Congrats @joeinid for your purchase! Thank you so much. It has been a while since I had the 225 in my system but with the high gain of that amp, it was finicky to match a proper preamp. Honestly, the best preamp for that amp was the Dartzeel NHB-18NS, dead quiet, low gain, and wonderfully sweet. No one in their right mind would use that combo because of the price mismatch, but we are not "normal". Another great preamp, rather I should say passive, was built for me by Richard Becker of AUM Acoustics. He was able to tailor the piece to my taste. Other preamps recommended are low gain, eg. 0-6db gain, like the Primaluna preamp work extremely well, based on friends recommendations. I was able to get the 225 to sing extremely well. Out of the box, the Job INTegrated is such a great package, no tweaking necessary. Sure it performs best fed by a digital signal because the RCA "analog" inputs are converted to digital and back to analog. Not a concern for me because of the way I intend to use it. The Job INTegrated, I think, works so well because it is tightly integrated, meaning the preamp/amp/dac work as one. No gain mismatch to worry about. No additional cables necessary, no additional pieces to worry about matching and wondering if they will work together properly. The sound of the Job INTegrated has a slight sweetness that typical solid state does not. It has a big sound stage, tremendous separation, wonderful vocals that are clearly heard that are right there in front of you. Bass is supremely articulate and when called upon, delivers powerfully. Image depth is surprising for solid state. You’d swear that this "system" cost 10X what you paid. For $1699 delivered, you can not only taste, but actually own an "audiophile" system that delivers in spades. As long as your speakers are not monsters to drive and are reasonably efficient, you are golden. The Job INTegrated is killer. |
@jond, yes I did sell it. It still is a giant killer IMO. The only reason I sold it is because my speakers are a bit bright and the INT, as wonderful and "warm" as it is, in the end was still too much of a good thing. Rather than open a whole new can of worms with shopping for new speakers, worrying about selling mine, etc, I chose to keep the speakers and get a new amp. I just didn’t want to roll those dice. |
