Club Attendees: Brian Koehler, Paul Fassbender, Nate Kern, Greg (Wilbur) Gessert, Lou Balch, Carl Hruza.

MEETING IN MADISON MARCH 20th 2005
 
Thanks to all who were able to attend the meeting at Bossmans place in Madison on Sunday, and a special thanks to Steve from SAS Audio Labs for attending.
 
The main focus of the meeting was to listen to Steve's equipment, mainly a prototype pair of 25 watt tubed Monoblocks and his 10A tubed preamp.
We were also treated to a demo of Doc's Blue Circle power amp, which sounded just as sweet and musical as the last time I heard it driving the Magnepan's in his system.
 
Steve is a real nice guy and has a great passion for the hobby. He is founder and designer of SAS Audio Labs(www.sasaudiolabs.com), a company which has traded for around 7 years and is now very much in the limelight, having received several favorable product reviews from the audio press.
Steve likes to keep things simple, which is often best. His 10A preamp has minimal functions, no 'bells and whistles' to negatively affect the sound. The 10A is a dual volume control design which takes a little getting used to for us lazy 'remote controlled everything' dudes, but it's really a breeze to setup and use.
 
The 10A has a basic yet attractive chassis with some switch functions that allow for easier system matching and flexibility of use. Steve doesn't make a big deal about aesthetics, but he makes a very big deal about the sound quality of his gear, and so he should. The 10A is a sweet sounding preamp. It appears to be very transparent, with good presentation through the frequency range. Grainy recordings sound grainy. Recordings with poorly mic'd upright basses (Abdullah Ibrahim - Capetown Revisited) sound just like recordings with poorly mic'd upright basses. That's the way a preamp should be. It's at the heart of the system and should add nothing and subtract as little as possible. If I had to try and pin down where the 10A sits alongside its peers, I'd say it has more of the neutrality of a good ARC tubed linestage, rather than the bloom of a CJ.  
 
It's a case of preference and for me I prefer to hear a component that adds nothing to the sound. It's acceptable to have some weakness by omission so long as it doesn't add gobs of bass, or flesh-out the midrange in an unnatural way, or whatever.  
Perhaps the 10A was a little lighter in the bass than other preamps in the same price range ($1995), not soft and flabby, just a little less of it, perhaps. Yet changing the cables, as we did later in the demonstration, seemed to make remarkable improvements to the sound, so maybe it was just a system synergy issue.
The 10A is revealing and doubly so when it comes to cables. Steve used hand made cables based on Jena Labs materials but without the intricate braiding that involves many labor hours and significantly impacts the cost. Switching over to far more expensive cables from Purist Audio made a very worthwhile improvement to the sound.
 
Steve also has a hot-rod version of the 10A, named the 11A. This is a 4 chassis design that takes the same solid engineering principles of the 10A and stretches them even further. We were not able to play the two side by side, but from what Steve says, and I believe him, the 11A builds noticeably on the performance of the 10A, to such an extent so as to justify the $1500 increase in price over the 10A.
Steve's monoblock amps are also very worthy of note. As a prototype, I would encourage Steve to add any finishing touches to their design and get them into the market as soon as possible. They seem to compliment the 10A and at $2500/pair fit right in price wise. Steve is playing a little with the voicing on the power amps, and I think took with him from our meeting the idea of improving the lower frequency response of the mono's. I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to hear what the finished production model can do.
Thanks again to Boss for hosting us and letting us run amok on his system....I hope your cat recovers without any permanent emotional damage.
I'd like to shake the hand of the dude that delivered the Pizza also, that was the best darn pizza I've had in a long while.
 
Rooze