VIVA AUDIO EGOISTA STX
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here were some good things about being an audio dealer, despite my marked inability to run an audio store. I met some great folks and was exposed to exceptional equipment that rendered music with sublime prowess and, well, some other equipment that rendered music in not so sublime a way at all. The folks that I met embodied the selfsame characteristics—a love of challenge, discovery, experimentation, and, of course, music—that feed heart, soul and mind. And via the discovery of our kindred ways, we got along swimmingly, that is very well. Amedeo Schembri of Viva Audio was one of those folks brimming with intellect, creativity, enthusiasm, and a torrent of ideas and wisdom. We also shared a love of films from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Through knowing Amedeo, I came to appreciate a great number of things audio and the Viva line in particular. I carried the Viva Audio line in my audio boutiques and owned one personally. The Viva Solista integrated was my first owned component. To a one, the Viva components embodied incredible musicality, naturalness, resolution, and the ability to transcend the listening experience and deliver a compelling “you-are-there” perspective. When I became aware of Amedeo’s Egoista STX – a singled-ended, electrostatic headphone amplifier – after my many journeys into the storied world of electrostatic, I was excited to have the opportunity to review it. I had found the ability of electrostatics to assist in seeming time travel from this venue to that
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and to simulate a preternatural closeness to performances simply stunning. If Viva had gotten me to the “you-are-there” perspective even without the electrostatic technology, what part of that world would the electrostatic Viva Egoista STX land me in? And what would be the experience? REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start, below, with how the equipment actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various parts, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Arrival, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Terminator, In the Shadow of the Moon, The Queen’s Gambit, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning. THE SOUND “How,” I thought, “would the coupling of an electrostatic headphone amplifier and a singleended triode implementation using 300B tubes sound?” Both are known for their resolution, their ability to peel away artifice and layer upon layer of opacity, while bringing forth a distortion free, “you-are-there” palpability and an arresting sense of texture. Interestingly, both technologies are nearing, or will be nearing soon, a century of existence. How is it that they still command what is thought, by many, to be the crowning achievement of audio playback? Add the
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