I started by comparing the standalone Reiki switches with the iFi power supplies to my standard SOtM set up including the CAD Ethernet Control filter, hooked up to the Wadax Reference Server, using the same cables for the main connection but Reiki’s own generic CAT 6 for the final link to the Server itself. Even in this basic set-up, there was a clear and obvious benefit to the Reiki network, with a significant reduction in grain, a blacker background, more depth and a greater sense of instrumental dimensionality. Playing a 24/96 file of the Anastasia Kobekina album Venice, the sense of musical purpose and presence, the vigour in the playing and the shape and structure of the pieces were all much improved, but more significantly, the music was much more vivid and engaging, with better flow and more articulate phrasing. Kobekina’s playing is committed and energetic, qualities that are far more obvious via the Reiki SuperSwitches. The orchestral backing is more positive, with a solid, emphatic quality and body that escapes the SOtM switches, even with the CAD filter in line. Adding the CAD filter to the Reiki chain brought a further and very welcome calm to the acoustic space/image, offering better depth and spatial resolution, more harmonic resolution, better dimensionality and a greater sense of the body behind an instrument’s strings. But whereas with the SOtM switches the CAD filter had been a musically significant step up, with the Reiki’s it was more ‘icing on the cake’, building on the fundamental musical qualities already present. In fact, its most significant contribution was that calm stability. For the first time, the Ref Server offered the same quiet musical environment as the Atlantis transport.
Next step was to experiment with the big power supply on the switches. Working on the (so far) unassailable logic that the closer to the Server you make a change, the bigger its impact, I added the Pro PSU to the Master SuperSwitch – with immediately obvious results. The soundstage expanded, bass depth, definition and separation improved, tonal separation of instruments across the mid-band increased, with a warmer, more dimensional quality. Playing a 16/44.1 FLAC file of the Hilary Hahn/Oslo Philharmonic Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.1, it wasn’t just the space around instruments that became more obvious: the space between notes became far more explicit, particularly in the Passacaglia, where the pauses and hesitations in the playing are so much a part of the piece’s power. Adding the Pro power supply made much more of Hahn’s poise, control and the fineness of her lines, while the extra body behind her instrument, a function of that improved bass depth, transparency and timing, added some necessary meat to her instrumental voice. She never quite matches the teetering brilliance of Batiashvili or the fragile, slightly brittle intensity of Ibragimova, the emotional range all a bit contained, but this is obviously and identifiably not just Hahn, but when it comes to the larger works that challenge her scope, it is Hahn at her best. That’s a significant step up in system performance, with the Server consistently matching the CD transport for the first time – sonically, but more importantly, in terms of musical connection.
