Not watching the performance: in it

I thought the MA9500 already gave me a huge soundstage, and it did, wide and colossal. What I did not know was that I had been sitting in the audience the whole time.

The C12000 and the MC611 monoblocks took that same soundstage and made it truly three-dimensional. Wider, yes, but the real change was depth and layering, musicians placed behind and beside each other with real distance between them. You are not watching the performance, you are in it.

Imaging became surgical, each musician in an exact space with air around them. And underneath it all, the system is dead quiet, so quiet that you forget you are listening to a system at all. Without that silence, I do not believe the depth would hold.

I had expected 5 to 10%, if I was lucky, a small step for big money. What I got does not fit in a percentage, because percentages describe more of the same. This was a change of position, from a seat facing the stage to a place in the venue, along with the artists.

You can measure a soundstage in width. You cannot measure where it puts you, and that is what I paid for.