leading edge, attack and drive at the expense of decays while both D05 and turntable offered a much more balanced presentation, with the D05 extending decays even further and allowing micro details to float over an ultra-quiet background forever, contributing to a fantastic sense of being there. The D05 on the other hand never sounded as driven or dynamic as the A5 which put far more (too much?) emphasis on the rise of notes. The Accustic Arts I'll detail in a future review didn't sound like any other source on hand, being both powerful and physical but also reasonably fast and light on its feet.
On Renaud Garcia Fons' Entremundo, the differences were extreme. The A5 delivered a truly energized performance at the expense of absolute tonal exactitude and depth of stage (RGF's five-string bass and surrounding violins could turn a little harsh on some of the higher notes and sounded piled on top of each other). The P05/D05 remained more put together and slightly reserved while highlighting a depth of hidden information and bringing the instruments into the room. Heightened tonal hues and spatial cues through heightened resolution. The A5 appealed to my body with its raw passion and rush while the P05/D05 appealed to my love of perfectly crafted music. Whichever you prefer will be a matter of taste. Mine varied depending on the day and disc.
To me the most surprising of all findings during this review was the increase in resolution when comparing the D05 driving the amplifier directly vs. the VRE-1 used in-between. Adding a component in a chain should not increase resolution. I am the first one to believe in this principle. Yet the VRE-1 showed how adding a component may provide a chance to hear information previously obscured.

Mainly through hours of listening to vocal music did I finally come up with a possible explanation. I already mentioned on Edgar Meyer's straight bass how I could hear more of the wooden harmonics. I believe a similar effect was responsible for the overall increase in resolution. Particularly, I could hear much better control and precision in the upper bass and lower midrange than when the amplifier was driven direct. My speakers are Nomad Audio's RPD which use a sealed 10-inch woofer which reaches up to 250Hz. It was the upper output of this woofer which I think became a lot cleaner. Added precision to 250Hz (and possibly at higher frequencies too as I thought I heard something similar in tenor voices) seemed to provide a more stable foundation for very small details that were previously lost between more dominant sounds.


The effect was similar to going from a Canon 24-70 f:2.8 L zoom to a 50mm Leica prime. Both are perfectly fine lenses one would be hard pressed to criticize (I own both) yet the Leica always seems to bring out more texture from any scene photographed. Both pictures will have the same detail but the Leica defines the limit of details more precisely (interestingly, it has nothing to do with enhanced edge sharpness as provided by Photoshop), providing a clearly defined space for each detail. The Canon ever so slightly blurs neighboring details into each other instead. Hence details smaller than this blending zone get missed unless you look into those transitional zones at very high magnification. Something similar seems to happen with the VRE-1. By preventing any soft-blur zone, very small detail has a chance to be heard when they otherwise would be lost in the boundaries of higher-level sounds. That's quite unscientific an explanation but the closest I can present for what I heard.

What follows may seem even more counter-intuitive. As the resolution of voices through the VRE-1 was heightened, the distance between me and the singers closed down (logical) and the level of emotional connectivity increased (not so logical). We've been told so much that increased resolution kills emotion that most of us have eventually decided to believe this urban legend. I believe it comes from the confusion often made between resolution and transparency. Resolution is made up of individual sonic details. Routinely, higher resolution is attained by artificially showcasing details. More often than not, this ends up in sterility and harshness.


Transparency is altogether different. It means full respect for the source, its smallest tonal hues, its dynamics, its spatial clues, its details too (but preserving their relative importance, not artificially enhancing some over others). That's what the VRE-1 does. If the source is harsh, the VRE-1will let you know. If the source has the sweet and distortion-free treble of the Esoteric D05 for example, the VRE-1 will also preserve every last bit of this sweetness.


That's clearly where the VRE-1 departs from another preamplifier acclaimed for its transparency, the Adcom GFP750 designed by Nelson Pass. The Adcom is fully resolved, has drive, power and glorious tonal colors but also suffers from a level of treble distortion that goes partially unnoticed until directly compared to the VRE-1. This distortion spoils the overall performance of the system and is responsible for what many reviewers have called the "lively top end" of the GFP750. In a direct comparison, what may have passed for lively on its own proved to be just plain distortion.