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RE: Calling Bob Neill (and others) who have heard Crimson cables, amps and preamps: what's up?

The return of relentless Mac the Frihed! Okay, should have known I’d have to face his music, was just hoping it wouldn’t be so soon. But I do appreciate the invitation and will try to respond as objectively as I can. I am still very new to this stuff so it’s probably the best time to talk about it here, before the trail marriage becomes permanent or dissolves. I am obviously much taken by this gear but I’m still listening with ears open.

To begin with I am a bigamist, not a serial monogamist. I now have three electronic wives where I had two before and am not disposed to choose among them. If I were persuaded by listening that one or two were better than the third, etc, I’d dump the odd one out. That’s stupid business but I’ve found I can’t love the one I’m with if I don’t love her. I tried that with Manley for a while. Dropping the Manley line was stupid business-wise because it’s a well known, appealing, and popular line. But you know how love is, and isn’t.

So what’s the deal with Crimson and where does it fit with Blue Circle and Audio Note? I don’t yet know what the deal is and you’re right, there’s precious little information about either the cable or gear anywhere. It’s from the UK. The gear is all solid state, though you wouldn’t know that from listening. I heard about it from John Geisen, a long time friend and fellow Audio Note dealer (who became a JMR dealer last year upon hearing my Blue Circle/JMR Offrande system at RMAF in 2010). He gently but firmly pushed their cable on me, arguing both sound and price. When I first heard it here last year (digital IC, IC’s, speaker cable) on my BC/JMR system, I thought it was a tad lite sounding. I shared this carp with John and Crimson importer Creston Funk of Austin (TX) Hi-Fi. Funk, the most patient and passionate man I’ve met in Audio, told me, after he heard what I was coming to Crimson cable from, in effect to give the cable time to ween me from the harmonically richer world of Audio Note cable (he’s been an AN dealer), so I could hear what Crimson cable is doing, not what it’s not doing. I did and eventually I did.

Audio Note cable never sounded harmonically rich to me before, it was simply my norm. It was what music sounds like, if perhaps a tad more beautiful than what I heard at concerts. But most things in audio seem to be relative and so after a couple of weeks rather than Crimson sounding lite, Audio Note cable (Lexus, Sogon, Sootto) began to sound rich. Objectively speaking, I don’t believe that Audio Note cable is especially rich and I don’t believe that Crimson is at all lite. A/B comparisons, as most of us know, tend to exaggerate differences. But I will say now, a couple of months later, that they are startlingly different. Both are convincing, when you’re in their worlds but their worlds are far apart. I exposed a recording engineer friend to the two of them in an A/B test at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest last October and she had the same problem, kept flipping back and forth. We were comparing Audio Note Pallas and Crimson as digital interconnects between an AN CDT 4 transport and Blue Circle BC501ob LOC dac. I think she ended up favoring the Crimson but it was close and the comparison unnerved her. She heard the differences clearly but couldn’t decide which was more right.

I try to describe on my site what I think the difference in these two approaches SOUNDS like, which is my usual ‘subjective’ approach. Hearing is what we’re about here and hearing, like tasting, is largely subjective. Crimson seems preeminently to capture the surface of instrumental/vocal sound: it sounds tactile as hell. It gets to the body of instruments and humans but not until it nails down that first wave of sound. As a result, bass is only there when there is bass. And there is not that sense of fullness, air impregnated with sound, that we get with Audio Note cable, especially copper Lexus. (Crimson cable is also copper.) That was what I missed at first. I felt there must be a lack of bass and body. Then an acoustic bass got plucked and my concern evaporated. Same with a full orchestra: what you hear through Crimson cable is not a wall of sound but 100 individual instruments. The blending goes on in your head, not out front. Audio Note electronics still prefer Audio Note cable to do that thing that Audio Note fans want; Crimson cable changes what Audio Note gear does, so I haven’t messed much with it much, yet. But Crimson cable does seem to make my Blue Circle/JMR systems leap ahead, open up, get more exciting.

I added Crimson electronics about a month ago -- strictly on trial -- and went through a version of the same experience, only this time the effects were considerably more dramatic. At one point I almost sent it back before it got me. Here it had to go up against mainly Blue Circle gear, as I tend to run the AN gear as an all-AN package. The Crimson gear magnifies the qualities of Crimson cable. It is faster, trimmer, clearer, and less fulsome than my hybrid Blue Circle gear. (Blue Circle owners: it actually reminds me of Gilbert’s highly capacitored, battery driven preamp, which I heard a year or so ago in its prototype form called “Pinky.”) Crimson gear is not as harmonically rich, full sounding, and ‘comforting’ as hybrid Blue Circle gear. Blue Circle is plenty clear, but Crimson seems clearer. You can’t do fulsome and clarity equally well. Not yet anyway. Crimson gear can make my Blue Circle BC3000II GZpz and BC 204KQ sound a bit full and rich; but the Blue Circle gear can make Crimson sound a bit lean. The Blue Circle is not overly rich -- I hate overly rich. Crimson is not lean -- leanness puts me on edge. Once you adjust to either presentation, they both sound quite natural. But moving back and forth can, as I say on my site, be destabilizing! I would say, to be more responsive to you, that Crimson gear is less romantic sounding than Blue Circle (which to my ears is not particularly romantic), less etherial sounding than Audio Note (which is not all that etherial). It’s not closer to Blue Circle than to Audio note really, though pressed I’d say it’s a little closer to my former Audio Note 2A3 based, much silvered Neiros than my BC3000/BC204-KQ (or Audio Note M6/P3 Silver Signature). It is startlingly transparent to my ears, though not bright, clinical, or assertive in the least, to wave off that concern.

I think that what is distinctive about Crimson, which is the reason it’s here, is that it fills a hole at my house. By not adding anything (warmth, soul, beauty, fullness, harmonic richness), by having no discernible character for us to latch onto, it seems to let instruments and voices have more character, which can sometimes seem like revelation. It can do both beautiful, raucous and everything in between. It enables what Peter Qvortrup calls” comparison by contrast.” Records and CD’s all sound different from each other. Actually, it does that better than Audio Note gear and cable do -- Audio Note adds a bit of beauty to everything! It is here because it introduces a new perspective, makes me more aware of what my other lines actually sound like, forces me to listen to them rather than just lean back into their worlds. No gear has done that since an Audience modified Sony CDP told me what my Naim CDS2 sounded like a decade or more ago. And, obviously far more important, it’s here because I’ve really come to like it. There is something addictive about it. How others will respond to it I have no idea. I plan to take it to Rock Mountain next October, if this is a decent year. And yes, do come visit in May. I need more ears on this stuff.





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