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But first, the Horizon. Because the French men of Grand Cru Audio were overdue to pick up their review loaners, I still had 'em. Their d'Appolito 6" twin-ported 2-way floorstander with Peerless mid/woofers, ribbon tweeter and a very complex 38-junction crossover with progressive 6-24dB slopes behaves closer to a typical ceramic design. It acts very articulate, precise and transient sharp. In trade it's also somewhat dry, texturally less fluid and on tone colour stingier than its half-priced French Apertura Edena competitor which had already returned to Nantes. Because the Horizon's designer is Europe's biggest Goldmund dealer; and because he develops around and with their gear; you'd not expect a poor match. And it wasn't. Whilst not transposing the Horizon into the key of Edena to retain its own flavour, it didn't exaggerate it either. It wasn't my tone-wood sound. Clearly the transmission stuck more to the MDF cabs than the constantly energy-shedding Alpine spruce projects it out into room. There was less bloom, less textural fluidity. Yet the Horizon's tone had pit. It wasn't hollow. It was substantial and robust; more rigid than the Edena or Wave 40 but satisfying full and as such beyond common ceramic* sound.
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* The thinking reader sensitive to bad habits appreciates how this is nothing but convenient short-hand like 'vintage tube' sound. Much modern tube gear sounds anything but. As my enthusiasm for the Albedo Aptica might suggest, modern ceramics can combine terrific articulation with astonishing smoothness and elegance. Such short-hand isn't intended to perpetuate preconceptions though it could if not qualified. It's to call up in the reader's mind a predictably clear sonic flavour or archetype.

My Nagra Jazz had little if anything to add on soundstage layering where superior valve circuits are known to excel. The Pre2's bullet points of broad bandwidth and low noise retrieved the same amount of ambient micro data for a fetching illusion of a recorded acoustic that's other than your room's own. On good recordings it's easy to notice a super imposition of hall sound—real or synthesized with electronic reverb doesn't matter—behind and around the speakers. It's not merely phantom performers which your eyes deny but your ears place right there. It's also acoustic context which vanishes the moment you hit pause to again experience your room's own sound. On that subject the Pre2 was a high-magnification zoom on the little things and on the overlay of audible space when recorded..

Where the Nagra pulled ahead—or played it different if you prefer—was in the gestalt domain. That sounds like a fancy word. It's not. It merely points at the difference between a swaying willow in the breeze, all foliage-laden vertical branches moving about; and a photo of it which freezes that motion. Same scenery, same detail. With and without motion. In musical terms, one is more rigid and taut. The other is more elastic and fluid. Is that measurable? If so, I've not seen measurements which correlate. Yet it's easily heard. Describing it in terse scientific lingo could simply be harder than using more poetic imagery. No matter, the effect is real. We're back to gestalt. That's the domain where aside from its functional advantages, the Nagra asserted itself. If functionality beyond the Pre2 didn't matter, the extra Jazz of 'tangible intangibles' would come at a very serious price. Quite so. That's the high end. What's more, this difference only magnified on my soundkaos eggs. It was less evident on the white Horizon though still in effect. Hence the Nagra's trump plays out at different dosages depending on how transparent a transducer is to it. That's the high end too. Our short-hand for that is compatibility.

During his delivery visit, Grand Cru's Jefferson Torno had most fancied the sound of his speakers on my Nelson Pass SIT monos. Time to play musical chairs around the Pre2 and swap amps. Whilst this gave me significantly more volume control motion before I reached equivalent levels—no worries, the Job 225 was handled perfectly too—the main point was the instantly greater juiciness. It's what Living Voice auteur Kevin Scott calls succulence. Did that mean the Job 225 was a crap amp? Hardly. Did it mean that the SIT1 monos were superior? As one of the best amps from Nelson Pass whose resumé isn't exactly short on great amps? At $10'000/pr, at a mere 10 watts and if you had the right speakers? Yes. The Job 225 is quite the giant-tickling amp. If you stack the cards too badly against it, it's simply not a giant slayer. But what is?

The rather more interesting takeaway was two-fold. One, the Pre2/SIT1 combo was terrific on these speakers. Spend long on the amps and very short on the pre was a definitely valid scenario. Two, into this load and if you wanted to graft atop its root stock of ceramic exatitude and precision a richer more generous wetness and saturated tone, the Pre2/SIT1 duo was superior to the Jazz/Job 225. Seeing that the Job mates are priced the same but the Nagra is costlier than the FirstWatt amps, this shaved off €4'000. Obviously this type of math was still nuts—who'd replicate it?—but it confirmed an established observation. The amp/speaker coupling sonically dominates over your preamp choice. In this instance, saner math would go after the $5'000 SIT2 stereo amp of identical power specs; or the $3'500 F6 at 2.5 times the power (and 6 times so into 4 ohms) with very similar sonics. So that's what I did. Having previously run tight A/Bs between the SITs and F6, the result was as predicted: very close and on bass control slightly superior even. If you're keeping notes in a little black book of fortuitous mates, the Job Pre2 and FirstWatt F6 combo belongs!

For an experiment of a different sort, I leashed up Crayon Audio's CFA-1.2 integrated. I usually run its passive attenuator fully open/bypassed fronted by the Nagra Jazz. Now I could compare built-in passive to external active volume if you will - Crayon pure, Pre2+Crayon. The Crayon itself is a texturally more refined version of the Job 225. Think sonic peer graduated from the same class a bit sooner. If you're coming from Tonewood Central as I did, you'd expect and get some losses vis-à-vis the no-feedback single-stage class A presentation. That was intrinsic to the transducers holding sway and their ground.


The dominant change wasn't colour saturation. It was a shift of overall lighting or weighting. The Crayon solo was more light-filled, quicksilvery, lean and vivacious. But it wasn't paler, hence no loss of colour per se. With the Pre2 there was more gravitational pull. Weight and darkness increased. By itself the Austrian integrated teased out more fine detail. With the Job things became denser. This was by a few degrees, not a real makeover. But clearly the Pre2 didn't behave passive. Its contribution focused on tone mass. The addition of extra gain circuitry, connectors and cable sacrificed a bit of lucidity and transparency yet paid back in downward solidity. This was on firm footing with what one should expect of a well-implemented active line-level gain circuit: minimal resolution losses, enhancements in overall mass. This was spot-on behaviour. Additionally the Pre2 wasn't at all embarrassed by having to serve costlier ancillaries.