Not wanting to restate Kevin’s comments, I’ll just try to add
to them; I’m certainly not as succinct as he is as you can see by the length of
this post. Before getting started with the listening, Kevin reminded us the
purpose behind this shoot-out was simply to compare the three pieces of
equipment and to do it in the spirit of fun and openness. And that’s just what
happened. Kevin was a truly great host and he had nothing but good to say about
ARC gear during the entire get together. He never tried to persuade us or nudge
us in any direction. As you can or may
have read earlier in the thread, he even mentioned how good the ARC integrated
sounded after being left on for a number of hours.
To start, Kevin used his IPhone to volume-match the three
integrateds. I believe everyone thought this was a very important step to put
all amps on an even playing field; secondly the same speaker wire and
interconnects were used for all demo purposes keeping that game-field level.
Kevin then proceeded to play the same Stevie Ray Vaughn track “unblinded” (Kevin’s
term for us seeing the cable swap) through each of the integrated amps. After
that first round, Kevin reminded us that someone in this thread asked that it
be performed double blind. So he obliged and got out his official “double blind
” (and thickness!) Cardboard boxes and put them in up as walls in front of the
amps for the next round. Everyone was asked to turn their heads away during the
cable swap to each amp. Once Kevin played the same SRV track through each of
the three integrateds, he asked for us to vote. Pretty simple – no
smoke-n-mirrors or fast switches here.
I was genuinely surprised at the tallying of the votes; more
voted for the less expensive Prima Luna integrated by a margin of two to one.
Before I share my pick, I can tell you straight up, at least for me, that all
three sounded more alike than dissimilar; better/worse, etc. For myself, I felt
that both the VSi75 and the DiaLogue Premium HP sounded pretty similar. At
times I felt that one was slightly better than the other. But really, there was
no clear winner for myself, still I had to pick a winner. I had no horse in
this race, I just voted based on sound. I did feel that the lower-priced DiaLogue
Premium was not quite as good as the other two, but there was no huge chasm
either, it was really quite small. So,
in the end I picked the DiaLogue Premium HP in the blind test. It was hard to
pick a winner, but then after Kevin disclosed the playing order, and taking
into consideration the struggle I had to pick a personal winner, I also felt
that the ARC integrated was very good as well. What got my vote was the DiaLogue
Premium HP seemed to have a bit more air at times and the bass was a bit more
controlled at times as well. But there was not a giant or even substantial
difference between the top two. I know I could live with either integrated very
happily. And yes, the HP wasn’t all that much better than its little brother
the DiaLogue Premium, but at the price increment between the two, you’d second
guess yourself every time you settled in to listen having purchased the
lower-priced integrated; the price difference is worth it in my opinion.
And if all this were not enough, Kevin then took us back to
his bench and took the covers off, so to speak, on both the HP and the VSi75
and explained what was going on inside. It was very interesting indeed. You could
see the quality in both pieces and readily see the design philosophies of each
company.
Finally, as a disclosure, I have no affiliation with Kevin
or Upscale Audio, I’ve never been to his retail establishment, nor do I own any
of the equipment listened to today or have any equipment made by those
respective companies. I simply attended because I wanted to hear for myself the
REAL difference between this gear; I was truly surprised at how little that
turned out to be. –Kevin, I just want to say thank you. You’ve really shown how
interested you are in good sound, so much so you took a part of your Saturday
(and spent hours before in the week setting up) to share that all with us. I
really appreciate that and I’m sure the other participants do to.
Tablejockey, your comments are appreciated and nice to have met you.
