It’s this almost subliminal sense of stability and poise that allows these amps to grasp any and every type of music, anchoring it solidly and setting it on its way. It might sound odd talking about musical authority and solo instruments in the same way, but it’s a quality that comes from the player and their performance, that’s embedded in the subtleties of timing and technique – and that’s skated over by far too many audio systems. Get up close and personal with a solo violin or piano and great players command the space, whether they are playing loudly or not. In fact, it’s often the slowest and quietest passages that hold an audience most closely. It’s this ability that the Trilogies possess. They’ll do meaty, beaty, big and bouncy all day long – and do it with an energy and attitude to make The Who proud – but wind back the energy and you’ll lose none of the emotional intensity on which these amps run. If you think that a solid-state output stage means cold and calculating, think again. The 994s run hot – in every sense of the phrase.
While a lot of the focus here has rested on the broad shoulders of the 994 mono-blocs, it would be a mistake to overlook the 914, a line-stage that quietly goes about its business without fanfare or fireworks. Indeed, quietly is the word. Running the Wadax Studio Player into the Trilogy set-up via the 914’s balanced inputs, advance the volume to max and there’s a barely (and I do mean barely!) discernable whisper of noise at the speakers. Hold your ear against the midrange driver and you could still miss it. For an all-tube unit, the 914 is ghostly silent, a silence that plays a big part in the temporal and dynamic integrity of the combination as a whole. The point at which a note starts is clearly planted, in the same way as its amplitude and energy envelope. It’s a performance that’s confirmed if you take the 914 outside the comfort zone of the Trilogy eco-system. Paired with amps from CH or VTL it proved just as capable – and just as invisible. If the goal for any line-stage is to do its job as unobtrusively as possible, the 914 certainly scores big on that scale. It succeeds in bringing order and authority to the source signals – and getting out of their way while doing it. It neither gates those signals nor adds any overt character of its own. The minimalist styling is classy and beautifully executed, belying its approachable price. At £13,750 (including 20% sales tax) in the UK, it’s an absolute steal. Translate that to €16,750 in the EU and it’s still just as big a bargain.
Which is another way of saying that both the 914 and the 994 mono-blocs are equally impressive – and equally at home as a pairing or playing away. Running the 994s on the end of the CH L1.5 more than makes that point. The one thing I’d love to see, is a second set of outputs on the 914, allowing you to run two sets of 994s in a bi-amped set-up – the mono-blocs are just begging for it and it’s my next stop on this particular review path. The problem of course is that adding additional facilities adds cost which, at the end of the day, would undermine the value on offer in aid of a facility few might use, so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and break out the XLR to RCA convertors – not perfect, but perfectly workable…
