For the cartridge, I chose the Lyra Etna Lambda, the latest version of the well-established and much-loved Etna – itself the latest in a long, evolutionary line stretching back to the original, ground-breaking Clavis. From that very first product, each Lyra cartridge has consistently raised the bar in its own particular market segment and the latest Lambda models are no exception, this Etna being another Best Buy to add to the list of high-profile products gracing this system. Hook the whole system up with Nordost’s multi-award winning, latest generation Valhalla 2 cables and that’s another long-standing success delivering the icing on this particular cake. In fact, look past the Best Buy stickers and marketing fanfares and both evolution and longevity are recurring themes that flow throughout this system – but more on that later…
Even a couple of years ago this system would have looked very different. As already noted, the cripplingly low impedance and reactive load of earlier Wilson Sashas mandated a lot more amplifier. The graceful, subtly toned but slightly soft nature of the original Etna meant that the dynamic authority needed to come from somewhere else in the system while the TL-5.5 only recently received its swish new casework, a sleek chassis that steps away from the traditional look of the original – which was all flat frontage, big knobs and front panel switches straight out of the 1980s.
Team players…
But the bigger box and easier load makes the DAW an easier breathing and more expressive performer than any WATT/Puppy to date, while the S-200, with its balanced topology throughout, generous output power and variable damping factor is just the tool to get a firm grip on the speakers’ anything but reluctant nether regions. This is a combination perfectly capable of delivering scale and power, dynamic contrast and impact – just as long as the rest of the system provides it. The big VPI ‘tables have always sounded – well, big – with generous dynamics and an easy sense of pace and rhythmic flow that seems to scale shifts in dynamic density or range with an effortless confidence that carries you through the music. The trick comes in harnessing all that musical enthusiasm, anchoring its sense of drive and giving it some purpose…
If the original Lyra Etna trod a fine line between resolution and musical articulation, tonal colour and dynamic discrimination – a balanced performance that revealed the inner intricacies of a performance just as surely as it reconstructed the shape and proportions of the whole – then the latest Etna Lambda takes those virtues and adds a serious measure of muscle and musical authority. Combine that purposeful musical momentum with the presence and dimensionality that come from a really well executed tube pre-amp and you’ve got just the signal that the amp and speakers demand. Deliver that signal through a complete set of matching cables, especially a set like the Valhalla 2, with its dynamic and temporal precision and absence of additive elements keeping everything in place and proportion and you reach that magic point where the parts becomes a single system, a whole that’s greater than the sum of those parts.
