The low-riding E.A.T. never failed to captivate when playing well-recorded jazz, electronic, or classical music on vinyl. It drew me deeply in to every recording. Its resolution, impressive spatial abilities, and tonal guts made listening to my most beloved records thrilling. The E-Glo I made me want to search through the waves of vinyl records all over my apartment and let the amp have at them.
While my Tavish Audio Design Adagio phono stage is being serviced, the Luxman EQ-500 phono stage has taken up residence. Where the Tavish sounds warm, liquid, and lush, the Luxman is highly resolving, airy, and powerful. I acclimated to the change before I started listening to the E-Glo—but there's no question that the Luxman further accentuated the E.A.T.'s virtues. The E.A.T./Luxman/EMT/Kuzma combination creates the largest soundstage with the most robust, best-resolved images I've heard in my system. Especially with classical LPs, the E.A.T./Luxman combo immersed me in music. The E.A.T.'s transparency, resolution, quick timing, and big soundstage (with proportionately sized images) made the most of good recordings while directing worse recordings to the Goodwill pile.
The impression of a large, spatially deep, wide soundstage inhabited by large images was sustained when I went digital, streaming files from Tidal. Gregory Porter's All Rise (Blue Note, Decca 00602508620157, Tidal 24/48) and The Avett Brothers' The Third Gleam (Concord/Loma Vista 7219552, Tidal 24/48) sounded a mite diffuse compared to vinyl, but the soundstage and imaging qualities were similar. The E.A.T. delivers a consistent, top-tier imaging experience.
Back to vinyl. As I write this, Chad Kassem's Acoustic Sounds Verve reissue series has been shipping for a few weeks. The first batch, scheduled for July but released a little late, was Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson and Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto's Getz/Gilberto. August brings two releases from John Coltrane: Ballads and A Love Supreme. September's two records are both from Nina Simone: I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues. Coming soon: Clifford Brown and Max Roach's Study In Brown, Peggy Lee's Black Coffee, and George Russell's New York, N.Y. All titles in the series are cut from the original analog tapes and pressed at Quality Record Pressings.
I dropped the reissue of Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson's Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson (LP, Verve Records B0031689-01) on my Kuzma player. I needed a shovel to lift my jaw up off the floor.
In triode mode, the amp delivered Pops's and Oscar's performance with pristine clarity, black backgrounds, large-scale acoustic bass, and brisk guitar and piano. Armstrong's gruff vocal appeared huge and dead center, every slurred nuance and guttural phrase alive and human. I uttered "wow" several times as I enjoyed the E.A.T.'s portrayal of this LP, including Louis Bellson's tactile drumming and Pops's tart, lustrous trumpet solos.
Jim Austin, Michael Fremer, and I all detected some distortion on Armstrong's voice in a few inner groove selections, but overall I found this record to be dynamic and transparently recorded—and forcefully delivered through the E.A.T., with (like most LPs through this combination) energy, good tone, and exemplary drive.
In triode mode, the E.A.T. reproduced sounds in the upper-midrange-to-treble frequencies as penetrating and brilliantly burnished. Cymbal crashes were explosive, and instruments and vocals were reproduced with fine leading edges, which imbued the music with a high-rez, physical, and nearly 3D quality. The midrange was generally full and transparent—as it was on the Armstrong/Peterson disc, its upright bass delivered with excellent touch, if also a touch of overhang.
Flipping the switch to Ultralinear mode made the sound more immediate and upfront but with a smidgen's loss of delicacy. Both modes sounded good, but for the rest of my listening I stuck with triode.
Though the E.A.T. consistently supercharged the upper-mids and treble, it never sounded etched or bright. Aided no doubt by the Luxman phono stage, the E.A.T.'s energy lit up cymbals, snare drum, percussion, strings, and brass. This was paired with an unparalleled (in my system) sense of air around instruments and ambience of the recording space. When I played Miles Davis's Relaxin' (1958 mono LP, Prestige PRLP 7129), I could almost see, and could definitely hear, the walls of Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs studio and the placement of each musician—this on a mono LP. Even in mono, the front-to-back layering of the instruments was easy to hear: Miles's trumpet was palpable and intimate; John Coltrane blew his tenor hard a degree or two behind him, alongside Paul Chambers's resolute bass lines. Above it all were the shimmering ride cymbal and snare drum jabs of Philly Joe Jones. The E.A.T.'s intimate, fast, expansive portrayal of this Miles Davis classic floored me.
In stereo, the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy in Afternoon Of A Faun/Daphnis and Chloe, No.2/La Mer (LP, 1959 Columbia Masterworks MS 6077), is the album that first convinced me of the E.A.T.'s spatial splendor. Here, the music was super-vivid and large-scale, the soundstage immersive, instruments sweeping before me and around me, stirring and tangible, their images at times diaphanous, at other times meaty and palpable. The E.A.T. reproduced the exceptional spatial cues of this large-scale recording with startling ppp-to-fff dynamics. I felt I could hear the span of the recording hall—the Ballroom of the Broadwood Hotel in Philadelphia—to its farthest recesses. Reverb tails were fully replicated, providing an enormous sense of space.
I hope JA's measurements reveal low levels of distortion, because that's the subjective impression I had. The E.A.T. allowed me to hear all the way "to the moon on gossamer wings," as Sinatra sang (footnote 3).
The E.A.T.'s reconstruction of Antal Doráti leading the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra performing Iberia/Interlude and Dance No.1 La Vida Breve (LP, 1958 Mercury Living Presence SR90007) provided a similar perspective. Iberia played with scary, almost violent dynamics. Instruments were presented with good textural shading and were extremely well layered in the large soundstage.
My only quibble with the E.A.T. E-Glo I was this: It possessed somewhat less bloom and tonal saturation than some other tube-driven products in a similar price range (and up). The E.A.T. offset that disadvantage with a presentation so thrilling and engaging that it was only later, away from my stereo, that I realized that I'd been missing something. That said, it matters: To me, that tonal saturation is the flesh and blood of live music, the heart-color of inspired musicians' personalities expressed through metal, resin, wood, and wires. The E.A.T. had it, just not as much of it as, for example, my Shindo separates.
Compared to the Cary SLI-80HS integrated amplifier
At $4495, Cary's SLI-80HS integrated amplifier costs almost exactly half what the E-Glo I costs. Like the E-Glo I, it comes stock with four KT88 power tubes. It uses two 6922 (input buffer preamp) and two 6SN7 tubes. The Cary specifies 40Wpc triode, 80Wpc Ultralinear, but falls significantly short of those specs, according to JA's measurements.
Where the E.A.T. was forceful and direct, the Cary was slightly more laid back and forgiving. The E.A.T. created high-definition images with more explicit leading edges; the Cary's images had softer edges and less interior definition. The E.A.T. was a mite dry compared to the Cary's more saturated tones, and the Cary was sweeter-sounding overall. The E-Glo I offered superb transparency and tons of air and space, while the Cary was slightly more diffuse but perhaps more colorful. Each produces its own version of excellent sound.
Conclusion
In its ability to create a supercharged musical presentation within a large soundstage populated by big images, allied to superb definition and resolution, with good tone, the E.A.T. E-Glo I gets so many things right in such a balanced, forceful presentation that I'd say it's worth its asking price. Enthusiastically recommended.
Footnote 3: "Just One of Those Things" has, of course, been recorded by pretty much everybody, from Louis Armstrong to the Pogues (with guest artist Kirsty MacColl). I counted 40 versions on Qobuz. A fun evening could be had just listening them all.—Editor
The impression of a large, spatially deep, wide soundstage inhabited by large images was sustained when I went digital, streaming files from Tidal. Gregory Porter's All Rise (Blue Note, Decca 00602508620157, Tidal 24/48) and The Avett Brothers' The Third Gleam (Concord/Loma Vista 7219552, Tidal 24/48) sounded a mite diffuse compared to vinyl, but the soundstage and imaging qualities were similar. The E.A.T. delivers a consistent, top-tier imaging experience.
Back to vinyl. As I write this, Chad Kassem's Acoustic Sounds Verve reissue series has been shipping for a few weeks. The first batch, scheduled for July but released a little late, was Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson and Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto's Getz/Gilberto. August brings two releases from John Coltrane: Ballads and A Love Supreme. September's two records are both from Nina Simone: I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues. Coming soon: Clifford Brown and Max Roach's Study In Brown, Peggy Lee's Black Coffee, and George Russell's New York, N.Y. All titles in the series are cut from the original analog tapes and pressed at Quality Record Pressings.
I dropped the reissue of Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson's Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson (LP, Verve Records B0031689-01) on my Kuzma player. I needed a shovel to lift my jaw up off the floor.
In triode mode, the amp delivered Pops's and Oscar's performance with pristine clarity, black backgrounds, large-scale acoustic bass, and brisk guitar and piano. Armstrong's gruff vocal appeared huge and dead center, every slurred nuance and guttural phrase alive and human. I uttered "wow" several times as I enjoyed the E.A.T.'s portrayal of this LP, including Louis Bellson's tactile drumming and Pops's tart, lustrous trumpet solos.
Though the E.A.T. consistently supercharged the upper-mids and treble, it never sounded etched or bright. Aided no doubt by the Luxman phono stage, the E.A.T.'s energy lit up cymbals, snare drum, percussion, strings, and brass. This was paired with an unparalleled (in my system) sense of air around instruments and ambience of the recording space. When I played Miles Davis's Relaxin' (1958 mono LP, Prestige PRLP 7129), I could almost see, and could definitely hear, the walls of Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs studio and the placement of each musician—this on a mono LP. Even in mono, the front-to-back layering of the instruments was easy to hear: Miles's trumpet was palpable and intimate; John Coltrane blew his tenor hard a degree or two behind him, alongside Paul Chambers's resolute bass lines. Above it all were the shimmering ride cymbal and snare drum jabs of Philly Joe Jones. The E.A.T.'s intimate, fast, expansive portrayal of this Miles Davis classic floored me.
In stereo, the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy in Afternoon Of A Faun/Daphnis and Chloe, No.2/La Mer (LP, 1959 Columbia Masterworks MS 6077), is the album that first convinced me of the E.A.T.'s spatial splendor. Here, the music was super-vivid and large-scale, the soundstage immersive, instruments sweeping before me and around me, stirring and tangible, their images at times diaphanous, at other times meaty and palpable. The E.A.T. reproduced the exceptional spatial cues of this large-scale recording with startling ppp-to-fff dynamics. I felt I could hear the span of the recording hall—the Ballroom of the Broadwood Hotel in Philadelphia—to its farthest recesses. Reverb tails were fully replicated, providing an enormous sense of space.
I hope JA's measurements reveal low levels of distortion, because that's the subjective impression I had. The E.A.T. allowed me to hear all the way "to the moon on gossamer wings," as Sinatra sang (footnote 3).
My only quibble with the E.A.T. E-Glo I was this: It possessed somewhat less bloom and tonal saturation than some other tube-driven products in a similar price range (and up). The E.A.T. offset that disadvantage with a presentation so thrilling and engaging that it was only later, away from my stereo, that I realized that I'd been missing something. That said, it matters: To me, that tonal saturation is the flesh and blood of live music, the heart-color of inspired musicians' personalities expressed through metal, resin, wood, and wires. The E.A.T. had it, just not as much of it as, for example, my Shindo separates.
Compared to the Cary SLI-80HS integrated amplifierAt $4495, Cary's SLI-80HS integrated amplifier costs almost exactly half what the E-Glo I costs. Like the E-Glo I, it comes stock with four KT88 power tubes. It uses two 6922 (input buffer preamp) and two 6SN7 tubes. The Cary specifies 40Wpc triode, 80Wpc Ultralinear, but falls significantly short of those specs, according to JA's measurements.
Where the E.A.T. was forceful and direct, the Cary was slightly more laid back and forgiving. The E.A.T. created high-definition images with more explicit leading edges; the Cary's images had softer edges and less interior definition. The E.A.T. was a mite dry compared to the Cary's more saturated tones, and the Cary was sweeter-sounding overall. The E-Glo I offered superb transparency and tons of air and space, while the Cary was slightly more diffuse but perhaps more colorful. Each produces its own version of excellent sound.
ConclusionIn its ability to create a supercharged musical presentation within a large soundstage populated by big images, allied to superb definition and resolution, with good tone, the E.A.T. E-Glo I gets so many things right in such a balanced, forceful presentation that I'd say it's worth its asking price. Enthusiastically recommended.
Footnote 3: "Just One of Those Things" has, of course, been recorded by pretty much everybody, from Louis Armstrong to the Pogues (with guest artist Kirsty MacColl). I counted 40 versions on Qobuz. A fun evening could be had just listening them all.—Editor
