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The involvement power of this particular musical number was very well complemented by how despite their obvious control, today’s testers didn’t impose stiffness. Rather they remained nicely fluid. While individual sonic events had impeccable definition without any softening, I found it even more impressive how silkily decays were tracked and how finely nuanced actual bodies—the filler between transients as it were—manifested. Even if such traits started out seemingly subtle, they really proved their worth over the longer haul of intensive auditions. Heaving a price-matched Accuphase P-5000 into the rack as comparator for example made very clear in which direction musical fun would proceed now – equally controlled and potent, perhaps dynamically a tad more angular but overall less fluid, more strict and ultimately a trifle mechanical.
Though these descriptions don’t focus on the treble per se, they could just as easily be pinned on the hi-hat in "Landscape at Speed". Sharply outlined to precisely convey the initial hit, then the opening and closing of the cymbal to avoid any trace of softness or blur, the Danes also avoided any artificial edginess, remaining well clear of ever painting the hi-hat as a staccato angular hissy fit and porous something of just faux accuracy. You could protest that this wasn’t much of a task when many rather more affordable amps don’t make such mistakes but even one of my favorite integrateds—the very well balanced and mature Fonel Emotion—emerged from a direct A/B a tad sharper and more rigid. Applying characterizations, it would be true to call the upper registers of these Gamuts somewhat more subdued and less electrifying than certain wiry crisp machines. The general color hue was more bronze than silver.


Always impeccably airy, open, silken and fine, the treble of the two black Danes over both my microdynamically very keen Thiel CS 3.7s and the freshly updated Sehring S703SEs which are more rhythmic and wiry felt truly mature and ripe in high-end terms. This quality placed the combo fully in its element with "Be Serious" on Robert Wyatt’s 2007 Comic Opera album. It kicks off minimally with vocals, cymbals and some guitar. Aside from the highly realistic cymbal sound—if the repeat mention of cymbals has you exhausted, sit in on a discussion amongst percussionists whose flowery and complex descriptions of these mere bits of metal give up nothing to our colorful hifi vocabulary—the vocals on this cut are special.


During an interview, Robert Wyatt once joked that vocally he was somewhat of a hermaphrodite. And indeed this perfectly mastered song can quickly degenerate into somewhat weak-blooded spry turf. Besides counteracting top to bottom any tendencies towards stiffness with their loose fluidity and that treble so bereft of hardness or overcooked sibilants, the Danes also injected a tad of warmth into the midband. This rendered Wyatt’s voice nearly a bit comforting for a change.
If one were chasing deflections from neutral, the Gamut duo showed a small but consistent tendency towards being tonally fuller and warmer rather than lean and wiry. The "Three Thousand" cut of the experimental These New Puritans with its martially heavy beats and sampled muted trumpet gained in substance and sonority over the ‘perfectly linear’ Audionet combo of Pre1 G3 inclusive EPS/Amp1 V2 or my Fonel Emotion. In the lower reaches, the Danes added a bit more flesh than a strict dietician would probably underwrite but this character trait was more subliminal than obvious.

The very bass-heavy "Three Thousand" thus became particularly pressurized, massive and listenable but in conjunction with the overall silkiness of the mid and upper registers also was a tad under-painted on the dryness of each beat. In this price league, it’s all about nuances. While the Audionet combo was tonally less juicy and as such perhaps a bit more sober, its lower band was ultimately more defined, articulate and taut.

In closing, while the above pertained to the combo, it generally also applied to the individual Gamut machines. I had them over many months and routinely teamed them up with others (the D3i / Audionet Amp1 V2 combo was very good). The small bulge below the belt was truer for the power amp than preamp.