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Surprisingly enough Esoteric's leading-edge behavior not only fell between ModWright and TruLife. It was closer to the former. This made the latter decidely more transistory than the Japanese solid statesman. In this context it meant too 'front heavy'. Whilst the C-03 couldn't match its deep-relief structuring of soundstage layers for that nearly crystalline acuteness, the shift deeper into music's sustain portion bled out the slightly aggressive element of the 6H30. Had Velissarios actually created the perfect counterpoint for his own zero feedback single-ended amps to deliberately inject transistor virtues of heightened speed and incisiveness? That seemed plausible. The obvious upshot then became that using sand amps already very fast and incisive on their own merit could or would add or even multiply these very qualities to excess.
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Following this thinking, should John Young's Acoustic Imagery Atsah monos based on Bruno Putzeys' Ncore 1200 module have contributed too much of their own Athena flavor where two wasn't company but unwelcome crowd? To my ears, absolutely. The temperature of this combo was too cool, textures were too lean, colors bright and desaturated. The ModWright meanwhile was perfect because it injected drama and voluptuousness over the politer more buttoned-up Esoteric. By now I felt confident that I'd pegged the Greek's overall gestalt to predict pay dirt for my next moves.
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Enter my KWA-100SE Mosfet amp, the natural-born mate to the 100-Series ModWright preamp. Because Gediminas Gaidelis' ported speakers are inherently warmer and bassier than my usual sealed and ribbon-tweeter'd Aries Cerat Gladius, here Athena turned tables on the previous exploits. During the climax of Titi Robin's signature track "Ton doux visage" [Anita!, Naïve], I had all his trademark wiry brilliance and plucked zingers intact as I know them from my stellar SIT1 monos and Bakoon current-mode amp. The ModWright duo on these speakers whose ports I'd plugged with tightly 'screwed-in' towels to accommodate my room erred just a bit on the languid side. I wanted more piss & vinegar. In her great wisdom Athena delivered exactly that rather than the proverbial milk & honey. |
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My many office equipment purchases over the years which on occasion cause my tax accountant raised eyebrows had paid off. I had sufficiently varied hardware in inventory to rotate the endless carousel of up and down and freeze it at a high point. Now I knew just where to go next - upstairs to the Boenicke B10 speaker system which serves as our small two-channel video rig.
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This €15.000/pr very elegant speaker in solid curved wood doesn't merely look different. With two opposing side-fire woofers running up to 1kHz before handing over to paralleled flat-diaphragm tweeters, the majority of the audible band disperses quasi omnipolar. It reflects multiple times before ever reaching the ear. Whilst the front-firing HF transducers lock in image localization more than full omnis, the general gestalt is ultra airy, spacious and as such somewhat amorphous compared to modern razor-sharp hifi standards. It's actually very much what life music sounds when the ambient field dominates over direct sound. These speakers also work noticeably better in a long-wall setup. This perhaps explains why despite smaller square footage this upstairs room beneath the sloping roof works a charm whilst the far more expansive short-wall layout downstairs is less congenial. It's exactly why these don't guest-star on occasion there.
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With a NuForce SE Edition modified Oppo BluRay deck as source, here the ModWright even with the lightning-y SIT2 stereo amp was too fuzzy and water color in its transitions. At the civilized levels de rigueur for night-time consumption with elderly townhouse neighbors, this setup always wanted for a blood thinner and accelerator to perform some proper ristretto action. In proper Greek coffee fashion—grind inside the cup for the finishing kick—here Athena finally was unconditionally superlative. This went well beyond turning tables. This was about making herself a permanent bed. My various attempts at solid-state preamplification had never generated this type of stage depth and jump factor before. I'd written off the former as a lack of ideal front wall distance. The 6H30 now proved me wrong. Without moving the speakers on their clever spring suspensions one millimeter, their very powerful staging potential—those flat TangBand tweeters have monstrous off-axis response!—finally kicked into high gear.
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For many reasons
I'd always viewed this system secondary to the downstairs setup where I do my work. Coincident with that mental ranking came acceptance that certain obvious and not so obvious aspects would always be second too. Not so. On tone which arguably is Sven Boenicke's great talent as speaker designer, this setup now had the edge. Poor choice of words that. Fullness without energetic drag would be far more accurate. The great bane of hifi is the unpredictability of system interactions. As this review's little journey inspired by Gerardo Núñez demonstrated, failure or mere partial success can turn spontaneous enthusiasm. It all depends on ancillary context. As is often the case, any component quite specialized in its virtues might perform more poorly than a more generalized unit if the right conditions aren't provided. When they are, a seemingly unreasonable leap forward like happened here can be the result.
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Giorgos Dalaras
Tragouda Kougioumtzi |
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Conclusion. To date Greek TruLife Audio has been primarily known for an extremist approach to hifi which reflected in exclusive stickers. Though its sticker has become far more mortally achievable than its immortal namesake, the Athena linestage in my experience remains somewhat extremist in performance. In many but not all ways she is the antithesis of tubular expectations and thus also their antidote. Slow, fuzzy, romantic, rolled off, gentle, soft, voluptuous, languid and patinated are utter anathema for the whole lot. Crystalline, lit up, incisive, quick, agile and penetrating are core strengths. What remains of tubular and general single-stage circuit expectations is the type of purity that's really nakedness or unconcealedness. Very low self noise, exploded bandwidth flat to 180kHz and output impedance of 48Ω are technical specs that have more in common with solid-state than most tube hifi circuits. Perhaps it then shouldn't surprise that many performance parameters have more in common with transistor circuits too. That it's not a self-absorbed engineering game of cloning solid-state with valves—which would ask why not use transistors in the first place—is to do with microdynamics and 3D soundstaging in the depth layering domain. |
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| In my book the ideal customer for the Athena is someone looking for a wide-bandwidth high-resolution transistor preamp who then wants to go even further with dynamic expressiveness and dimensional sculpting.
For the steep level of performance on tap, this ideal customer will make allowances for the somewhat rudimentary case work, limited cosmetic mojo and be confident enough to not require slick marketing, a fancy web presence and regular reviews in the glossies. With these conditions provided, the TruLife Audio Athena from Velissarios Georgiadis is an extremist insider's tip for very non-extremist coin. Given the particular hardships which the current financial EU crisis has caused for the Greeks, this would be a very timely conclusion and call to action indeed! |
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Yannis Parios
Dose mou ligaki ourano |
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