Review for the Sistema
(Rudistor NX-02 and Ultrasone PROLine 2500 Headphones)
A Funny thing happened on the way to the (audio) forum, no this is not the Richard Lester directed flick with Buster Keaton, about the laziest Roman slave trying to purchase his freedom, but it does a include a certain Italian amp manufacturer, after receiving some email about getting a Rudistor amp (
www.rudistor.com) and one of their headphones reviewed from Ultrasone (
www.ultrasoneusa.com ), namely this one,
http://www.ultrasoneusa.com/sistema.html. We did a bit of communicating back and forth, and after a while I had a lovely package at my doorstep, in all its brown glory, I meant the box not the amp. Having opened the box I found a nice looking amp with a glossy blue faceplate, and with blue being my favorite color, I was off to a good start, did I mention that the headphones were also blue, I was ecstatic. After a couple minutes I was ready to go and had it up all hooked up to my modest little setup.
My setup includes a modest EMU404 with a software player of Foobar2k in KS Mode bypassing the mixer software – High Quality Nitrogen Interconnects specially made by Head-Fi forum user eric343 from the soundcard to the amp, and although I did have another amp to compare it to, I won’t get into that here. What I will give you is my unbiased opinion on what I found is one the great setups that’s out there from a commercial company that is easily attainable now.
A little about me, and what I’ve done, I had a little music background, was in the school band from elementary all the way up through high school, playing clarinet and the alto saxophone, it’s given me a pretty good idea of what instruments should sound like in a live environment. I also have the luxury of being in the Seattle area, which gives me chance to see a lot of the musical acts that pass through here on occasion. Be it Rock, Classical, or Opera. I’ve also have had the privilege of having listened to pretty much every headphone amp from your SinglePower MPX3 to your Electrostatic KGSS with an Orpheus HE90 headphone and the Omega2’s, only the Sony Qualia have eluded me, which I hear people say they either love or hate.
Some Quick Impressions
Opening the case and I found some good choice components, Rudistor went with the musical sounding Elna Capacitors and a pair of Analog devices OP275 op-amps, very impressive. As for the sound, fast, punchy, and spatial, instruments placement is easily identifiable in and around your headspace, instruments sound musical and real as opposed synthesized or artificial.. The PROLine 2500 headphones are certainly very comfy, on par with my Sennheiser HD580s, love the swiveling earcups, which can be pulled up or turned laid face down like your Grado headphones.
Music Listening
After grabbing a cup of tea and sitting down in front of my computer, and looking at my fairly large music collection, I started picking out some of my favorite music from a variety of different genres. After listening to a little bit of rock, classical, and psy-trance, I was thoroughly impressed by what I heard, its safe to say that I was going to be re-listening to quite a bit of my music collection again.
Social Distortion – Mommy’s Little Monster
Telling Them – The opening guitar lick to the guitar riffs fronted by Mike Ness’ vocals makes this one of my favorite tracks on this album along with the opening track of The Creeps, put the volume up and have your own little personal rock concert, one of the important things I find a good amp has to do is to keep that instrument separation in the face of different music genre’s along with tight fast responsiveness, slower solid states and some tube amps have trouble with this resulting in muddied sound that seemingly affects other frequencies. The PROlines do well with this track, giving a nice spacious surround sound that makes feel like your hearing these guys live in your own little venue. Everything is easily controlled no muddled sound anywhere, very cohesive and tight, wonderful bottom end, a high point in my book.
Shpongle – Are You Shpongled
Divine Moments of Truth album version and live version: my de facto standard reference psy-trance track for that trip factor, there’s so much happening in this track that it defies normal reasoning, with an infectious beat with some tribal and party effects thrown in the mix, you get your bass, mid and highs fix in one shot. The PROlines are fun with this track with their surround sound effect. Sounds are clearly distinguishable in their space, nice smooth decay, something else I find interesting is that the NX-02 seem to be nicely tuned for the PROLine 2500’s, the smooth decay and black background lends its self well to the PROlines S-Logic effect and neutrality which sounds spacious while still maintaining that cohesive detail, it balances them out quite nicely. Oh and did I mention how great the bass is on the PROlines, its fantastic on this track, something I’ve noticed about the PROLines is their great bottom end and midrange, and a flat neutral sound which is a good thing, no one thing really jumps out at you with theses cans, I can probably attribute this to the sound staging effect of the S-logic, which is just a different flavor of headphone with an emphasis on surround sound for the headphone listener.
Arvo Part -- Tabula Rasa
A favorite composer of mine, known for his minimalist style, his music needs to heard to be believed, absolutely ethereal sounding. Tabula Rasa – Ludus – beautiful violin work here, one thing that Arvo does is make use of sweet silence between his passages adding to that lingering ethereal decay before he delves more deeply into his masterpiece. Much like rock music, if the amp is not fast, detailed or cohesive enough you’ll find a big mix of frequencies meshed together, fortunately the amp delivers the goods and we get a nice orchestral piece to listen to center front row seat, with our violins clearly distinguishable. The PROLines do well and make this a more personal piece, I had some Sennheiser HD580s to compare to, and while the Senns do sound very sweet and just as detailed, the PROLines take you closer to the music, because of their surround sound effect and they are seemingly more cohesive in certain musical passages especially with several violins being played in close quarters.
Kenny Garrett – Songbook
I had a chance to see Kenny last month playing at the Jazz Alley here in Seattle, and let me tell you something, I have never seen a better saxophonist Live, my friend says I still have to see Branford Marsalis to get a clearer picture, ill take him up on that when ever he rolls into town around here, but live, its that magical second to none experience, especially from a jazz great, its spontaneous fairy dust on your ears. Kenny for those that don’t know was Miles Davis’ saxophonist during his last years, and it shows, pick up a copy of his album Songbook and listen.
Listening to “Before its Time to Say Goodbye” off Songbook, the piano, Kenny’s saxophone, the careful brushing and light tap on the cymbals is clearly heard. On 2 Down & 1 Across you got a fast tempo, piano is blaring to your left, drummer is pedaling his bass drum and tapping his cymbals, bassist is strumming his beat down, and you got Kenny on main stage blaring solos, the NX02 and PROLine handle this track nicely, never does it get congested, S-Logic surround sound compliments that near live experience and keeps things cohesive as usual.
Dead Can Dance – Toward the Within
Dead Can Dance is what I truly call world music, their influences are many and you can’t quite put a finger on it, but you love it. This is album is no doubt one of favorites if not my favorite from them, the live setting is great, and there’s DVD-video of their performance available as well, poorly recorded however. Lisa Gerard sings the female vocals in DCD, some of you may remember her singing on the Gladiator soundtrack, a great voice with amazing range, what comes out on the NX02 through the PROLine headphones is wonderful. The size of the venue can be heard coming through the headphones, definitely a great album for headphones, with a nice airy open soundstage, listening to this music transports you to another time and place, the PROLines definitely project the music in and around the listener, and the sound, neutral, nice emphasis on the low end and midrange vocals, I do prefer the Senn’s here a little, as it sounds a bit richer in highs, the PROlines do however have them beat in soundstage and bass, and it does a great job at resolving that inner detail, an excellent comparison.
Jean-Luc Ponty – Live at the Semper Opera
An exquisite recording lent to me by a friend. I was not familiar with Ponty’s music until recently, but I did know he played with Zappa on a couple albums. Ponty’s use of the electronic violin in with jazz fusion is wholly original and from what I heard he was pretty much the sole pioneer in this area. His music reminds me a lot of what Miles was doing during the 70’s with fusion, after listening to several of Ponty’s albums you can pick up his distinct style. The album Live at the Semper Opera is a revelation and one well recorded live album, its one of the few albums where the musician and the music sound actually 3-dimensional, the PROlines and the NX amp mate well into bringing Ponty into my room, the cymbals are especially delicate sounding, and the overall tonality and cohesiveness is spot on, drumming is nice and punchy, the reverb on the bass drum is clearly heard.
Conclusions:
What you’ll find in this package is a good amplifier with a good mix of high quality components, excellent build quality, perfectly matched with a pair of PROLine 2500 S-Logic Surround Sound Headphones; your answer to a private music listening or movie watching experience. Reasonably priced at $1199.00 only from
www.ultrasoneusa.com , not a bad deal considering this includes the headphones and the amp. I’ve heard more popular and expensive amps costing hundreds of dollars more with no headphones as part of the package so it goes without saying that I like what I hear as well as what I get. Rudistor is certainly one of the few headamp manufacturers that are out there making great solid states, I could easily say that Rudistor is in my list as one of the top 3 amp manufacturers delivering on both price and performance, a list which may fluctuate should I ever get to review one of their top tier amps, *smiles*.
Review of Ultrasone Sistema Package -Rudistor NX-02 amp and Ultrasone Proline 2500's
