Display
Contents
You already read it in the title. The 9000N sounds Neutral. But the right kind of neutral. Not cold, analytical or sharp. Dull, monotonous or colourless. No, it’s a device that gets out of the way. It sounds open and smooth and, with the Minimum Phase filter, surprisingly organic and analogue. No, not like a top record player but it’s amazing how mature digital has become these days. Audiolab has years of experience making dacs and they keep getting better at it. The built-in dac is downright great. Coming from a spoiled reviewer, that’s saying something.
As mentioned, the filters on the 9000N are quite decisive. This is not what we experienced in the pas, but here they really differ. We noticed this when we reconnected the 9000N after two weeks when it had been taken out for another review. We no longer had a connection with the music and were not amused. After half an hour or so we came to our senses and realised that the 9000N had returned to the default filter and that one just doesn’t do it for us. Something to keep in mind.
Listening to the Audiolab 9000N
Lucinda Chua made her amazing “Yian” album in 2023. An intriguing album made by an intriguing musician. We are truly touched while listening to opening track “Golden”. Her voice floats between the speakers. We notice every sigh and are entranced by her pronunciation. The silences in the song are also very meaningful and we are a bit blown away by the performance.
A lucky find this year was ‘Once upon a Poolside’ by The National featuring Sufjan Stevens from on the album “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” . The menacing character of the song comes through all the way. The track is rendered without sharpness and we sit mesmerised as we listen to the lyrics of this beautiful song.
On Andrew Bird’s “I Cover the Waterfront”, his band is nicely seperated and everyone has their own place on an imaginary stage. The beautiful instrumentation, especially the double bass and violin, sound spot on. The drumstrokes are another striking element on this song and clearly audible through the Audiolab 9000N. This streamer does so much right.
Belgian band Big Scary makes great music. The song ‘The End of the Road’ from their new album “Wing” possesses a delicious bass line that palpably reached the listening chair, something that rarely happens through our Revels. Low notes are rendered with impact and the Audiolab 9000N is great at unravelling all the layers in the music. Lovely.
Compare
We normally use a modified, read new clocks, Sonnet Hermes streamer and combine it with the widely acclaimed Sonnet Morpheus d/a converter. So you can say there is a certain synergy here as well. This Sonnet combo is a lot more expensive, yet the Audiolab 9000N stayed in the set for weeks just because the playback was on the same high level. Different, but at equal. That non-digital sound, the correct tonality if you will, is particularly striking. It delivers a relaxed, mature reproduction of music where just about everything sounds right. And that is far from easy with streaming. The longer we listen, the more we are convinced of the absolute class of this device.
Ik heb deze speler kort na de introductie gekocht en ben er heel gelukkig mee. Wat me wel van het hart moet, is dat Audiolab geen erg stevige RCA-aansluitingen monteert. In vergelijking tot andere spelers is hier nog wel wat te winnen. T.a.v. de prijs, ik heb deze speler in december 2023 al voor minder dan 2000 euro als retourdeal kunnen kopen…er zijn dus mogelijkheden