Soooo…some may know that Don (Wattsabundant) has been building a 400s2 for me. Well it arrived safe and sound a few days ago and I wanted to share my impressions with the group and publicly thank Don for his outstanding work and generosity. I would also like to thank Mark (mlucitt), he built the boards and of course Joe (Gepetto) for making all this possible with White Oak Audio.
To start with, this is not going to be a audiophile review with all the creative audio speak, just a real world opinion from someone who does not have golden ears or any formal musical training. I think I know what sounds good but I have learned that music reproduction and how good it sounds is a very personal and subjective subject.
This is also an initial test done in my shop with very modest gear just to get a baseline before it goes in the big system. Doing a real A/B test in my bigger systems is not easy and more work than I am willing to do right now.
I am using an old PL 3300 preamp being fed through the AUX from a BT dongle connected to my phone. The speakers are Acoustic Research Phantoms, they are actually amazing little speakers that use Illusion Audio drivers that were developed for high end car audio. Anyway, this is not exactly a high end setup but it is better than you might think and good enough for initial impressions.
The stock amp is in good shape and sounds great, it does produce the famous double pop from the caps discharging when you power it off.
So here is the setup. Not having ever heard a WOPL before, I honestly did not know what to expect and was worried that this was going to be a totally different animal.
I can happily report that this is not the case, in fact the tonal signature is very much the same. All amps have a sound that is unique to that design and I love the PL sound. So I was hoping that Joe had taken the physicians moto of “first do no harm” and to my ears that has been accomplished.
What is different is the noise floor, he WOLP is quieter at idle and stays that way as the gain goes up. Now the preamp does inject some hiss and both amps pass it through but with the music paused and the volume turned up all the way, it is easy to tell the WOPL is quieter.
Now for the more subjective part, I don’t hear any magical whispers of music that I never heard before, nor was I transported to some audio never-neverland. In fact the differences are very small in this setup but they are there, the WOPL is a tiny bit more crisp and punchy, still what I consider a warm sounding amp but with a cleaner leading edge. I obviously can’t really test the bottom end with these speakers and might just have to lug everything down to the house and give my B&W’s a chance to weigh in on all this but as far as first impressions go, I am very pleased.
To start with, this is not going to be a audiophile review with all the creative audio speak, just a real world opinion from someone who does not have golden ears or any formal musical training. I think I know what sounds good but I have learned that music reproduction and how good it sounds is a very personal and subjective subject.
This is also an initial test done in my shop with very modest gear just to get a baseline before it goes in the big system. Doing a real A/B test in my bigger systems is not easy and more work than I am willing to do right now.
I am using an old PL 3300 preamp being fed through the AUX from a BT dongle connected to my phone. The speakers are Acoustic Research Phantoms, they are actually amazing little speakers that use Illusion Audio drivers that were developed for high end car audio. Anyway, this is not exactly a high end setup but it is better than you might think and good enough for initial impressions.
The stock amp is in good shape and sounds great, it does produce the famous double pop from the caps discharging when you power it off.
So here is the setup. Not having ever heard a WOPL before, I honestly did not know what to expect and was worried that this was going to be a totally different animal.
I can happily report that this is not the case, in fact the tonal signature is very much the same. All amps have a sound that is unique to that design and I love the PL sound. So I was hoping that Joe had taken the physicians moto of “first do no harm” and to my ears that has been accomplished.
What is different is the noise floor, he WOLP is quieter at idle and stays that way as the gain goes up. Now the preamp does inject some hiss and both amps pass it through but with the music paused and the volume turned up all the way, it is easy to tell the WOPL is quieter.
Now for the more subjective part, I don’t hear any magical whispers of music that I never heard before, nor was I transported to some audio never-neverland. In fact the differences are very small in this setup but they are there, the WOPL is a tiny bit more crisp and punchy, still what I consider a warm sounding amp but with a cleaner leading edge. I obviously can’t really test the bottom end with these speakers and might just have to lug everything down to the house and give my B&W’s a chance to weigh in on all this but as far as first impressions go, I am very pleased.