The Genus has Landed. A few words before I do a full review. I want to burn it in for 4 weeks and get used to the shockingly different presentation of this SET monster, though the 'baby' of the Aries Cerat stable, still pretty huge regardless. Serious iron indeed.
My Plinius SA-103 was a very good SS power amp, I ran it with a passive straight out of my Kassandra's 10v line out. I was a nice system, but I did notice it came 'on song' at higher levels of volume, and at medium and lower levels it sounded a bit flat and cold, synthetic.
Before I went SS on the power amp, I had an Audio Note (UK) M3 pre-amplifier and the Conquest SET 300B mono blocks with 4 x 300Bs and 'silver' OPTs. My Zingali's sounded a bit uncontrolled on those amp, nice mids but the bass was loose and tailed off below 60hz, the treble was also very soft and recessed. The OPTs used to get saturated real quick at decent listing levels as well, even though my Zingali's are 95dB and 6 ohms. So many of the SETs I have heard tended to be 'coloured' and an attempt to cheat the sound and try to avoid various weaknesses in the FR and dynamic envelope on anything less than insanely efficient speakers.
Anyway, I have had home demo's of other SETs and other SS amplifiers along the way. Then after selling my Audio Note DAC 5 and getting the Kassandra Ref II things really began to get exciting. A few long conversations with some Audio Note owners who have since moved to Aries Cerat gear, and I ordered the Genus.
The whole idea of the Genus was to give some of the Aries Cerat Outrageous dynamics and control of an over sized SETs but in a more manageable 60 kilo chassis. The Diana Forte SET power amplifier is the next one up and weighs in at 110 kilos. So the baby Genus is designed to retain as much of the higher models sonics as possible in a single and lighter chassis.
Before I powered up the amp I took of the top plate and it is packed with huge components. It has dual torroids stacked on the right side as opposed to a single unit. Left side are 3 huge capacitor banks, really huge. I have never seen anything this big in a domestic amplifier before. Then the 2 x OPTs are behind those, weighing 12 kilos each.
The preamplifier driver board is below the top plate right side, with 2 x E280Fs sticking up and bias adjust knobs. The LED readout is at the back of the top plate right side. The big 813 power tubes sit inside removable cages. In this case I prefer the cages on, it is part of the design look and is very nice IMO.
Bias adjust for the 813s is on the back plate and uses the same top LED readout as the E280Fs. I biased them a few times on the first day, and it is settled now, hasn't moved. Tweaking the bias changes the sound / timbre. It is also possible to roll the E280Fs which make a big difference as they are the driver tubes. I have RCA 813 1943 on the power tubes, the NOS tubes that come with the amplifier. They are a high voltage big bottle, more than twice the voltage of the 300B, more like a GM70 or 211.
The speaker binding posts are some really high quality units with nice rubber grips. And a 4 gang of RCA inputs and one pair XLRs. I believe you can ask this to be configured to suit on order.
Unusually we have a true headphone output for low or high setting. I am particularly interested in that, as I love my LCD4s.
Also unusually, there is a balance control on the remote! Cool, that is very useful for headphone use.
Another nice feature is a way to zero each input level, so you can equalise the sources, and even set one pair to then use the Genus in Power amp mode.
Sound
Bear in mind I will do a longer review, more in-depth later, but some words stand out.
1. Immediacy
It really kicks and takes me by surprise, live jazz for example, I nearly fell off my chair, no kidding. This is great stuff.
2. Soundstage
Wow, super 3D, both width and crucially depth as well, pin point placement. Stuff moving around in a 3D space beyond my back walls. There is a weird track by Chemical Brothers called 'The Private Phychedelic Reel' where the intro swirls around like a washing machine, amazing.
3. Treble
Finally more detail than I could imagine but with no harshness, edges, coldness or synthetics. No hiding behind a woolly capacitor here, we have real transparency and an open window. This is another level altogether. I imagine having no coupling capacitors in the signal path is like removing a film layer. You can only get away with that is the rest of the amp is up to the task, and I can tell you this one is, very much so.
4. Bass
Well here is the wobbly bit for most SETs I have tried to date. I think I would sum up what I have heard so far as a bass like a 'back up plan', a separate element that tries to keep up, but sadly is left flapping around in the background. Add to that the dreaded OPT core saturation and tube overload. I am very happy to report the bass on the Genus can go super low and has the control needed to keep up with the lightning fast mids of a good SET. It kicks and it has balls.
5. Midrange
I expected this to be great, and am not disappointed, it is really magical. I am trying to channel flick but keep letting stuff play through. Female vocals, strings, the usual suspects are all fantastic hear, it just lets me chill out and stop analysing the electronics. Which is how I want my audio system to sound.
Stavros, well done, a masterpiece of an amp you have here
For 15K Euros it is worth every penny. In fact it has wiped the floor with other amplifiers already costing over 100K and I won't say which ones. I'll let you work that one out.