No less an authority than Schering declared that BWV 1064 was adapted or evolved from a piece of Italian origin, something that’s reflected in the music’s vitality and the playful urgency in its rhythms. The Groove presents the music up close and personal, with an incisive clarity and explicit separation of both the solo instruments and the orchestra as a whole. The playing is lively, quick and purposeful, the picture well-lit. In contrast, the voltage input on the P1 offered a more set-back perspective, smaller in scale, less obviously detailed but presenting a more coherent, over-arching acoustic and a greater sense of temporal continuity and shape to the piece as a whole. The virtuosity in the playing was more apparent on The Groove, the superb ensemble playing more obvious on the P1. Overall it’s a close enough call that choice is likely to come down to individual listening bias and musical preference – except that one costs more than five-times the price of the other! Does that make the result a slam-dunk? Well – it would do unless you switch to the current sensing input(s) on the P1…
The low internal impedance of the Lyra means that it has always thrived when hooked up to the P1’s current sensing input and this occasion was no different. The music built on the steady, slightly polite but ultra stable and coherent presentation of the voltage input, adding energy, presence, dimensionality and an uninhibited sense of dynamics and musical fluidity. The performance sprang to life, with an irresistibly dance-like quality to the structural formality of the piece, the precision, grace and intricacy of the interplay between the solo instruments. The Groove still delivered greater separation and resolution, but the P1 was now offering a sense of substance and overall shape to the music, colour and solidity to the instruments, purpose and continuity to the playing that raised the bar significantly. So no, the £5K Groove doesn’t actually clean the P1’s clock, but even a phono-stage as accomplished as the CH Precision needs to bring it’s A-game in order to see the upstart off. In a situation where the cartridge to phono-stage matching and optimisation are less than spot-on – all bets are off. It’s a salutary example of just how far above its weight The Groove can punch – and just how comfortable it is in that rarefied atmosphere.
Sit The Groove and the P1 next to each other and it’s immediately apparent from their sounds that musical clarity and a subterranean noise floor are definitely shared concerns. What happens if you place The Groove in a less congruent musical environment?
Taking ‘the tube’…
VTL’s TL 5.5 preamplifier places The Groove in an interesting and very different context. At $8,000 it is in the same price bracket, it’s an all tube circuit and, most interestingly of all, it offers users the option of an internal, hybrid J-fet/tube phono-stage of its own – at the very reasonable price of $2,500. In a very different way, it offers The Groove just as stiff a challenge as the CH Precision P1. Not only does the resolutely solid-state and ic-based phono-stage face the challenges (electrical and sonic) of integrating with a tube line-stage, that line-stage also turns the tables on The Groove by offering a hybrid MM/MC phono-stage constructed from discrete components at half the price of the interloper. Comparisons to the P1 might represent a measurement of absolute quality. Mixing it with the TL-5.5 throws The Groove straight into the real world hurly burly of the heavily contested, high-value/high performance market place.
