Soulution Amplifier
object
"A Solution to your ultimate system"
"To end the search"
"To stop wondering about solidstate or Tubes"
Before I took a chance and spent all of my (and my children’s) life savings to become an Audio dealer, I had many high-end pieces of equipment. For the amplification, I have gone through just about anything worthy of hunting down; long listening sessions and most of the time end up buying them. Names include Audio Note Ongaku, Krell Evolution Pre / Power, ASR Emitter II exclusive, Boulder Mono Blocks, Vitus SM 101, Dartzeel Pre / Power, the list goes on...
So as you can see, if I am a high end dealer, my own amplification will have to be rather special, or if you read between the lines, I have become a dealer because of that reason. Mad about music? Yes, I am... Some would say, Too mad!
The first time I heard Soulution, the set up was 720 Pre amplifier hooked up to a pair of 700 mono blocks. The source was a 740 CD player. The system was driving a pair of Gershman Acoustics Black Swan’s.
The room was very large, possibly one of the largest rooms at the show, yet the room was full with music. I couldn't remember exactly what was in my system at the time, all I remember was when I went back to my own system the sound was light and lifeless compared.
For the next few years I heard Soulution amps at various hifi shows, mainly with a pair of Magico, the sound always consistently satisfying. At the beginning of 2015 I decided to open Winters Audio. Soulution was top of the list of brands to stock, and since then I have yet to find anything that comes close to the Swiss High-end “marque”.
There are 2 levels from the Soulution production line. The 5 series which is the less expensive range, and the almighty 7 series which I have yet to hear anything better.
From the starting point of the 530 integrated, all the way to 725/701 Pre-Power combo, there is a trademark sound of Soulution all the way through. That trademark is "they have no sonic character". So what is the sound of Soulution? It is very difficult to describe! The cliché of ‘straight wire with gain’ has been used to death by Hifi magazine reviewers, but Only this time is perfectly suitable. The resolution of Soulution is nothing short of breathtaking, everything sounds so right and scarily real. The difference between the 5 series and the 7 series is the size of musical note. Think of it this way. If the music note on the 5 series is the size of a 1 pound coin then the musical note of 7 series would be the size of a 2 pound coin. This includes the air around every individual note, the size of soundstage, the density of decay. The 7 does everything simply better. But if you’ve never heard the 7 series, the 5 ispossibly, going to be the best amplification you will ever hear.
The 520 Pre / 511 Power amplifier sounds fast and Precise. There is no trace of distortion and when you turn the volume up, the sound just gets louder without any compression. The sound stage and imaging are first class - the speed breathtaking. Yes, I keep coming back to speed and only because it is this factor, that made Soulution better than any other amp I have ever heard. The 5 series has macro and micro dynamics of real life sound. Snap your fingers in front of your face while moving your hand from side to side and you will start to understand my message. The small differences in sound (each click of your fingers do sound different) and small movement in direction of music notes can all been tracked by Soulution. This makes any genre of music so compelling to listen to.
So what do you get when you spend even more? Replace 520 / 511 with 725 / 711 is like moving the concert venue from O2 Arena to the open air of Wembley Stadium! The first thing that comes to mind is how on earth can they lower the noise floor of the 5 series even further? The sound is now bigger, more layers, more width and more depth. If you like myself, like all types of music, but listen to Pink Floyd every week kinda of person, you will appreciate how clever the mixing engineer was; even all those year ago. The running footsteps on the track "On the Run" (Dark Side of the Moon) have more density to them, panning speed is incredible and you can position every step all the way from behind the speakers across the room to outside your room boundary. Staying with the same type of music, playing live recording, "Perfect Sense I & II" (Roger Waters In the flesh? Live) and you can really feel the atmosphere of that concert. The famous "Q Sound" recording does make sense more than I have heard previously. The thunder roll was so spectacular I just can not help but laugh out loud. The happiness within just came out..... I guess.
There are many high end amplifiers out there. Many are cheaper, and some are more expensive than Soulution; but let me tell you from my own experience, they do all have a house sound. I did love my old Krell Evolution series because of their Larger than Life character with chest pounding bass. The ASR Emitter II has a relatively low noise floor with imaging that floats out of the speakers. The big Vitus mono blocks was warm, smooth and relaxing. But for me, Soulution is the ultimate amplifier, it lets you hear everything on the input and makes it louder without any loss in detail or any change in sonic character.
Is it musical? Well my answer is quite simple. Soulution takes nothing away, so when the music signal is going through the input you will get nothing but music coming out, and if you do like listening to music as much as I do, there is nothing better.
OB
Partnering System:
Fidata Server
Soulution 560 and 760 DAC
CAD CAT / DAC (computer Audio Design)
Reed muse 3C Turntable with ikeda IT-407 tonearm and Ikeda Kai cartridge
NVO Phonostage
Soulution 750 Phonostage
Maxonic TW1300 andTW1900 Speakers
Boenicke W11 SE Speakers
Vertex AQ Aneto DC Blocker, Balance Taga distributor block, Hirez Solfonn interconnects and Hirez Roraima power cables
Ziro Audio Disclosure Speakers cable and Digital Lead.
