Audia Flight Classic combo (pre +FL100)

I am going to write about these two products that have been in production in different version for many years. They are mine. I didn't buy them but I did an exchange with a friend of mine that was in love with my Shindo Labs that I was not using too much since its power didn't allowed me to play around with difficult loudspeakers, and then because i like to change like many of us. I found strange that in all these years I have never been pushed to own these two since they are absolutely beautiful made, on pair with gears costing three four times their price and they are nice looking too to my taste since they have a nice understaded elegance. I think I have never had been pushed to own them because as many of us my brain has been deviated by what we have red when we were at the begining of our hifi sickness. We all started dreaming of Mark Levinson, Conrad Johnson, Audio Research and so on. We all, in a small part of our heart like to own legends. With time and with the opportunity maybe we bought legends and we sold legends so many times that we don't care about legends any more and sadly enough we realise that legend or not legend we keep buying and selling hifi stuff. So we start having another look and relation with legendary makers. But they indeed keep on exercing a certain magnetism in our heart.

Audia Flight is not legend but it is built like a legend and expecially it sound like a legend.

This is why I am going to write about this combo expecially because is also very cheap in comparison to legend. First let's go to the final conclusion. The FL100 is better then a Pass Labs class A that I have, better then a Accuphase Class A of a very close friend of mine better then one of my Lamm. I avoid saying models since all of them cost much more then the FL100. The conclusio is: it is rare to find an amplifier on its level and to find something better you have to invest a fortune.

The preamplifier is also extremely good but it is so undemostrative that is very difficult to have an idea of it. Just when you compare it to legend you realise that it does things less well but that most of the time is more balanced and makes you feel much less the need of adding something or changing something.

But the most annoying thing for this combo is that to really appreaciate them is an impossible cable matching war for most of us. In the years I have collectioned a really enourmous ammount of cable that goes from the mid level to the if I tell you the price the first to be ashamed is myself. With all the cable you give them their sound change like with any component but you don't have neither the mesure nor the suggestion or prelude of their exceptional status. You just think they are very good. I gave them an all Cardas menu, a MIT one a Tara Labs an VDH a Synergistic Research a Kimber, but was at the last menu that they showed a very special a rare combination of power, stability, solidity and delicate finesse at the same time with an extremely correct sense of timing. When I talk about cable menu is because I gave them the same maker of cable even for the power chords and this is essential even if you don't want to believe it or to accept it. The last cable menu was difficult for me and was impossible without some friends of mine since I didn't have all the cable of these maker: Wireworld. So when I had all silver cabling from Wireworld they become legend.This is a mistery to me and I would like to know how the maker built them and if he knows it or maybe he never heard his amplifiers sounding at this level.

Now I try to identify the single caracter of the two units.

I will start from the pre that is the most difficult to define.

The Audia Flight pre is a work of art. For the price is built extremely well. It has an elegant understated look that is classical in the best way.

The sound is...actually you can make it sound the way you want. It is like salt. You can put almost everywhere. The only thing you have to be careful is the quantity.

Depending on the cables used it can sound firm, rich, fast, ritmic, open, layered or upfront or spacially organized and so on. It is extremely rare to ear such changes in a preamp and this brought me to the conclusion that this preampli must be the closest possible to be a neutral affair. And this is an extremely good thing. I say that nobody can affirm not to like this preamp. Just because if it say so it means he just listened to with what he had on hands and jumped to this conclusion.

With the standard power cord it is an accetable performance, a little compressed but pleasent nevertheless. But the pre is not compressed at all. You are earing the power cable!
Then you try a VDH Mainsserver and it opens up; the timbres gain colours and so on. Then you try with a Wireworld Silver Electra and the sound becomes darker, much more silence between the instruments and more details and more depth but a little less natural flow. And so on. With interconnecting cable is the same situation. The Pre will make you realize that they are not many very good cable around regardless of their price. And this is a profound truth.

A good compromise for cost perfrmance is the Wireworld Electra 7 as power cord and the Wireworld eclipse 7 interconnect. To be used togheter. With this preampli is very clear you must use a coherence in the choice of cabling. When you match well the power cord with the interconnect one it will sound more accomplished and balanced.

The sound you must get from this preamp is fast but not hurried, stable and firm but with a very difficult to describe delicate touch that makes it in some way inviting. Very, very few preamp have this very difficult to describe quality. Being neutral and inviting at the same time.

Negative point: the set editing meny. This allow you to write the name of the source you are using in the display. Like if you are using a LP12 in the 4 input you can write Linn LP12 in the display. You are going to do it, but you will get frustrated doing it!

I can affirm this preamp to be on a same level of a Mark Levinson 326 that I had for a couple of years and that is much more expensive. It propose you the impossible to define inviting touch, that the ML does not have loosing a little on the bass department that is slightly less powerful.

The FL100 amplifier:

to be continued...

Grandinote Celio (latest version).

This is the latest version of the musically beautiful phono stage from Grandinote. Yes I was very, very interested in listening to it since its former version was the only phono stage I have heard that I could have lived with after my Lamm even though it had some weak point, not musically though but in its application. So I really was extremely interested to discover if it was improved in its conception and esecution.

First thing I will start from a building point: inside things are much better then the previous one and the lay out is well organized and tidy enough. Not the NASA style construction or the clearly hand made with visible cables nicely organized that I like but nice and behond reproch. Nothing to be in love with or to be repelled from. The outside changed a little. The faceplate has a slightly different design. I found the faceplate of the previous design a little more elegant, this one a little more understated as the global size of the unit that is less deep and definetly easier to fit in a shelf.

In the back of the unit things are almost the same except the loading selectors that take place of the rca connector to which you had to connect resistive plugs to get the desired setting for your cartridge.

So I connected the new unit to my system. After half an hour of playing I sat to have a listen. Even though the unit was brand new I could easily ear some improvements and differences. The improvements in comparison from the previous version were strange enough to be put in words in an anylytical way but they were clear nevertheless. If I have to put it simple I would say the sound is somehow more solid and there is less of a kind of oxigenation and light behond the interpreter that was typical of the previous unit but that could give a feeling of a certain fragility. 

This light within the sound is still there but in a lesser degree. I found this thing to be a good choice since the Celio sound this way was more consistent and predictable.

The beautiful layer of shading in the high frequencies is still there, the natural timing is there as was in the previous version. Its tonal colour is very slightly darker. And the separation of instruments is slightly better.

Let's go to the weak point of the first version. loading. In the previous version I have noted that loading the Celio was slowing its sound and expecially making it loosing its magic characteristics. Loading the Celio was transforming it in almost another phonostage and loosing its magic. This latest version is more constant. You can load with the selectors switchs at its back and it will keep it personality much more then the previous version. Still I prefer it at 47kOhm but with certain cartridges if I need I can load it at 1000 and even at 500 or 300 and being happy. Still with less then 300 load the Celio changes character and becomes an excellent phono preamp but looses its particular magic. This is also a strong improvement over the previous version since with the previous version I was feeling almost mandatory the use of open loading at 47Khom.

The Grandinote Celio is the only pre phono that I have tried that could replace without any regreat my Lamm LP2. I put them on the very same level. I cannot really say which one is better.

It has a very low noise floor, it has all the hifi characteristics you are after with a special liquidity and light.
I would like to say more of this light from within the instruments: it is not a real thing. It means it is not that real instruments generally have it, only few instruments have it. It is something that has to do with the reproduction of the medium high frequencies. VDH products, at least the top range tends to go after this effect, with more or less success. Few good 300B amplifiers have it too. It is something extremly difficult to achieve and I feel it is something that when you ear properly esecuted is fast addicting. I love this effect. We loose so much during the recording that it is easy to feel you need something more. What I mean is: I did few years of recordings, not in a professional way, but for myself and for friends musicians. Even in the monitoring after you have recorded for example a Bosendorfer you don't get it right. I have to say that you don't get it right even earing it in the recording room since the recording room generally is not a nice room for the instument to perform. So when it is perfect recorded you have the sound of an instrument playing in a dead room, the sound is not what you are used to ear. I don't like it. So for this reason some magic tricks that only hifi masters can achieve with experience or with luck let you enjoy the music much more then if you were earing it in a studio. At least for me since there are some people that say that is in the studio with the master recording where you ear the best reproduction. Sometimes these hifi masters are capable of putting some lost life in the reproduction of the instruments. Of course I think this added life is a kind of distortion. The big problem is that we have a lot of distorsions that will add in the hifi chain so the outcome is impossible to forecast for this reason it is a question of matching the right gears togheter.
The new Celio version still has this light, as I previously said, but it is less evident. It is not of a golden colour, it is not the light of a sunset but of a dawn.
Since this caracterisitc is less pronunced in this latest version it makes the Celio more costant in its performance. You tend to have its characteristics with a far larger load choice.
With the previous version charging the Celio (thing that makes the sound darker in any setting and with any phono preamp) was making you immediately loose that kind of glowing ligth that you had a t 47Khom so the Celio was immediately changing the way it was presenting the music at you. In the new version since this "glowing" is less evident at open load and balanced with the other characteristics of the music reproduction, when you charge it down you don't have that kind of loosing a good thing you had with the previous unit.

The Celio is a wonderful product. It is more then an excellent hifi product: it is an excellent music instrument. It is capable of giving life to the reproduction of music.
Very few hifi products of any price are capable or were capable of doing it.

PS: peculiar thing in the Celio use: after you power it give it at least five minutes before listening to some music if not strange sound will come out of it and one channel will fade away and you will think something is wrong. For its design its transitors need to polarise and get stable. The fist version was muted in the first 5-10 minutes, so no sound was coming out of it, but in this last version sound comes out even after 2 minutes but it will sound wrong and like something broke down. So don't listen to it after turning it on for at least 5 minutes. You can leave the unit on all the time. It uses very, very low electricity.