Modest Midwest Audiophile

 Today I am doing more testing of the LSA Voyager GaN 350 after having set with it for about a week in my system. I mentioned after the first couple of listening sessions that this was one of the best, if not the best amplifier pairing that I’ve made yet, and those aren’t words I take lightly, so more testing had to be done so I’m not shoving my foot in my mouth. I set up to do a serious review on the GaN and not just a blanket statement, my plan being to make head to head comparisons over a weeks time to 2 other amplifiers whose sonics signature I am very familiar with, the NAD 218, and the LSA Warp - 1. Reference speakers as always are my QLS 1 towers, preamp is Carver C-1 with upgraded op amps, DAC is my old and trusty Keces DA-151 USB. With the first set of testing, I always start with the amplifiers only on the top end of the QLS. The top is a rather stable load and resolving enough to easily differentiate minute details, and without low bass this makes it all the more easy to...

  As brothers and sisters typically do, my little sister shares quite a few similarities and interests as I do. Being someone who loves to share the love of music and what high end audio has to offer, I would be a bad brother to not at least introduce her to the experience of better sound. It was September, and I had recently been given a Bose AV321 stereo system without the center control box. Like most audiophiles, I tend to shy from Bose since products from this era were mostly marketing instead of providing good respectable full range sound. This system was no exception with the bass cabinet cutting off above what decent bookshelf speakers can accomplish (46Hz), and having an entire band of musical information missing in the mid-bass section (203-279Hz) as measured  here . That being said, there were still some positives to the the design and could be a great jumping off point for a first stereo. The satellites were heavy and well damped, with some foam feet added there wa...

      The Process      Cables are a finicky subject in audio as they are extremely system dependent, and of course a level of trust has to be had with the manufacturer if there is no description of why this design is different or better than another. Cost can't be the only indicator of quality either, as a more expensive cable doesn't always guarantee better performance. This is why in home demos and trustworthy review processes are critical in our industry, and why when I am offered the opportunity to review a piece of equipment, I test a little differently than most. For cables, I stand by a three step process in vetting a new entry into the system.      The first test is to swap the cable into every applicable part of the chain in order to find the most synergistic location for further testing, as well as providing me with a good indication of any similarities in tonal shift. My system has been carefully tuned over the years, and I am very...