Originally Posted by
Richard
BTW sorry to say it and sound like Ash but NVA is better, even the guy who owned the company agreed as he sold both in his shop, and read this from a reviewer who compared both. The Albarry are very fine amps though.
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Audiophile with hi-fi answers, March 1991
RISING TO THE CHALLENGE
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When NVA claimed it could replace the hi-fi of any Audiophile reviewer with its own gear, and then try to convince them it was better, we chuckled up our sleeves and gave them the green light.
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For a small company, NVA has a lot of balls. The company's latest ad campaign suggests as much. The `NVA Challenge' is an open invitation to the world to shoot NVA equipment down in flames. We couldn't resist having a go.
The idea is simple: NVA people come round to your home laden with NVA goodies. And if after an evening's demonstration you're not convinced that they've bettered your system, c'est la vie...
Richard Dunn (right), the main man at NVA, turned up on my doorstep armed with mountains of equipment - a turntable, more amps than I care to mention, loudspeakers, cable, tables. You name it, he had it with him.
it was immediately clear from his comments that synergy is a concept he whole-heartedly embraces. Refreshingly, however, he doesn't insist that you use a complete NVA system, Dunn is happy for you to fit NVA equipment with a front-end or speakers from another firm, whatever he finds in your home in fact.
My resident system is real in the sense that I've assembled it for my own use and bought it mainly from retailers. It consists of Arcam Delta 170, Musical Fidelity Digilog, a home-brew passive preamp (see Audiophile December 1990), Albarry M408 Mark II monoblocks, Tannoy DC2000 speakers, Monster Interlink 500, and biwired Audioquest Green speaker cables.
Since NVA does not make a digital front end, the plan was for me to compare Time to sum up. Had I been a real customer I might well have bought the NVA equipment. It works very well indeed with CD. My only real reservation was the feeling that drummers really do hit drums harder than the NVA was allowing them to. It's not an overall dynamic range thing, it's simply a lack of grunt (away Setright!), which Richard says he could fix by using a different set of cables with the bass/midrange amp. He claims there would be trade-off in transparency, however. Within the terms of the Challenge, this was a failing, because my objection could not be refuted within the timescale allotted.
Sonically, it's a qualified victory to NVA. Like all things in hi-fi, it's a compromise, but a highly workable one. At the end of the day, the whole system is very good value, and comes from a designer whose priorities very closely match my own. What's more, NVA gear certainly attains Richard's stated aim of presenting a highly detailed, musical sound. The NVA system could occupy space in my living room easily.
Unconventional as it may be, this is a perfect valid way of assessing the gear. The last thing you'll have is a pushy salesman who doesn't know the equipment he's demonstrating. When he visited my flat, Richard was scrupulously fair, allowing the equipment to do the talking. He's very confident of his products, and rightly so. Richard also intends that the same high standards will be adhered to by any of his dealers when they are setting up a Challenge. I was very pleasantly surprised - blast and botheration!
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Dave Rosam, this reviewer sold the Albarry monos the next month and bought the prototype TDS monos off me.
