Triode User
Member of the Trade: WAVE High Fidelity
Did you get to hear the Zenith Statement compared to the SE?
Yes I did. Innuos and Fanthorpes had a joint room and Innuos were repeating the SE and Statement comparison that they had done at Munich.
The SE and Statement were feeding into a Chord Dave. When swopped from the SE to the Statement I could hear a clear difference and which was immediately noticeable. Everything was clearer, more resolved and this applied all the way from deep bass through to the top end. It was a very impressive demonstration.
However, I was interested in how it might sound in my system and so I had taken my Blu2 complete with my WAVE High Fidelity BNC cables to be able to connect a Blu2 to the Dave in the demonstation at the show.
With the Blu2 and WAVE cables now in the system the difference between the SE and Statement was somewhat more subtle (at least to my ears) but it was still there. The Statement had cleaner and more defined bass, the mids and treble were more enjoyable. The whole presentation of the music was just more enjoyable.
On a purely personal basis I think that if I was to rank the combinations I would put them in this order.
Best.
Innuos Statement feeding Blu2 and Dave with WAVE bnc cables.
Second place.
Innuos SE feeding Blu2 and Dave with WAVE bnc cables.
Third place.
Innuos Statement feeding Dave.
For me this just reinforces that a well sorted Blu2/Dave combination is very difficult to beat no matter what the source. I was also left wondering whether the cables between the Blu2 and Dave were filtering out other stuff from getting into the Dave apart from the RF generated by the Blu2. This could explain the more subtle difference between SE and Statement when the WAVE bnc cables with their Rf filtering effect are in the system.
Overall though, which ever way you look at it, the Statement does improve on the SE. That is quite an achievement because the SE is a class act.