MonoBlock Review - ClarKit - ANK AudioKits Forum

MonoBlock Review

Posted by ClarKit (A) on January 30, 2008 at 13:27:55

I had to put fingers to keyboard!!. Recently I took a plunge & invested in AN/E's to be driven by my trusty tranny amp (iconoclastic, built on valve principals & with me for years; they had embarrassed many other tranny & valve amps at unsuspecting dealers during their time!!). Well shock!! the AN/E's driven by my tranny sounded WAY WAY better than I expected (yes this is a monoblock review!!) suddenly instruments & voice had a natural tone (piano wow!) - the only previous glimpse (alas only a glimpse) was with a pair of old Quad ELS (after 5 years they had to go forced out by my better half) that the tranny was designed to drive. Well I was now seriously worried I had on order an M3 and IE Mono Blocks. I had to have wasted my money.

I built a DAC2.1 then M3 and mono's. Could "home made" work at all? let alone produce high quality music?. Its a serious worry switching on home made kit for the first time !!!! but oh the satisfaction when it actually works. But then you listen and the sound - WOW the improvement was unbelievable. The speakers had previously a "fat" sound near to back walls & I was going to move them away. But all that changed with the mono's they took control & what I thought were room effects (my room is a truly bad shape) became almost irrelevant. The mono's control of the speakers is absolutely fantastic right through the range. I have heard some big macho transistor amps "bully" speakers around but this was different - the speakers and mono's work together to produce natural sounding music from high to low. The improvement in sound quality was a shock (yes jaw dropping)- I had never heard anything like this before. Everything highs, lows, imaging everything improved orders of magnitude. I recently got into Clutch in a big way (Peter Q's fault I visited him in Brighton) but they just did not sound right - dense music that just could not be unravelled (better in the car) until the mono's that is - they made a huge difference unravelling everything. I could go on but ..................

........ anyway why is it that many musicians are totally disinterested in hi-fi? enter my brother very gifted in the music department (unlike me) and COMPLETELY & UTTERLY disinterested in hi-fi in 35+ years of my hi-fi systems (which he always viewed with thinly disguised amusement). Many times we would end up in front of my system after a few pints talking, not listening. Last week we sat down in front of the AN/E's powered by the mono's - I tried to speak but he kept turning away to listen to the music. He turned round more than once to say "wow did you hear that?" referring to the real & natural sound of an instrument or a sound or voice or riff on a familiar album he was hearing for the first time - He rifled my LP collection going through LP after LP (& CD) through to the early hours. He is completely blown away by the sound - for the first time in 30+ years I have a system that produces a reasonable facsimile of musical instruments and make all hifi I had before irrelevant.

Thank you Peter Andy and Brian !!!!!!

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Topic - MonoBlock Review - ClarKit 13:27:55 01/30/08 (2)

Great review! - Rune 01:56:56 01/31/08 (1)

Forgot Andy - ClarKit 14:00:43 01/31/08 (0)

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