Which is to say, sonic differences, large and small, are there for observation, but they aren’t insisted upon. Instead, the Zandens seem to find a dollop of natural musical sweetness in whatever balance a recording, record player, or DAC presents them, making everything not just more listenable but more enjoyable and realistic.
I don’t know how Yamada has accomplished this trick, but it is a helluva neat one, reminiscent (for a lot less money) of “unique circuitry.” (Though he guards the secrets of his circuits closely—to the extent of masking and potting the parts on his triple-shielded circuit boards—Yamada is in print saying that, after decades of research and experiment, he has discovered “correlations between the realistic balance of music and the phase components embedded in the audio signal.” Examples of phase anomalies are inconsistencies in the recording equalization curves of LPs and high- frequency phase distortions caused by the low-pass filters in digital gear. Only by fully accounting for these phase anomalies, says he, can music be reproduced with the “utmost fidelity.”) Still and all, you likely won’t be impressed by reading the 8120’s spec sheet. Same for the tube-rectified, zero-feedback, 5687WB-based 3100 linestage preamplifier.
Once you audition the pair, however, your opinion will change.
This Zanden amplifier and preamplifier are one of those rare combos that somehow manages to be transparent to the sources ahead of it (and the speakers behind it) while at the same time putting a consistently lovely and lifelike spin on timbres. This is not to say that the Zandens are overtly “dark,” “warm,” “beautiful,” “liquid,” or “rich” sounding. They are not inherently any of these things. Like so much other top-rank Japanese audio gear, the Zanden pair is essentially neutral in balance —neither “bottom up” (i.e., dark) nor “top down” (i.e., bright), to quote Raidho’s Michael Børresen yet again. As a result, differences in recording, speaker, and source balance are always clearly reproduced by the Zanden duo. Not only do RCAs sound like RCAs, Deccas like Deccas, Mercs like Mercs, but the same specific differences in miking and mastering among individual RCAs, Deccas, and Mercurys that one hears through the highest-transparency, highest-resolution gear are also clearly reproduced by the Zandens. And yet, at the same time, the 8120 and 3100 what Edwin Rijnveld managed to do in his swooningly beautiful-sounding yet startlingly realistic Siltech SAGA System.
I’m mentioning the SAGA electronics in the same breath with the Zanden 8120 and 3100 because they share several other qualities beyond a see-into transparency that is not bought at the price of lovely natural timbre. For one, like the SAGA, the Zanden duo doesn’t sound “tubey” in the fat, old- fashioned, loads-of-second-order-harmonic-distortion sense. It is quick and clean and quiet and quite incredibly finely detailed, with superbly defined bass (perhaps even better here than the Siltech).
For example, in Britten’s Young Person’s Guide (from Reference Recording’s Britten’s Orchestra) at the close of the Allegro maestoso that announces the majestic Purcell theme upon which the variations that follow are based, the bass drum is struck sharply—to help signal the end of the thematic exposition and the start of the variations. Provided your electronics don’t stumble over transients or muddy up the bottom octaves, this dramatic percussive punctuation mark should sound crisp, clean, and exciting—with beater, drumhead, and shell clearly audible in series.
What may not be clear—or as powerful—is the drum roll that follows this fortissimo thwack, like a little flourish as the curtain is raised. Some electronics—particularly some tube electronics, and particularly in the bass octaves—need figuratively to “catch their breath” after large expenditures of dynamic energy such as that initial drum thwack. As a result, notes that follow hard upon in the same register can sound a bit smeared or compressed, kind of like the electronic version of woofer “overhang.”
Despite the fact that they’re powered by tubes, the Zanden 8120 and 3100 have none of this overhang-like effect. The drum roll is as clean and clear and distinctly full and natural in timbre as the fortissimo thwack that preceded it. It wasn’t all that many years ago that tube gear simply
