I could never be a good reviewer. Aside from not having great writing skills, I don't know when to stop when it comes to moving cables, components, and tweaks, and this is especially true of the Aeris. The Wavelet, of course, adds another dimension, having a 'built-in' DAC, a preamp, and room correction. And then there's the cables. I have logged hundreds of hours of testing. My wife too, is not one to let anything she feels is amiss. But this is our journey, so here it goes.
The Wavelet II arrived, and so did the 3m Kubala Sosna balanced cable to do battle with the Pegasis and the Revelation. I won't go into details, but for our ears, the Revelation was the winner, giving the music more focus, clarity, and especially space, and my wife likes space. My wife noted a 'buzz', for lack of a better word, with some tracks. It bothered her ears. I didn't note that through my listening but did take notice that when music, and it does especially with rock music, everyone is playing at the same time, of course it sounds a bit busy. That's just normal for this former concertgoer. So I swapped my venerable Verastar XLR's for a pair of Allnic RCA's. That was surprising. For some reason, the Verrastars did not like the connection between the Wavelet and the Allnic integrated. The Allnic RCA removed this 'buzz' to an extent, and my wife was happier as was I (you know happy wife hap..). The system was sounding fine except for one nagging issue I had with the setup. I did not like the idea of having my Allnic Dac reprocessed through the Wavelet. Remember, I really liked the sound without the Wavelet. The Wavelet brings in room correction, which works well. It has tone controls and user-defined presets for various sound profiles, depending on what one is listening to. But it loses something too. It can't compete with the Allnic's DAC by itself. Around this time, I got word that my buddy had to give up his Usher Grand Tower speakers. They won't fit in his new home, so he offered them to us at a very good price. We know these speakers. The best speakers we had ever listened to, while listening to symphonies or classical music, I started thinking... Then arrived a Linear Tube Audio power supply for the Wavelet. Let it be known that this is an essential piece of gear when purchasing or owning the Wavelet. This added depth and clarity and widened the stage a bit, as expected. At the end of the day, it was the DH-Labs Revelations that won us over. Everywhere we put them, someone had cleaned a window into the music.
The Wavelet in full control.
Now that we have a proper power supply feeding the Wavelet, how might it sound if I removed the Allnic DAC and employed the Wavelet's built-in DAC all by itself? Not just that, I removed the Allnic T2000 30th integrated and replaced that with my BMC-S1, a 200WPC 100-lb German-bred amplifier. Upon first listen, it was somewhat laughable. The sheer amount of clarity and dynamics was startling. My wife loved it. The 'buzz' was gone, and space? Now we have an amazing amount of separation, and while I wouldn't say one was placing instruments in specific locations on the stage, they were clearly defined and occupied their own space. Percussion instruments rang distinctly, often well in front of the speakers. Again, my wife really loved what she was hearing and remarked that this is what she's been waiting for. My own feelings were somewhat doubtful at first. - continued
