Vinnie Rossi, Well-Pleased Audio Vida, Triode Wire Labs | New York 2019

Moving to the top floor of the show, a number of the rooms were still not open for the early press opening time of 11:00 am.  Vinnie Rossi was open for business and had a somewhat larger room than what seemed to be the standard size.  He was using it to great benefit featuring his L2 “Signature Edition” integrated amplifier ($18,995) with the highly-regarded Takatsuki 300B tubes in the line stage and 100 wpc into 8 ohms from the class AB mosfet output stage.  This was powering the latest 2-way, floorstanding QLN Prestige Three SE loudspeakers ($12,000/pr.), made in Sweden and supplied by Mark Sossa of Well-Pleased Audio Vida.  Mark also supplied the Innuous Statement Music Server ($13,750 with 1TB SSD storage) with outboard power supply, as well as an interesting new product, the GigaWatt PC-4 EVO+ flagship power conditioner ($10,000).

The Innuous server/streamer was delivering a Qobuz stream to Vinnie’s onboard L2 DAC module ($3,495), which is capable of decoding PCM up to 32-bit/768kHz and DSD up to DSD512.  Pete Grzybowski, of Triode Wire Labs, supplied the cables as in many of Vinnie’s past shows.  To partner these relatively affordable cables with such lofty equipment is quite a testament to their value.  Vinnie used to live about half an hour from me when he started out his business in Durham, CT.  He knows that I like Roseanne Cash, so it was quite a coincidence that he was playing her when I arrived in his room.  Sitting in the sweet spot, I was immediately drawn into a truly spacious soundstage that was almost unprecedented for such a modestly-sized showroom.  Depth, air and image location were laid out in spades!  Vinnie played two artists who were new to me; Cody High and Sarah Bareilles, both of which turned up on playlists in other rooms.  I was also able to select some tracks that I knew well, such as a couple from Wilco, and was very favorably impressed with the system’s dynamics, as well as its resolution and nuance.

— Steve Marsh




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