SimAudio Moon P5 Pre-Amp and W5 Stereo Power-Amp
by Roy Gregory

Issue 7 - August 2000

There are amplifiers out there that hide their light under a bushel, creeping up on you when you least suspect it. Others are adept performers of sleight of hand; you know what they're doing but it takes a while to work out exactly how. And some are just downright flashy; all teeth and trousers to start with, but their charm soon wears thin. The SimAudio Moon Series amplification is a refreshing change. This is a combination that wears its heart well and truly on its sleeve. Mind you, it takes a while to emerge. The manufacturer recommends a 200 hour burn-in/warm-up period, and if anything I'd say that's conservative. The review set were company demonstrators with plenty of hard work under their belts, (and still wearing the original grey / gold livery rather than the smart new black and aly shown in the news pages of Issue 6) but they still took a good ten days to really come on song.

Fortunately, prior experience with the Advantage amps as well as SimAudio's own little 1-5 integrated amp (reviewed in Issue 5) meant that I was well prepared for the wait. However, the lesson is clear; don't rush to judgement or you could miss out on a bargain. Bargain? Yes, in their own way, the Moons represent a genuine bargain - as long as you are after what they're offering.

Simply because these amps are so free of artifice it's easy to identify their shortcomings. Select a few of your preferred test discs and let them loose on whatever you use to spin them. Within a couple of tracks a practised ear will have identified a lack of top-end air and overall immediacy, and a hesitation in the jump of really sudden dynamics. Of course, this is in comparison to the kind of small amp and efficient speaker combination that excels in these areas; but whilst the Moons might not compete head to head on the mighty-mites' home turf, they're quick compared to most of the heavy-weight competition. What makes them so interesting is their own particular (and considerable) blend of strengths; or rather, what they bring to the party, not what they leave behind.

If you were going to sum the Moons up in just a couple of words, you could do worse than choose 'power' and 'drive'. They give music a sense of compact solidity and momentum that brings studio rock recordings to life. Their "what you hear is what you get" approach instils a system with a sense of uncomplicated directness and the music with a real sense of purpose.

You want solid? Listen to the rhythm section on Rattlesnakes (Polydor LCLP1), especially the perfectly pitched and paced bass line on the track 'Speedboat'. Each note is a deep, satisfyingly tactile plop, like a rock dropping into a barrel of oil, placed against the drum beats, pacing them precisely its pitch spaced clearly from its neighbour. Deep, deep and stable, the notes go down through the floor without ever feeling anchored to it. This is a bass line whose energy drives the song, full of life and vibrance, and that's exactly how the Sims deliver it.

The shockingly discordant opening of the DCC re-issue of the Stokowski / Everest Uirapuru (DCC LPZ 1003) is suitably impressive, as is the cavernous acoustic of this 1958 recording. Again, scale and low frequency power are abundantly obvious, but what is really special is the way that the Moons preserve the delicacy and fragility of the flute theme against the percussive cacophony of Villa-Lobos' orchestral jungle. This is difficult, shattered and discordant music, but the P5/W5 combination made perfect sense of it, sorting out the separate strands and weaving them into a coherent whole, full of the requisite beauty and menace.

Rhythmically the Moons excel which is what prevents the solidity and stability weighing things down. The complex and convoluted rhythms of 'Crocodile Cryer' (Martin Stephenson and the Daintees Boat to Bolivia Kitchenware KWLP5) roll effortlessly forward, the punch emphasis and rests given real force and drama by the Sims' almost physical substance. And shifting onto 'Coleen', the almost whimsical delicacy of the playing survives intact. These amps tease out the rhythmic backbone of the music, and then they hang its structures, its melodies and layers, like the ribs of a gigantic beast. The P5/W5 lay out the music's form like it's been x-rayed; that clean and that clear. But don't for a moment think that they are dry and clinical. These bones are there to give shape and substance to the flesh. Thea Gilmore's fantastic new album The Lipstick Conspiracies (Naim CD046) make point. These are songs with serious attitude and the Moons put it all right in front of you, impossible to ignore. The recording might not be great, but it works for the music, giving it the poise and impact of an on-form Chrissie Hynde, which is pretty impressive for a twenty year old.

Which brings me to what is arguably the Sims' greatest attribute.

There are some amps that send you reaching for your best recordings, the ones off the audiophile wish lists. The let's see what this baby can do syndrome. The Moons send you in the opposite direction, dragging out long forgotten records, most of which have seen one party or charity shop too many These amps propel you so directly into the music that the recordings simply get passed by.

To that extent, the average audiophile record can do more to highlight the amps' chosen compromises than impress the hell out of your friends. These are tools for listening to music, not recordings. The chosen strengths and balances work for the music that's on the disc, not the aggrandisement of the engineer who put it there. That's a design path that I can relate to!

Part of this open armed approach to different discs rests in the warm tonal balance the amps give them to bask in. Not the cloying warmth and stodgy bass that some people refer as romance, but properly developed instrumental harmonies to fill out the cold crystal separation that infects so many big solid state amps, and its this, combined with the real power available that stops the dynamics jumping quite as quick as they should. Aha, I thought to myself, this could spell trouble on smaller scale music, and reached straight for the string quartets. Eventually I graduated to Violin sonatas, but the results were always the same. The Moons give you the all-important structure and ensemble elements of the music, at the expense of the last ounce of intimacy and immediacy. Performances have a slightly distanced (not distant!) quality that spaces you from them, with the result that the amps decode the music perfectly without giving you the "you are there" feel that small scale acoustic recordings sometimes achieve. In this, and in other respects, they resemble the Naims, albeit with a warmer balance and prodigious bass performance.

Of course, you can affect the overall balance with ancillaries, and the ClearAudio Reference / TQI / Victory brought greater transparency and a little more air to proceedings, which was great on the Heifetz / Piatigorsky Concerts (RCA LSC 2985) but robbed the bass of drive and substance on the Thea Gilmore and the like. On balance I prefer to play to the amps' strengths, returning to the natural tonality and coherence of the Clearlight Audio Recovery carrying the increasingly impressive (in that I'm more and more impressed with it) Incognito Rega RB300. Cartridges varied, but the Ortofon Jubilee was the mainstay. Likewise the speakers rotated, but time and again I returned to, and eventually settled on the NHT 2.9s, a speaker which shares so many of the amp's virtues, and whose difficult load was like water off a duck's back. Using the Ars Acoustica Divas played to the Sims' staging and excellent levels of detail, but in the end it all came down to the bottom end, and there the NHTs are fully signed up members of the haves, while the Ars consort with the wannabes. With the SimAudio Moons you sacrifice the last vestige of transparency and dynamic agility (qualities regrettably absent from the vast majority of recordings), in favour of their compelling musical performance. These could be the cheapest way to really make a set of Watts and Puppies sing, and that's no small compliment. Combining solid sonic and build quality with a dash of Gallic flair, these amps should send you delving far and wide through your record collection. If that's why you want a hi-fi then check them out. If you want them to impress your mates (probably without turning them on) then you'll probably look elsewhere, but then you'd be looking to spend more anyway.

As a confirmed lover of the small amp / efficient speaker approach you might assume I'd be glad to see the back of the SimAudio Moons. Far from it. These amps deliver musical satisfaction by the bucket load, and that's always top of my list.