Nenuphar was free from any whitening dilution and capable of truly lifelike acts which floated in spectacular space in every which direction. Its agile behavior created the feeling of enormous air being pushed my way which rendered even large orchestral plots as effortless as all else. It's up to a debate whether one would want such music even bigger, fleshier, dynamically wider and cast off far bigger cone surfaces. But to my ears and taste, Nenuphar nailed repertoire even this challenging. During my time spent with these Poles, there were only two things missing: lust for more scale and any signs of struggle or compression. In short, I was perfectly thrilled.

This might read like a do-it-all tale and to quite an extent it really was. Obvious linearity, acceleration, openness, bass reach and treble extension all indicated it. Still, it was a mature widebander and acted as one. Despite performance aspects which are normally off the table for the breed, Nenuphar sang inherently most expressive, charming and seasoned. How vivid and intimate it painted vocal lines, how sonorous its string plucks were and how explicit all this came off was the inescapably intoxicating part. It simply wasn't merciless in any way nor did its speed or directness strip music of its soul and harmonic content. Nenuphar handled this beyond similar products I've heard. It scored higher on both euphony and torque. In the world of amplifiers, it'd be a valve deck of top sophistication augmented with the bass shove of muscular class A/B transistors.

Once its performance with my Trilogy 925 had been mapped, I moved on to the two-piece set of FirstWatt F7 fronted by a Thöress DFP linestage. As expected, this netted audibly drier stiffness. Some vanished textural moisture and heft spelled out clear drawbacks. However, snap, bass reach and speed increased. This led to heightened openness and extra excitement with repertoire based on acoustic instruments. With these separates, Nenuphar kicked harder. That was the contribution of the German linestage mapped months ago. Still more insight, euphony and tangibility of the F7/DFP vs  925 was the most surprising turn of events.

Gestalt shifted in a clear direction for two distinctively different flavors. The 925's darker, milder and warmer approach contrasted with the two-piece team's even more insightful, effortless and open-throated attitude which in turn was also leaner, more lit up and spicy. The separates better fit low-level nocturnal auditions, the integrated scored more points on sophistication, vibrance and smooth organic touches. But disparities aside, Nenuphar shared its time between both amplifiers evenly. I didn't find that one out-edged the other significantly enough. Both provided joy served up in two distinctive ways.