Aesthetix Romulus Signature Upgrade Worth the $3,000 ?


Hi all,

I just purchased a "base" Aesthetix Romulus and am very happy with it. Has anyone had their unit upgraded to Signature or heard the base unit and Signature unit side by side? I am wondering what the sonic differences were and if you think it is a worthwhile upgrade. The vast majority of my units use is spinning cd's on a high resolution system. I would be particularly interested in the difference in dynamics and bass extension with the upgrade.

Thanks for looking!!

billandsol

Showing 3 responses by rrsclyde

A bit off topic here, but those of you that use a server with Windows OS with your Romulus--what version of the Streamlength driver are you using?  I'm still using the original v126s that I installed when I first got my Romulus, but have lately been encountering more and more driver issues (I'm running WS 2012 Essentials R2 as my OS). I can't seem to locate anything about the necessary drivers on the Aesthetix site (even though the manual points you to the site....), and haven't heard back from my query to Aesthetix (maybe due to CES). 

I pi would appreciate it if you could check and see what version driver you are using and let me know. 

Thsnks,

Randy
I have Mullard 10M 12AX7s and also 6JD8's--the 10M's are fantastic tubes but very pricey to get the real deal. 

I'm currently running Tesla (authentic old stock--beware there are many fakes) 803S's and the Mullard 10M 6JD8's. For my tastes, this is a great combo. 

At at some point I'll likely try some triple mica 5751's. 

As I stated in my first post in this thread, I tend to agree that the cost to upgrade the Romulus to Signature status is on the high side; however I bought my std unit used with the intent to do the upgrade since dsd playback capability was/is very important to me.  With the total cash outlay I have in my unit, given the price I paid for it used plus the upgrade cost, I'm more than happy with my total cost. 

IMHO Jim White is one of the best with respect to digital playback design. I am extremely disappointed that the Signature version still won't do dsd via its spdif inputs despite it still being marketed as having that capability!!  In correspondence with Jim a year ago about this issue he indicated that this feature would indeed become operational, but to my knowledge it is not (recent query to customer service about this remains unanswered). 

During our correspondence Jim asked what other features I'd like to see; I told him that adding I2S input would be great.