Exlibris:
Thanks. Here is my attempt to answer your very difficult questions:
Does your First Sound linestage have excellent high frequency extension?
Yes, excellent high frequency extension with no rolloff that I can determine at the high end.
Does it "energize" your whole listening room and regularly project images well in front of the speaker plane when the recording calls for it?
It does energize the room and it delivers a very close, intimate soundstage. Everything is well-focused, but female vocals really stand out in my system, particularly with the right tubes and matching equipment. If I understand what "energize the room" means, this would be enhanced by transparency, image focus and dynamics, all of which the F.S. has a whole lot of. I would say image focus is somewhat dependent on the recording and which tubes you are using. Some tubes give a high degree of image focus and others are great for dynamics in the F.S.
When images "speak" does their voice have good "action", in other words, does their voice project from the image and wash over the listener? What I'm getting at is: Are you the listener "inside" the music or are you left "watching" the music as if watching ghosts in another dimension behind an invisible, yet impenitrable plane?
This is a tough question to answer. You should be a poet or a novelist, because your imagery is pretty graphic. I am not sure that I experience music in the way that you do, but I would say that unequivocally the F.S. brings me closest to the music in its immediacy and "aliveness" than other preamps which I have heard. I don't experience the music by being inside it, but on the best recordings, I hear a broad soundstage with vocalist and musical instruments each in their own well-defined space within that soundstage. With the First Sound, on the best recordings, the vocalist is projected a couple of feet in front of the other musicians. Vocals and brass, in paricular, have a "you are there" quality on the best recordings. As I sit 8-9 feet away fron the speakers, I experience the vocalist at the five to six feet away point, so it's all a very close-up, intimate presentation. This is not a rich, ambient, reverberant sounding piece of equipment. It is spectacular in what is revealed at close quarters with music and musicians, whether the music is subtle and reserved or spectacular and dynamic. That is the best that I can describe it.
Please check my other posts on preamps and the First Sound if you want other comments on the F.S.
Does anybody have a Wyetech Opal and live in NYC?
