Proprius impressions

This is a bit late in coming but work commitments and attention demanding SWMBO has delayed the writing of this. I originally borrowed the Proprius before xmas expecting a few days off over Christmas would allow some serious listening and side by side comparison with my current amplifiers. However a cold and work curtailed some of that so most of my listening was done with just the Proprius with an immediete listening session after I sent back the Props.

My current setup consists of:

Shearne Audio Phase 2 (integrated) and Phase 3 Anniversary amplifiers biamping my speakers.

The speakers are a pair of Audio Physic Yara (mk1) floor standers. (89db 4ohm)

The speaker cables are I think (I have lost the receipt) LFD Spiroflex 1 Biwire. They are a solid core cable not as flat/restrained as DNM and not bright.

When they arrived I disconnected the in place amplifiers and placed the Proprius on the rack to warm up, I decided to biwire rather than dig out the speaker links. An initial listen confirmed that there was a bit of warming up required a slightly thin sound with some splashy cymbals so I left it on with some Internet radio.

A colleague tells me that his multi thousand pound Naim System takes 2-3 weeks to return to normal when he comes back from holiday. The power supply upgrade for his system (discrete regulator modules) actually costs as much as a pair of Proprius!

I left it warming up for a week before I started my listening using my Marantz streamer but I rapidly came to the opinion the bass quality was not up to the job of reviewing the Proprius and certainly not up to the standard of my Gyrodec wired to my Revelation M so I switched all my listening to Vinyl. 

Perhaps the streamer needs an external dac upgrade.   

In my system/room my initial thoughts were that there was slightly less weight compared to my biamped system, not so much bass as presence (see later). Turning the wick up on Massive Attack’s Angel still shook the room anyway; so no lack of bass then, I soon adjusted to the perceived balance change too enjoy my listening sessions.

Overall there seemed to be a wide left to right soundstage and I am sure that I was picking out some more detail than previously noted. Since it was such a clean sound you did feel encouraged to turn it up and the sound is fatigue free so listening to multiple records wasn’t a chore. The actual soundstage seemed noticeably wider than my current system with sounds easily discernible outside the space between the speakers rather just in between them.

While listening to Sade’s Diamond Life SWMBO commented how good Diamond Life and Cherry Pie sounded lots of detail.

Holly Cole’s Night album sounded intimate, Massive Attack sinister and the Black Keys rocked.

Sending back the Proprius and plugging in my amplifiers revealed a bit of a shock, I seemed to have lost some treble down the back of the sofa.  Perhaps my perception of less weight mentioned earlier wasn’t strictly correct.

I can say that part of the perception is that Proprius seems to be a wider flatter bandwidth device with an clean and explicit treble (not in a bad ear shredding way) whereas with my amplifiers the treble is slightly recessed in comparison, maybe some sort of earlier treble roll off (it’s supposed to be a valve like topology)? I suppose this roll off of treble would mean the mid-range appear stronger whereas in fact it is probably more a case of I am used to the balance of system with my more recessed treble. 

I would still like to be able to hear a fully biamped Proprius system with the Aria driving them to confirm my thoughts about bass weight but I feel that this will be out of my price range for a while.

I will just add that my amplifiers are not dull and certainly outshone my previous amplifier a NAD 3030.

As I told Graham I am now looking at rearranging my system and cabling in the vain hope that all the improvements were down to the Lautus which would be a cheaper system upgrade.