Take ‘White Flowers Take Their Bath’ (from Lys, Mari Samuelsen, DGG 486 2096) as an example. The gentle layers, repetitive motifs and burgeoning intensity can sound disjointed and harsh on the CD, demanding a cautious hand on the volume control. But with the PowerARAY Pro in use, the recording and hence music, is transformed. The solo violin takes on a natural texture and complexity, a tonal richness that spreads to the other instruments as they enter. The overarching acoustic becomes apparent, not just as a space but as an enclosure for the relationship between the instruments. The fragile opening hangs in that space, setting the scene for (and making sense of) everything that subsequently develops. As the track climbs into its towering crescendo, the musical energy is concentrated, vibrant and projected, rather than glazing over and congealing. The sonic affects of the PowerARAY Pro are significant. The musical impact is profound, bringing beauty AND power to this poised and intimately structured piece.
Playing nice…
What the PowerARAY Pro does for Lys it does for all music and in all the different systems I’ve tried it. Whether you are listening to the inner beauty of vocal harmonies or the satisfyingly visceral thwack of a well-hit snare, the reedy texture of a breathy sax or the ensemble energy, purpose and attack of orchestral strings at full chat, the PowerARAY Pro invests the music with a natural energy and purpose, intimacy and immediacy that makes performances both more lively and more like life. What’s more, I’m not sure there’s a different way to achieve the same result – at least not one I’ve found. Superior grounding systems, a dedicated AC feed and a coherent cable set each offer elements of what I’m describing, but none of them offer the complete, coherent package that the PowerARAY Pro does. Describing its impact on the system, the recording and the music, words like ‘sumptuous’ or ‘gorgeous’ spring to mind, but they are missing the point. As much as this is about sound, it’s far more about communication and musical reward. Like any fundamental lift in system performance, you just get more back for the time you invest.
Clearly, this is a seriously impressive performer. It doesn’t just deliver significant musical benefits, it delivers benefits that it is difficult, maybe impossible to get in any other way. Which begs the question, what price this little black box? At £7K the PowerARAY Pro certainly isn’t cheap: but at £7K, how much of a system do you need before you really don’t want to be without it? The first system I plugged it into was a Wadai S71, Wadax Pre1 Ultimate, VTL TL-7.5 and S-200 driving Stenheim Alumine 2s. Not cheap – but the PowerARAY Pro really did transform it, delivering an easy clarity, inner intimacy and directness of musical communication. It’s always hard to put numbers on these things but I’m thinking that if you’ve got a total of 40K invested in a system (including the supports and cables) then before you spend the next 5.5K, you should definitely investigate what the PowerARAY Pro can bring to the party.
Doing more by doing less…
But the scary thing is that the bigger the system, the wider the bandwidth, the bigger the benefit. Taking the PowerARAY Pro down to the Music room, where it got plugged in beside a system consisting of the full Wadax Reference front-end and a complete suite of CH amplification driving Stenheim Alumine 5SE speakers and PureLow subs, the quantitative improvement might not have been as dramatic, but qualitatively it was even more profound, almost as if the PowerARAY had stopped trying to deliver more and was instead, simply concentrating on letting the system seem more natural and make more sense. Perhaps that isn’t surprising. Given that the AC feed is, in very real terms, the raw material from which the system manufactures sound and, if we’re lucky, music, acting to improve the quality of the ingredients always has a salutary impact on the quality of the resulting dish. ‘Front-end first’ was a popular mantra back in the day. Well, if you think about it, you don’t get closer to the pointy end than the quality of your AC.
