Integrated Amp Reviews

Through the Pass XA25, Bernstein conducting the NYP in The Rite of Spring (24/96 FLAC, Sony Classical/Qobuz) sounded marginally less sweet and supple, more stern, more like Gergiev's interpretation. There were less subtle gradations of tone in the strings. less tasty textured harmonics. But dang! The XA25 really made Stravinsky dance. It forced me to feel the orchestra's rising and falling energy. Musical-poetical moods were transmitted less by the beauty of observed sounds than by sensations of vibrating energy. The Pass XA25 presents the energy of music with an Olga Korbut–like athleticism, so much so that it made the Cary SLI-100 seem a touch dreamy and somnambulistic.

Both amps drove my Harbeths with an attractive, refined clarity. Both amps could boogie. Both were equally nuanced. Both played symphonies, sonatas, and blues harmonicas in a natural, non–hi-fi manner. Neither sounded tubey or transistory.

But! Each amp presented in a strikingly different manner Sarasate's superseductive Carmen Fantasy, based on themes from Bizet's opera, as performed by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter on the compilation Simply Anne-Sophie, accompanied by James Levine conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (16/44.1 FLAC, Deutsche Grammophon/Tidal). Mutter brings bounties of charisma, intelligence, and fierce vivacity to every performance, and through the Harbeth M30.2 and Cary SLI-100, the Carmen Fantasy did precisely what it's supposed to do: It seduced me, filling my imagination with Romani caravans, strong spirits, and exotic dancers. Mutter's distinctive touch extends the sonic effect of every note, drawing attention to its poetic purpose. The Cary seemed to enhance that quality.

I then played the first recording of the Sarasate I'd ever responded to, one I love and know well: by Ruggiero Ricci, with Pierino Gamba conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (16/44.1 FLAC, Decca/Tidal). This fantastic recording was first released in 1960, on one of the greatest LPs of all time: Decca SXL 2197. I've played it often on million-dollar hi-fis with some of the world's finest cartridges, but even via Tidal streaming, Ricci's violin tone remains the gold standard for tear-your-skin-off texture and supersaturated string tones. But after an hour of repeated plays, I realized that Ruggiero's Carmen Fantasy on Tidal into Schiit's Yggdrasil Analog 2 DAC feeding the Cary SLI-100 via Triode Wire Labs Spirit interconnects and driving the Harbeth Monitor M30.2s via Auditorium 23 speaker cables was not quite tearing my skin off. For that, I need the LP. But it did speak volumes about the quality of my Cary-Harbeth pairing, which delivered almost the full-intensity Decca midrange, plus the searing beautiful highs. The masterful subtleties of Ricci's playing were easy to discern and savor.

Fully intoxicated, I now craved master violinist Joseph Szigeti playing his buddy Béla Bartók's Romanian Folkdances, arranged by Zoltán Székely, with the composer at the piano (16/44.1 FLAC, Hungaroton/Tidal). The SLI-100 displayed Szigeti's extreme sweet/sour, dark/light lyricism in a manner I thought impossible without 300B or 211 triode tubes. Bartók's piano and Szigeti's violin were relatively close-miked in this recording from January 1930, but vividly present and musically intense. I thought I could hear inside Szigeti's violin.

Performances like these masterpieces by Mutter, Ricci, and Szigeti are why our world needs fine amplifiers—like the Rogue Stereo 100, the Pass Labs XA25, the Cary SLI-100—and loudspeakers they can drive. Via the Harbeth M30.2s, Mutter's art ascended highest with the Pass Labs XA25, Ricci's violin was its most skin-tearing with the Rogue Stereo 100 wired in Triode, and Szigeti playing Bartók produced more tear-jerking texture and presence when the Harbeths were powered by the Cary SLI-100.

Remember that SRPP 6DJ8 tube I told you about? Its linear, high-transconductance "sensitivity" is quite possibly the reason Szigeti's violin and Bartók's piano sounded so dense and microtextured.

With headphones
My favorite headphone amp is no headphone amp. I know it's illegal, but I like connecting headphones directly to the speaker binding posts on the backsides of power amplifiers. The resulting combination of high-gain, high-voltage, direct connection to a big power supply and extra-low-output impedance seems to trick headphones into doing fantastic things, the most obvious of which are preternatural transparency and super-duper density. When the stars align, the sound seems to leave the headset entirely to float, unsettlingly ghostlike, out into the room around me. This surprising level of out-of-head transparency is very exciting, but takes some getting used to.

When I played Collocutor's Black Satin EP (16/44.1 FLAC, On the Corner/Tidal), the Cary SLI-100 did all of those exciting "illegal" things—with HiFiMan's Susvara headphones ($6000) connected not to the speaker outputs, but to the Cary's front-panel headphone jack! This surprised and impressed me. Integrated amps usually have headphone amps that sound like afterthoughts.

Needing more evidence, I put on Vlad the blind Russian's favorite: The Rite of Spring, with Gergiev conducting the Kirov, and listened again. It sounded much more see-inside transparent through the Susvaras than from the Harbeth M30.2s. The Rite completed, I hauled out my secret four-pin, balanced-to-twin-bananas headphone cable and connected the Susvaras to the SLI-100's speaker binding posts, switched to the 4-ohm tap. The purity, transparency, and tactility of the Cary exploded into my head. It was some of the best headphone sound I've ever experienced.

Next, with the Susvaras still connected to the speaker outputs, I played "Félenko Yéfé," from Momo Wandel Soumah's Afro Swing (16/44.1 FLAC, Fonti Musicali/Tidal), which was also pure and transparent. I could not tell that the sounds were coming from the headphones—at all! The title track of Black Satin was solid and present in a way I doubt many of us have experienced. I repeat: The pure, coherent sounds emanating from the Susvaras were not stuck inside my head. They were out in the room. Their transparency exceeded anything I have experienced from floor-standing speakers at any price.

Hoping to substantiate these results, I switched to my reference headphones, JPS Labs' Abyss AB-1266 Phi ($4495). Guess what? Corporeality and transparency increased even more. Bass was superpowerful. Saxophones and percussion sounded as I imagine they did coming from the monitors in the studio. I felt I was hearing everything the mastering engineer heard—maybe more. As a headphone amp, the Cary's speaker outputs had no equal.

Or did they? When I switched from the SLI-100's speaker posts to its front-panel headphone jack, I thought the Kirov Orchestra was playing in a darker, less transparent space. I thought maybe the instruments seemed lighter in weight, and that maybe the highs were less extended. But if any of that was true, the differences were extremely slight. Overall, the SLI-100's headphone output was powerful and delicate and musically effective in ways I had never before experienced from the headphone jack on the front of an integrated amplifier. Later, Cary Audio's president and design chief, Billy Wright, told me that the SLI-100's headphone output is taken from its own tap on the output transformer's secondary winding.

Conclusions
The Cary Audio SLI-100 brings something uniquely satisfying to the high-powered tube-amp party. Until I listened to it for this review, I'd thought we needed low-power, directly heated triode tubes to unveil this much purity, presence, vivid texture, and colorful tone. Actually, we do—but the SLI-100 sounded more like a high-quality single-ended 211/845 amp than it had any right to. I enjoyed every minute I spent with it. Highly recommended.