Primare separates.

This Saturday I happened to be at Absolute phase. I saw the Proac studio 140 wired to Primare separates. Pre and power with their cd player. Okay……..I thought; let me listen to these for sometime with an open mind. Prithvi warned me that they are going to sound harsh until they warm up for some 45 minutes or so. I thought I‘ll spend some time with these babies and settled down for a listen. Listening was mainly Blues-rock and Jazz. Speaker wiring was Nordost. Do not remember the interconnects.

The setup started sounding glassy and slightly harsh on startup and continued like this for atleast 20 minutes or so. This is not to say they sound very harsh on startup but sounded quite like ordinary solid state equipment with that synthetic cold feel to it with lot of punch and power. Quite unlike good solid state which can sound detailed without adding that glassy feel.

At about 20 minutes or so, it started sounding better and continued to improve and the setup started resolving inner details, the bass became more detailed, the glassy feel to the treble was gone, mids became clean. Basically the sound spectrum started to feel part of the same cloth rather than bits and parts. I agree to some other listeners on the forum that the amp has a “ lean “ signature to it. But this can be a boon to some audiophiles while not to the liking of some. Other than this observation, I felt the Primare separates are quite resolving, refined, dynamic sounding pieces of SS gear. They do not sound like SS amps trying to sound like tube gear either. Value for money and such issues are to be determined by individuals themselves.