"Promenade" from the ECM album Melos with pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos and cellist Anja Lechner is one of my go-to tracks for upper-harmonic effulgence. As a Manfred Eicher production, sonics are sterling. Where my own amps emphasize its enhanced airiness and shimmer as well as the initial bow/string interactions, the SIT5 dug deeper into the wooden sonorities of both instruments. This portrayed greater gravitas and scale. Yet embedded in it the signature triangle strikes packed the full scintillating textures rather than just the platinum initial flare. The singular Tokin hockey-puck transistors cast bigger images, the multi-paralleled phase-split lateral Exicon Mosfets separated them more sharply and condensed. On the latest Tord Gustavsen Trio production Seeing, my favourite track "Christ lag in Todesbanden" had greater dynamic swings with my quicker more powerful amps, the SIT5 were texturally more generous, wet and mightier on feeling centre-of-the-earth anchored. To overwrite for effect, if my amps put acceleration and road feel first, Nelson's amps prioritized the unperturbable feel of a big Merc isolating the cabin from all external disturbances no matter the Autobahn rush. One feels sportier, the other more majestic and intrinsically calm. That the latter describes the far smaller amps on the power meter could stump popular opinion.

Wael Jassar is one of my guilty pleasures. Why something that gives us true pleasure without hurting anyone should cause guilt is a very strange question of course. Audiophiles simply pull it as a get-outa-jail-free card when confessing to occasionally listening to recordings of dubious production values. Collection N°1 consists of minimalist vocal miniatures in a setting of piano, cello, clarinet and the occasional ney or qanun. The dreamy atmosphere is very water-colour so reverb laden. Often the mastering adds rings-of-Saturn excess trails around the voice like honey syrup drenching baklava's many layers. Regardless, it speaks to me deeply like Amr Diab's equivalent miniatures. On such fare my resident amps' more fastidious separating powers had the intelligibility advantage; for a price. By shining a brighter light on the reverb excess, they caused some pixilation of the voice which the NoCal guests avoided altogether. That's back at pulling the lame reviewer trick of invoking the truth x beauty polarity as though anyone but the recording and mastering engineers knew the truth of any given recording. Just so, it still makes the intended point. The tuning of the SIT5 makes more music more enjoyable. That pleasure and puritans rarely live at peace is none of their concern.

Jamshied Sharifi's One is very cinematic music; a quasi soundtrack if Dune were set in Africa not Arrakis. Like Hans ZImmer there are big drums punctuating soundscapes assembled from synths, acoustic instruments and tribal voices. With the SIT5 at happy hour on the SPL meter, the whole thing scaled up like a jungle frog's throat sack expands to unexpected proportions. This is a side effect of the aforementioned bloom. Requiring more juice than background levels, it kicks in like a turbo. It works like a substance expander; and I don't mean narcotics and expanded consciousness. It scales up material substance so musical weight goes up, fills out and grows. It just takes some boisterous material when the neighbours are out to really press that point home. This is traditionally why one pursues muscle amps. We're back at lower-power amps defying their Napoleonic stature and bigging up beyond where 'lesser' if apparently far more powerful amps won't go. Perhaps it's the combo of pure class A, no feedback and the Tokin's huge reserves? Do the 'why' and 'how' really matter? Other than fodder for arm-chair speculations, I say not.

In my view of FirstWatt the brand and the many circuit permutations Nelson has funneled through it, the SIT4 and now SIT5 have breached a higher octave. He's the same designer but with seriously more experience amassed since I reviewed his 1st SIT monos 13 years ago. He now plays with a 'new' if NOS part of unicorn specs. What's more, the implementation in the SIT5 has moved the prospective audience from FirstWatt to MoreWatts; from specialty to regular speakers. It's the first time those are invited to this catalogue. Owners of specialty speakers aren't left behind, either. They get to spend half on a SIT4 and snicker at those who require more low-impedance power to need/want the SIT5. It's a win/win across the board. As a reviewer expected to parse, peruse then proclaim, we're still left with a question. How do I rate them in the big picture? Or as The Audiophiliac puts it who already reviewed the SIT5, "so what did you really think, Steve?" In my diary of amplifier dates, the two best which eclipsed my own were the €23K/pr LinnenberG Georg-Friedrich Händel class A monos with SMPS; and the class AB €19.5K Electrocompaniet AV800M. At half their ask, the SIT5 eclipse my residents by what I think might be a similar margin albeit of different qualities. I've always sucked at math but even I can add this up. Let's get blue in the face and on screen.

The 5th SITuation. Transistors and tubes. Particularly when transformer-coupled, the latter clearly do things different. That's not been lost on some designers working either side of the fence. They felt that settling down somewhere between both camps in a mythical best-of-both-worlds middle would be a commendable goal. Today isn't about which side of this argument you come down on. Today is about suggesting that with the SIT5, Nelson Pass has managed to get closest to that middle when approached with transistors. It's not the same as approaching the same middle with tubes in rare David Berning fashion as popularized by Linear Tube Audio for another take on a sonic hybrid gestalt. As such I propose that the SIT5 are for transistor lovers who want a good helping of tubular bloom whilst staying loyal to solid-state bass control, S/NR and overall bandwidth. After 23 years on the beat, that's a quite unique achievement. Hence my 'unicorn' award caption. To use another big word with full deliberation behind it, I think that the FirstWatt SIT5 is a true masterpiece from a bona fide circuit-design genius. Or in the words of one Watsky, whoa, whoa, whoa…