Boy, that Bob Katz (grin)! A few other Big Sound reviewers had similar impressions, I know, but I think it's Bob Katz's legendary status and skills that swung some things around here. Good thing he's not given to strong opinions.... Okay, so basically, not only would he never pay cash money for the Moon Neo, I kinda think he would pay to never have to listen to it again! Without question the Neo is not for everyone. You have to be coming from a different perspective. Can I offer again a bit of that other perspective?
The 430HA is soft, smooth, euphonic, romantic, "tubey." It is not muffled. "Muffled" can imply that Simaudio fell short of clarity they otherwise would've liked to have achieved. I think they hit exactly the target between "syrupy" and "strident" they were aiming at. Without question, there is an attenuation of dynamics and tonality. However, it doesn't present itself as the result of a deficiency, but as a precise tuning toward a well defined goal. It's just that that goal is not absolute accuracy–but musicality–though that's harder to define.
Surely there will be passages where other amps reveal more satisfying detail, but there will be other passages where those same amps will come across harsh. Bob Katz is not wrong, that is accuracy, but in this context, it is at the expense of musicality. The sudden jolt of an insufficiently mastered dynamic swing or grating frequency takes you out of the music. And to get all trippy and meta, though that may be accurate to the printed master, it fails the intention of the artist who set out to make music not a sample of audio engineering. To quote a different Neo, "Whoa!"
Are there certain times when I wish for a harder hit and more bite? Absolutely, but the Neo is not uninvolving. Track over track, genre by genre, the 430HA has earned my respect for the judiciousness of its choices over the full range of material. Case in point, Alanis Morissette's classic, "Uninvited." You remember her voice right? You have to be safecracker specific to ensure its musicality. A hair to the right and its screeching and annoying; a hair to the left and it loses its piercing power. Get it wrong and she's just a woman whining on her way to the next Lilith fair in the 90s. Get it right and she is making a profound statement that penetrates to the shared sense of loneliness we all deny.
Musicality. And the 430HA gets it right.
All of this, I know, is so heavily system dependent and subjective. I may not pair the Neo with soft phones like planars. Also, my sonarworks EQ subtracts out midrange mud from the HD800, around 100Hz-1KHz, and I'm using pristine silver cabling from DHC. From my perspective, though, the 430HA has so many strengths, it's worth building a system around.
