In the Hangar
It was with great anticipation that I waited for the F-117 Nighthawk to become available for me to review. I had heard the prototype at Ray’s place, and I was pretty impressed. He had it running with his mighty VPI HRX, and the rest of his reference rig, and the vinyl I heard through it sounded excellent. However, I am not all that familiar with the sound of his rig, and so I was really looking forward to hearing it in mine. The product has a lot of intrinsic appeal – small, inexpensive, flexible – and at least from what I had heard at Ray’s – very good sound.
When Ray brought over the first review loaner, I thought it sounded good, but just a bit bright. Ray ended up agreeing with this assessment, which he had heard from some others, and made a slight change to the design before production. All my comments below refer to the second review sample, not the first one.
The pictures belie it’s very small size – just 1”H x 4.5” W x 3.5” D:
The F-117 MUST be used running off its battery. It does not output sound when the charger is connected. Considering it will play for a week straight when used 8 hours per day, this hardly seems like an issue to me. I just kept the charger nearby.
The Nighthawk has front panel adjustments for cartridge loading and gain – which is a godsend for moving-coil cartridge owners. For most moving-magnet cartridges, there is only one choice – lowest gain setting, and 47KOhm loading. But moving coil cartridges come in all sorts of gains, and will sound pretty different depending on the load. In fact, it was possible to get a bunch of different shadings of sound by changing the loading – the lower the loading, the generally softer the sound. The Benz LP-S sounded best to me at 500 ohms, but some might prefer 100 ohms – the sound was a tiny bit on the light and lively side at 500 ohms – it was a bit on the dark and lush side at 100. The nice thing – with the controls on the front panel, you can literally change this on the fly from one record to another, if desired. In any case, it is hard to imagine the cartridge that the F-117 could not handle.
On the Runway
My analog front end has taken a pretty major step forward this year. I am now using a VPI Scoutmaster with a Benz Micro LP-S cartridge. My normal phono preamp is an Audio Electronics (Cary) PH1-DJH, with Mullard ECC35 and Tung-Sol 12AU7 tubes. I use a vintage Denon moving-coil step-up transformer. I think the sound from that set-up is, quite frankly, astonishing. So it was going to be interesting to see how the Nighthawk would sound in that context, being fed to my Cary SLP-05 preamp, Sunfire Signature II power amp, and B&W Nautilus 800 Signature speakers. The question is – could a battery-powered, tiny, $700 phono preamp acquit itself well in the context of that fairly high-end system?
I did also try the Nighthawk using my other vinyl rig: Denon DP-59L > Clearaudio Maetsro Wood > Audio GD Phoenix > Dynaudio BM5A active Monitors /HifiMan HE-5 headphones. The Clearaudio is a MM cartridge which I find has a warm, forgiving nature generally. So I used a very neutral low-output MC and a warm high-output MM for the test.
The F-117 was very quiet in my rig, as one would hope for from a battery-powered device – this at least should be one advantage, and I found that it was. It was not dead quiet, but no phono preamp has been dead quiet in my system – in spite of the fact that I have a dedicated 20 amp circuit just for the stereo, there is some very low level of AC noise in my system that no amount of filtering will remove, especially when we are talking about high-gain phono preamps. But the noise from the F-117 was only noticeable at the top end of my preamp’s volume control – nothing that would even be heard at all at even loud playback levels.
Takeoff
In general, I thought the F-117 was a very impressive sounding little device. It has a very clean, basically transparent sound. The mids overall were transparent and open, and very well fleshed-out. Holly Cole’s voice on “The Train Song” was very cleanly rendered. The mids are not overly lush in and of themselves, and I would not describe the F-117 as "ripe", but the neither was the presentation overly dry. It was maybe just a very small touch dry, but not in a way that interfered with the music. The treble was extended and nicely detailed, and pretty neutrally presented. On my 180g issue of Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky”, the wide variety of instruments on “Silence and I” was naturally and engagingly reproduced. The charachter of the treble was clean, and quite neutral. Again, it was not overly sweet. In general, actually, it was pretty hard to assign the F-117 much of a character – I thought it was quite neutral sounding. And further, if you fuss with the loading, you can shade the sonic flavor somewhat, so there is a lot of flexibility to be had.
Dynamics were excellent – the sound from the Nighthawk was punch where required. Bass performance was very good. The deep bass was especially impressive – very much so for a small battery powered amp. The deep bass in “TeakBois” from Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe’s self-titled LP was very impressive (this is a GREAT record which is incredibly well recorded, and has been a reference for me lately). In general the bass was tight and well defined. Ray is a master at coaxing thunderous bass from very small battery amps, and the F-117 is certainly also very good in this regard. I sometimes laugh when people think that Vinyl isn’t capable of delivering the bottom octaves well – in my rig, vinyl can shake the whole room with bass when called for by the recording. Several times during “It Doesn’t Matter” from Alison Krauss’s “So Long, So Wrong”, there are some just subterranean bass notes, and the Nighthawk plumbed these with vigor.
The soundstage was very well defined, being both wide and deep. Lateral image stability was very, very good. This is one area that I thought my reference phono amp was noticeably better, but that does not mean the F-117 was a slouch – I think the Cary is exceptional in this regard.
Overall, I thought the F-117 held its own very well in my system. Comparing it to my existing phono stage, however, was a bit challenging. When taken as a whole, amp + tubes + step-up, the cost of my existing “phono stage” is about 3 x that of the F-117. And of course in consideration of that, the F-117 was astonishing. That said, however, I have to admit that I preferred the sound of my phono stage. It has a magic and beauty to the midrange that I didn’t think the F-117 quite managed. While the Nighthawk is essentially neutral, but I think the sense of musical realism from my reference phono stage was better. But again, this is NOT an apples-to-apples comparison – a small, solid state, battery powered phono pre is going to have some limits compared to a large, expensive tube phono stage, to be sure. And this was the reality. None of that should in any way come across as a poke at the Nighthawk – considering the price and form factor, it sounds terrific – and has an incredible amount of flexibility. But it did not beat the pants off my more expensive tubed phono preamp – not that it should be expected to. The PH1-DJH was a little better sounding overall – or perhaps looked at another way, I like its sound a little better – I think the Nighthawk is a little more strictly neutral, but the PH1-DJH is a little more transparent.
Landing
Taking the F-117 for what it is, however, its sound was nothing short of terrific, and never anything less that very enjoyable. For $700, it’s a great value, IMO, considering its sound and feature set. It’s very easy to recommend to someone coming from a budget phono preamp who wants to step up to the big leagues, or someone who already owns a world-class vinyl rig but wants a healthy measure of that sound in a second system. And with the Nighthawk’s loading and gain options, it will be able to pair well with far more cartridges than many phono preamps will. I owned two or three phono preamps in roughly this price range as I was ascending the performance curve in vinyl playback, and from memory at least, the RSA bests all of these, including the Monolithic Audio, which had the same gain and loading options and was very highly regarded when it was available. So I think Ray has a lot to be proud of here. While the Nighthawk didn’t shoot down it’s more than 2-3x the price competition, I do think it sets a new standard in under $1K phono preamps.
EDIT/UPDATE 2/26/10:
Ray called me about a week after this review and asked me to come over to his place, saying that he had made another change to the Nighthawk which he thought addressed the slightly dry midrange issue I had heard, an assessment that he indicated he basically agreed with. I did so, and agreed that in his system it seemed to do the trick. Bass was also deeper and firmer. But I needed to take it into my system to really get a feel for it in this regard.
So I did that, and I do think this last tweak takes the Nighthawk even higher. The bass on "Mesopotamia" from the EP by the B-52's of the same title was full and VERY tight and well defined, and Kate Pierson's vocals were not the least bit dry - they were rendered beautifully and transparently. My last reservations about it, which were very small to begin with, are now gone. Anyone auditioning a phono stage at any pricepoint would be wise to audition the Nighthawk, in my opinion. It's an outstanding performer.
It was with great anticipation that I waited for the F-117 Nighthawk to become available for me to review. I had heard the prototype at Ray’s place, and I was pretty impressed. He had it running with his mighty VPI HRX, and the rest of his reference rig, and the vinyl I heard through it sounded excellent. However, I am not all that familiar with the sound of his rig, and so I was really looking forward to hearing it in mine. The product has a lot of intrinsic appeal – small, inexpensive, flexible – and at least from what I had heard at Ray’s – very good sound.
When Ray brought over the first review loaner, I thought it sounded good, but just a bit bright. Ray ended up agreeing with this assessment, which he had heard from some others, and made a slight change to the design before production. All my comments below refer to the second review sample, not the first one.
The pictures belie it’s very small size – just 1”H x 4.5” W x 3.5” D:
The F-117 MUST be used running off its battery. It does not output sound when the charger is connected. Considering it will play for a week straight when used 8 hours per day, this hardly seems like an issue to me. I just kept the charger nearby.
The Nighthawk has front panel adjustments for cartridge loading and gain – which is a godsend for moving-coil cartridge owners. For most moving-magnet cartridges, there is only one choice – lowest gain setting, and 47KOhm loading. But moving coil cartridges come in all sorts of gains, and will sound pretty different depending on the load. In fact, it was possible to get a bunch of different shadings of sound by changing the loading – the lower the loading, the generally softer the sound. The Benz LP-S sounded best to me at 500 ohms, but some might prefer 100 ohms – the sound was a tiny bit on the light and lively side at 500 ohms – it was a bit on the dark and lush side at 100. The nice thing – with the controls on the front panel, you can literally change this on the fly from one record to another, if desired. In any case, it is hard to imagine the cartridge that the F-117 could not handle.
On the Runway
My analog front end has taken a pretty major step forward this year. I am now using a VPI Scoutmaster with a Benz Micro LP-S cartridge. My normal phono preamp is an Audio Electronics (Cary) PH1-DJH, with Mullard ECC35 and Tung-Sol 12AU7 tubes. I use a vintage Denon moving-coil step-up transformer. I think the sound from that set-up is, quite frankly, astonishing. So it was going to be interesting to see how the Nighthawk would sound in that context, being fed to my Cary SLP-05 preamp, Sunfire Signature II power amp, and B&W Nautilus 800 Signature speakers. The question is – could a battery-powered, tiny, $700 phono preamp acquit itself well in the context of that fairly high-end system?
I did also try the Nighthawk using my other vinyl rig: Denon DP-59L > Clearaudio Maetsro Wood > Audio GD Phoenix > Dynaudio BM5A active Monitors /HifiMan HE-5 headphones. The Clearaudio is a MM cartridge which I find has a warm, forgiving nature generally. So I used a very neutral low-output MC and a warm high-output MM for the test.
The F-117 was very quiet in my rig, as one would hope for from a battery-powered device – this at least should be one advantage, and I found that it was. It was not dead quiet, but no phono preamp has been dead quiet in my system – in spite of the fact that I have a dedicated 20 amp circuit just for the stereo, there is some very low level of AC noise in my system that no amount of filtering will remove, especially when we are talking about high-gain phono preamps. But the noise from the F-117 was only noticeable at the top end of my preamp’s volume control – nothing that would even be heard at all at even loud playback levels.
Takeoff
In general, I thought the F-117 was a very impressive sounding little device. It has a very clean, basically transparent sound. The mids overall were transparent and open, and very well fleshed-out. Holly Cole’s voice on “The Train Song” was very cleanly rendered. The mids are not overly lush in and of themselves, and I would not describe the F-117 as "ripe", but the neither was the presentation overly dry. It was maybe just a very small touch dry, but not in a way that interfered with the music. The treble was extended and nicely detailed, and pretty neutrally presented. On my 180g issue of Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky”, the wide variety of instruments on “Silence and I” was naturally and engagingly reproduced. The charachter of the treble was clean, and quite neutral. Again, it was not overly sweet. In general, actually, it was pretty hard to assign the F-117 much of a character – I thought it was quite neutral sounding. And further, if you fuss with the loading, you can shade the sonic flavor somewhat, so there is a lot of flexibility to be had.
Dynamics were excellent – the sound from the Nighthawk was punch where required. Bass performance was very good. The deep bass was especially impressive – very much so for a small battery powered amp. The deep bass in “TeakBois” from Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe’s self-titled LP was very impressive (this is a GREAT record which is incredibly well recorded, and has been a reference for me lately). In general the bass was tight and well defined. Ray is a master at coaxing thunderous bass from very small battery amps, and the F-117 is certainly also very good in this regard. I sometimes laugh when people think that Vinyl isn’t capable of delivering the bottom octaves well – in my rig, vinyl can shake the whole room with bass when called for by the recording. Several times during “It Doesn’t Matter” from Alison Krauss’s “So Long, So Wrong”, there are some just subterranean bass notes, and the Nighthawk plumbed these with vigor.
The soundstage was very well defined, being both wide and deep. Lateral image stability was very, very good. This is one area that I thought my reference phono amp was noticeably better, but that does not mean the F-117 was a slouch – I think the Cary is exceptional in this regard.
Overall, I thought the F-117 held its own very well in my system. Comparing it to my existing phono stage, however, was a bit challenging. When taken as a whole, amp + tubes + step-up, the cost of my existing “phono stage” is about 3 x that of the F-117. And of course in consideration of that, the F-117 was astonishing. That said, however, I have to admit that I preferred the sound of my phono stage. It has a magic and beauty to the midrange that I didn’t think the F-117 quite managed. While the Nighthawk is essentially neutral, but I think the sense of musical realism from my reference phono stage was better. But again, this is NOT an apples-to-apples comparison – a small, solid state, battery powered phono pre is going to have some limits compared to a large, expensive tube phono stage, to be sure. And this was the reality. None of that should in any way come across as a poke at the Nighthawk – considering the price and form factor, it sounds terrific – and has an incredible amount of flexibility. But it did not beat the pants off my more expensive tubed phono preamp – not that it should be expected to. The PH1-DJH was a little better sounding overall – or perhaps looked at another way, I like its sound a little better – I think the Nighthawk is a little more strictly neutral, but the PH1-DJH is a little more transparent.
Landing
Taking the F-117 for what it is, however, its sound was nothing short of terrific, and never anything less that very enjoyable. For $700, it’s a great value, IMO, considering its sound and feature set. It’s very easy to recommend to someone coming from a budget phono preamp who wants to step up to the big leagues, or someone who already owns a world-class vinyl rig but wants a healthy measure of that sound in a second system. And with the Nighthawk’s loading and gain options, it will be able to pair well with far more cartridges than many phono preamps will. I owned two or three phono preamps in roughly this price range as I was ascending the performance curve in vinyl playback, and from memory at least, the RSA bests all of these, including the Monolithic Audio, which had the same gain and loading options and was very highly regarded when it was available. So I think Ray has a lot to be proud of here. While the Nighthawk didn’t shoot down it’s more than 2-3x the price competition, I do think it sets a new standard in under $1K phono preamps.
EDIT/UPDATE 2/26/10:
Ray called me about a week after this review and asked me to come over to his place, saying that he had made another change to the Nighthawk which he thought addressed the slightly dry midrange issue I had heard, an assessment that he indicated he basically agreed with. I did so, and agreed that in his system it seemed to do the trick. Bass was also deeper and firmer. But I needed to take it into my system to really get a feel for it in this regard.
So I did that, and I do think this last tweak takes the Nighthawk even higher. The bass on "Mesopotamia" from the EP by the B-52's of the same title was full and VERY tight and well defined, and Kate Pierson's vocals were not the least bit dry - they were rendered beautifully and transparently. My last reservations about it, which were very small to begin with, are now gone. Anyone auditioning a phono stage at any pricepoint would be wise to audition the Nighthawk, in my opinion. It's an outstanding performer.
