I had a home demo of the Vincent, while the Poorly Rotel was being looked at.
I'll give you my impressions of it..
Firstly, it is a seriously well made bit of kit. It's heavy as hell, all metal casing with a metal remote that weighs about a pound. Put the plastic, flimsy remote that comes with the Rotel to shame.
The face of the player is beautiful, with the central circular window showing one of the valves inside.
When the machine is switched on, a blue light flashes, telling you that the valves are warming up. After 20 seconds, the light goes out, and away you go.
The first thing I noticed was disappointing: I thought the Valve on show would glow, but it doesn't. It has an orange LED in the window that lights it up instead. Still very pretty, but not the same.
Ok, on to the sound quality.
I started with some gentle stuff:
2151DCEKYBL._SL500_AA180_.jpg (a really good collection of songs, by the way)
41M987XQ4HL._SL500_AA240_.jpg (Very well recorded, and a HDCD, to test the players chip)
It was brilliant with these. It goes deeper than the Rotel, giving strings and vocals a different character. However, this player has made me understand the term that gets banded about: Coloured. The sound is full and rich, but artificially so. The sound doesn't quite have the detail of the Rotel and also it doesn't have the life-like quality which give the hair-stand-up-on-neck moments.
A perfect example is track four on the Chilled Classics. The Vocal on that track is soooo clear and natural on the Rotel, but left me feeling a little flat after it played on the Vincent.
During the demo I also played Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah. The guitar sounded good, but his voice had a nasty sibilance which I couldn't put up with.
I played some heavy stuff, too. Messhugah, Pantera and a few others. Unfortunately, with these the treble got brittle getting close to the point of distortion. This machine doesn't like the hard stuff!
I can understand people liking the valve type of sound, because it is full and rich, but if this player is an indication, it comes at a price.
Luckily for me, the dealer called me up, and the Rotel was fine. The cold weather down here had caused the grease on the laser rail to thicken making it skip constantly (my boilers on the fritz, some days my lounge has been -4. Nice).
So, I returned the Vincent and took the Rotel back home.
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