Listener, know thyself. Then instinctual reactions paint a quick picture. Of course it'll be subjective but still can prove to have surprisingly consistent implications. Do you find yourself pulling out your biggest baddest bombast to go on a symphonic/soundtrack binge? Do you pursue small intimate slow numbers to draw you into a zone of reverie? Do you go after virtuoso how-many-notes-in-a-bar fare? Are you in critical observer mode to notice stuff left, right and centre? Are you in uncomplicated immersion without internally ticking things off? Do you play loud or sotto voce? Electronica or acoustic? Such questions could break down into quite the list depending on listener. From my early reactions, I quickly understood that the Direkt was no HD speaker. It was a real MFer: not a high-definition number but about more fun. How so? It didn't edge-limn the virtual stage in holographic focus. It created no performer haloes of illuminated venue reflections. It didn't do a number of special ultra-contrast effects. It put me in easy listening not critical observer mode. The latter notices things against a constant reference. Maintaining said reference creates distance. With it comes a certain measure of abstraction or aloofness. On the other hand, no distance, no watcher. Things aren't noticed, they just are. With immersion, one partakes instead of judging, comparing or measuring. And the Direkt triggered such immersive involvement, not the critical faculties.

To facilitate convenient A/Bs against the Russian amp with pot, I left the Nagra Jazz preamp in the loop. I simply set it to 0dB gain to act as an actively buffered passive of sorts. This drove the XA30.8 balanced; and the S.A.Lab Blackbird single-ended. The latter's volume control was fully open, hence bypassed. For standard SPL, the Nagra's volume sat at 10:00 o'clock, meaning a full 30dB below unity gain (the fixed output voltage of the Aqua Hifi LaScala MkII DAC). Yousa. If you hadn't figured it out yet, 95dB in-room speaker sensitivity has loud and clear benefits. In our 100sqm listening space, I had headroom galore for all civilized and even raunchier purposes - with an 8/15wpc into 8/4Ω valve amp. Being of the push/pull sort to cancel most 2nd-order THD of equivalent 300B SET, the Blackbird lacks their octave-doubled fuzz. Its softness belongs to the temporal horizontal domain of melody not rhythm. It's more fluid, elastic and pliant than the Pass transistor amp. With the Direkt's virtual suspension more softly sprung than a sports car, the combination was fantastically redolent and tonally generous. Tube lingo would call its colour palette saturated. I'd sign off as long as one subtracted from it the humidity and blur of no-feedback single-ended triode behaviour. The Blackbird's climate isn't tropical but moderate. Its low-bass definition and impact meanwhile fell behind the XA30.8 where the vintage 6V6 bottles gave up some grip and reach. Here the higher power and current delivery of the Mosfets had the aces. That was little surprise given that into the speaker's 22/23Ω port peaks at 28/70Hz, most amps deliver a 1/3rd or less than they do into 8Ω. If the 8Ω rating be excessive for this application, no problem. If not, those bands in the low and mid bass will attenuate and dynamically compress. If Heco wanted to really welcome low-power tube amps all around, they'd need to linearize their impedance plot with many more crossover parts.

Depth is likewise influenced by front-wall distance but other things factor as well. Here the Heco staged more shallow as though the rear stage lights were dimmed. With mellower transitions and lower recorded reflections—I heard far less of that pixilated faux reverb trailing Wael Jassar for example—what happened within the borders of the stage focused softer. This same gentler less illuminated focus also meant that images were bigger if a tad more ambiguous. In the immortal famished words of ex contributor Chip Stern, this was comfort food à la meat, potatoes and gravy, not some overpriced food paintings on plates in a swanky bistro that still have you hungry afterwards.