You’ll hear the same musical integrity but subtle distance or absence of individual character on Red House stable-mate Lucy Kaplansky’s equally impressive album The Red Thread (RHR CD166) and on other vocalists where I know their voices from both conversation and performance. Ultimately, it comes down to a lack of the lowest level resolution. You hear it in the missing vocal inflexions. You hear it in the lack of harmonic texture on strings. But that is judging by the highest standards, a judgment invited by the TMA’s astonishing sense of musical organisation and integrity – categories in which it challenges far, far more expensive products.
Rather than ‘reach out and touch’ intimacy, the Neodio delivers musical and sonic substance. You’ll never be left wondering whether this is a great piece or why the person wrote it. If communication is the goal, then the TMA is right on target. There are amps at this price or a little more that sound ‘nicer’ on first listen; that have a warmer balance and richer colours, a more immediate and immediately impressive sound. But what none of those products possess is the easy, natural, communicative presentation that makes the Neodio so listenable, both in the short and the long-term. As I pointed out earlier (but it’s worth repeating), that natural sense of shape and structure equates to the bones and the flesh that covers them. Then over that you get the colourful and stylish clothes that people wear. The problem comes if you invest in those clothes at the expense of the frame to hang them on. At best they don’t fit properly, at worst they fall in a shapeless heap on the floor. It’s an interesting image, given the number of musically incoherent systems I’ve come across over the years…
In some ways, the TMA is the ultimate PRAT amplifier. When Linn and Naim first coined the acronym (Pace, Rhythm And Timing) to summarise the key elements in musical reproduction it was in the face of a dominant philosophy that fastened on frequency response and measurable distortion. It was a back to basics approach that called for a complete re-boot. It also went hand-in-hand with a Front-End First philosophy that emphasised the importance of the source signal. Along the way, the speakers became something of an afterthought (which in the case of some of those early Linn speakers was probably no bad thing). The Neodio builds on and re-shapes that approach, keeping the core truth but adopting a more even-handed approach to its system partners.
The TMA excels when it comes to exposing the musical skeleton, with that unusually stable picture and exceptional musical and rhythmic integrity. The structural connection between the different parts in a performance, be those vocal or instrumental, is explicit. Each separate part of the performance is combined into and contributes to the whole.
It wraps that skeleton in the flesh and fibre of the performance, the musical energy and the dynamics it generates. The Neodio tracks dynamic range with unimpeded gusto and a seemingly unburstable enthusiasm. Push it really hard and the sound starts to congeal and ultimately harden, but by that stage it will almost certainly be uncomfortably loud! What the TMA adds to the PRAT party is the ability to drive real-world loudspeakers, something that was confined to more expensive amps in the original philosophy. By delivering not just load tolerance but a serious measure of low-frequency control, the TMA is unexpectedly comfortable – indeed, it’s at its considerable best – driving full-bandwidth loudspeakers. The challenging and revealing Vienna Acoustics are a case in point, but it’s a point that was underlined during a brief outing with the Sasha DAWs: room rattling output levels may have been compromised, but the engaging musical integrity was never in question.
Right thinking…
What the TMA does is preserve the spatial and temporal relationships that are at the core of any musical performance. It does it with an effortless clarity that allows it to really anchor the system. Because it doesn’t tailor or bend things out of shape, it is inherently unobtrusive, musically and functionally invisible. You simply don’t notice it doing what it does. With that secure footing established, you can then shape the system through the choice of partnering equipment. Pair the Neodio with an affordable but engaging CD player (or better still, a basic record player and phono-stage) along with a small pair of two-way speakers and you’ve got a classic starter system with exceptional musical potential. Elevate the quality of the front-end, extend the quality and bandwidth of the speakers and the system will grow, built on that stable musical foundation delivered by the amp. In the same way that the amp stands behind the music, it allows the system as a whole to do the same. I spent a lot of time running the TMA sandwiched between the Vienna speakers and the TEAD Groove, fed from a Kuzma Stabi M or VPI Avenger front-end, with seriously entertaining results. By getting the structural aspects of the performance so firmly established, the Neodio allowed the system to really exploit the musical potential of these extravagant partners.
