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Esoteric C03 vs. ASP-1000. As mentioned already, in its day the Japanese demanded €10'000. Many years later, the Polish deck wants half. That's decisive. What's more, both have very similar socketry. Also, they both offer three-stage variable gain. Where the C03 goes beyond are creature features. Think alphanumerical display, nameable inputs and defeatable i/o. Minus these niceties however, it would be a functional draw between direct competitors. Finally, the AbysSound runs a front-to-back true balanced circuit. Esoteric's XLR bracket a single-ended gain stage and volume control.

If we were to call the Esoteric's sound old money—genteel, refined, conservative and with great depth and poise—the AbysSound would be the more freshly minted money. This was embodied as projecting more upfront, wearing bolder louder colours and showing less expansive space in the rear. It's appropriate to distill from that a sense of greater urgency, tension and vivaciousness to contrast against the C03's more Zen-like calm. Once we jump off our antropomorphically high horse to question just what might give rise to such subjective impressions, we'd stick to audiophile-approved terms like great timbre articulation, strong projection power and good saturation. We'd also note an illuminated lively top end with which to follow wispy decay trails to their delayed expiry inside recorded ambiance. This treble energy contributed to a fresh vital sound with very developed upper harmonics. That's another way of saying that the ASP-1000 gave good tone to flip the preconception that only valved decks do.


Nagra Jazz vs. ASP-1000. Lest you thought that was a casual throwaway comment, I had an actual valved deck on hand for exactly that and related inspections. If your notions of tube sound still reference certain legacy examples, you should know that modern valve preamps from Nagra or Octave for example compete with or exceed transistor equivalents on bandwidth, low output impedance and SN/R.


What remains of identifiable tube contributions tends to occur in the textural realm of how transients versus decays are handled. On this count, it's fair to add that tube preamps on par with top transistor decks tend to be costlier to execute than their solid-state competitors; and that if high feedback became the main problem solver, it can dry out the very textures which might make the valve specimens desirable in the first place. Against this prelude, should one really expect demonstrative differences between the Swiss and Polish machines?


Let's rewind for some anecdotal interest. My friend Dan had just borrowed the Jazz to see how it might interface with his new Elrog 300B twin-chassis monos from Thomas Mayer. One of his comparator preamps was the fully balanced transformer passive from Audio Music (previously StereoKnight). With 100dB Voxativ Dué or Rethm Saadhana 3 speakers, key to him are low or scaleable gain for usefully wide volume range; and absolutely zero noise. With the zero-gain option of the Nagra operating as pure buffer, what did Dan think of its contributions to his system aside from adding remote control over the TVC? On pure transparency, a proper passive is very hard to beat after all whilst on raw drive and constant impedance, it is quite easily.

With my Bent Audio Tap-X's optical encoder on the fritz and Vinnie Rossi's LIO with Slageformer TVC not yet dispatched, this would be my closest data on a purely passive comparator. Dan: "I don't have an easy or straightforward answer but will give it one try. Imagine a beautiful well-educated young woman who took a shower, put on a bikini, then started graciously dancing on a tropical beach, her impeccable hair flowing and her diamond earrings shining in the breeze. Not far away is her twin sister. She slept on the beach overnight. She just woke up to start stretching. She gradually changes her naked body into a ritualistic ancient rhythmic dance. I'm sure you know which one was which."


Dan's imagery points at the type of groomed perfection which might feel just a bit airbrushed. The real thing is wilder and more unpredictable. It's not uncommon for valve gear to find itself criticized for the former. That falls under pleasing colourations. On one hand, those colourations make everything sound prettier. On the other hand, they also make it all sound more alike. Dan had a bit more on his perceptions.
 
"Some like it 'raw'. Seriously, the Jazz is a superb bit of audio jewelry, vastly superior when it comes to functionality, quality, looks etc. Perhaps less elegant, the passive to my ears recreates the primitive juice of some vocal recordings a bit better. When we talk Mahler or classical music in general, I voted Nagra 9 out of 10 times." This is a reminder. Beyond a certain quality level which deals with technical competence, a component choice is always about personality traits. Buyers must really know what they want to weigh the innate consequences which any choice will entail. Whether Dan would go with the passive or tube deck, he'd know that one was the more direct and immediate on simpler fare, the other better at sorting out and scaling complex stuff.