Octave Phono Module Phonostage

Jacob Heilbrunn has posted a review of the Octave Phono Module phonostage ($4500 plus input modules) at AVGuide. His conclusions:

But the Octave is the complete package at a lot lower price. I’m not sure personally if I wouldn’t hanker for a mite more golden bloom. But the Octave achieves exactly what it sets out to accomplish. It creates an amalgam of tubes and solid-state that doesn’t really land solidly in either camp. Instead, it is so neutral and clear that it seem to provide an open window onto that sonic landscape I mentioned earlier. It doesn’t force you to focus on each nuance, but each nuance is, nonetheless, present. It doesn’t assault you with its dynamic power, but it possesses great dynamic power.

In sum, the Octave is a somewhat bewildering piece of equipment. It never occurred to me that tubes could be this preternaturally quiet and resolute. Yes, tubes can be quiet. But the Octave went beyond that. It was lowering the noise floor below what I would assume tubes produce—a tribute, I suspect, to the ingenuity of the power-supply design. To my mind, the Octave is thus another example of the tremendous sonic strides now taking place in the high end. Such superlative sound at this cost would have been inconceivable a decade ago. If you want to scale the musical octaves, Octave is a wonderful place to start.

You can read the full review here.