With the arrival of Pál Nagy's new icOn Pure, an op arose to exploit VC's resolution with still more upstream lucidity. The Pure is a magnetic volume control. Two custom multi-tapped autoformers switch with just three reed relays and clever microprocessor coding. That remote-controlled scheme gives 1dB-stepped click-less precision attenuation from -74dB to 0. It even adds +7dB of passive voltage gain past unity. Until its ultra-cap power supply arrived, its designer had provided me with a 6V block battery to drive his microprocessor. How would VC cotton to losing my boutique direct-heated triodes? By parlaying still more of music's innate tension with more dynamic bluster. Having installed the Elrog triodes specifically for SuperMon Mini's leaner personality, it turned out that bigger brother VC with well more thrice the cone surface didn't need their subtle textural ministrations. With the Pure in the chain, the sound gained spunk, firmed up further around the edges and fluctuated more vividly with even small voltage swings. It's as though rise times accelerated and startle factor sharpened. I liked that even better. Given my comments on VC's innately cooler and well-damped thus articulate profile, that's an important observation. It shows how lack of 'warmth' which in this context is really absence of typical micro blur and soft focus needn't mean bareness of threads which then requires class A pigment to fill. A first-rate passive-magnetic volume control coupled to a high-bandwidth DC-coupled class A/B current-feedback amp with sealed Meanwell SMPS were perfect candidates. Their self-reinforcing lucidity didn't mean thin, pale or whitish.

Just as true, you'd not call this warm. We must simply vacate binary mentality. That would automatically infer cool. Yet equating not warm with being cool is false math. Also, we acknowledge that like most of their kind, these AMT are rather more dynamic than classic silk domes. When cymbals crash, triangles ping, drone strings glitter, overtone rasp of a strained voice grits, a common damper on their intensity lifts. We hear more vigor, sparks, illumination, even cutting power. It's not for kiffed bathrobe dudes in slippers. It's not shy about attacks or laid back on microdynamics. It's about non-obscured detail and non-slurred enunciation. Those attributes present naturally drier than reverb-laden 'wet' transducers in deliberately talkative cabs.

Were we to swap VC's mid/woofers for the +10-year old Accuton versions of my Albedo Aptica, I'd predict real actual coolness from harmonic thinness. Of course since those earlier days of hard ceramic diaphragms from Germany, even harder membranes championed by Børresen and particularly Raidho have come a very long way. Here it's curious that despite very high sell prices, both Danish brands still work in HDF cabinets. It's Stenheim whose marriage of aluminium boxes and soft membranes most closely mirror VC. Hence my earlier assumption and show memories that between Magico, Stenheim and YG, VC will be closest to the Swiss. And to say it again, the difference factor of VC's tuning steps forward with rising SPL. As acoustic energies which attack enclosures from within multiply, we cross a line where more resonant boxes really start to 'talk' whilst the more inert constructions keep shtum. It's what I view as the prime selling point of heroic cabinet constructions. They hang tough at extreme SPL where lesser builds lose their lunch. Once bass systems seal to compound internal pressures which can't bleed out through common port tubes, intense SPL and low bandwidth ratchet up overkill construction mandates to avoid distortion. My simple question is, how loud do we listen? If we mostly or always remain below overloading a given enclosure, we need far less. Now pursuing an extremist heroic box will never breach its unfair advantage sufficiently to matter enough if at all. On said score I already heard VC's advantage at what for my smaller room were high-ish volumes. Just don't expect that lead to hold the same at whisper levels. This particular resolution advantage relies on resisting mechanical stress which troubles competitors.

At whisper levels other speakers might come on song sooner. It's at room levels and beyond where I thought VC stepped forward to truly be noted. To test that further, moving downstairs was next.