If the attention to detail that goes into the SJS components is impressive, the attention paid to lacing them all together and extracting their potential is just as reassuring. There’s more to achieving system performance than simply selecting the boxes and the care that’s gone into this set up is immediately apparent, from the selection of the CAR-50, with its sapphire cantilever and more demonstrative, spot-lit presentation, rather than the CAR-40, arguably a more obvious choice with its understated and more balanced performance, to its pairing with the LV transformers. In another strategic choice, Definitive Audio has chosen to equip the amp with its own LV 300B output tubes at £975 the pair, a significant investment but one that really makes the most of the Model 5’s 8 Watt per channel output. The whole system sits on Definitive’s own Living Voice G1 stackable equipment rack, with its piano ply shelves and torque-loaded, large diameter aluminium legs. The vexed question of cabling receives short shrift, with a combination of sensibly priced Ortofon Black interconnects and Bronze speaker cables – so no audio fashion excess there then!
Common sense(ibilities)…
All told, this system’s overall aesthetic exudes the quiet confidence I alluded to earlier. From the beautifully understated finish and timeless styling of the compact speaker cabinets, to the fit and finish of the electronics, there’s a self-contained air of calm finesse that even extends to the orange turntable, its solid block chassis painted in a shade that’s more Farrow&Ball Earth Tones than screaming Lamborghini. It makes you wonder whether this is a case of all show and no go; just how much (or little) effort would it take to disturb that calm and confident impression? With a mere 8 Watts on tap you might think, “Not much.” But there you’d be wrong!
In some ways, the price-tag, power rating and reputation of the components involved in this system just beg you to reach for something big and ugly to wipe away any vestige of smug complacency. I mean – who in their right mind spends this sort of money on a system with pint-sized speakers and a half-pint rated output? The Kertész New World (Decca SXL 2289) might not seem like the biggest, ugliest stick you could use to beat a system, but with its expansive soundstage and mounting opening crescendos, all underpinned by those percussion detonations it’s the audio equivalent of a ramp test, music that just goes on asking for more. Yet this Definitive Audio system sails through the opening passages to reach the calm beyond with barely a feather out of place. It’s a performance that is as musically impressive as it is astonishing – at least once you remember that it’s being generated by a whole 8 Watts of vintage-ish valve power. The phrasing is fluid and expressive, the pauses pregnant with anticipation, the scale and dynamics present and correct, all wrapped in a natural sense of space and colour. This is audio performance that captures both the expressive range and exquisite tempo of the original musical performance, with an unerring sense of pace and timing and an effortless range of orchestral voices, shifting smoothly from the lyrical to the threatening, the quiet and mellow to the almost overbearingly dramatic. Of course, in real terms, there’s no way that this system can reproduce the level and scale of the Vienna Philharmonic at full-chat, but that it does such a convincing job is testimony to the careful balancing of bandwidth and efficiency in the speakers, the way the available power is delivered and the grace with which the amp can handle overload.
