Unison research S6

Audioholic

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I am thinking of changing my Naim nait 5i for a Unison research S6.

I have been offered a used S6 with all original packaging for £950. What are your thoughts on this amp (this model rarely seemes to get mentioned in Unison's range) and do you think that's a good price?

Do you think the S6 is a decent all rounder, providing midrange magic and subtleties on a range of types of music, or are its strengths really limited to small-scale acoustic & classical?

Thanks
 
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Anonymous

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I've tried the Unison S2 SET which is the entry level amp in the same range. I thought it was breathtaking but somewhat different in presentation to a Naim!
 
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Anonymous

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To be specific about the audition, I heard the S2 on a pair of Sonus Faber Concerto Domus speakers with a Unison Unico CDP. I listened to Michael Jackson, Alison Krause/Robert Plant and Shawn Mullins.The acoustic and vocals were out of this world but the poor little amp didn't have enough welly to make the SF sing in the bass. The thing that stuck with me the most was the scale of the sound stage.

I also tried the Unison Unico P (50W) amp next to it and found it to be distinctly dull and boring in comparison. I thought the 10W S2 was lacking in oomph but the Unico sounded a lot less powerful!

I was offered the new pair of SF speakers and used S2 with spare valves for £1.8k. Quite a bargain but I felt that it needed more power. They'd just sold the S2K
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If I was getting an S6 (I wish) then I'd seriously consider some Sonus Faber speakers. They gel superbly.
 
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Anonymous

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During that session I also heard a Cyrus 8VS amp on a pair of Dynaudio Focus 110 speakers with the Unison Unico CDP; all of the paint just peeled off the wall. Yuk! Valves rule!
 

Audioholic

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which of the SF speakers would you recommend - the trouble is, they have to be close to the wall, which played its part in why I chose the Sabre III over floorstanders (which generally performed best well away from walls)!
 

Thaiman

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S6 for under a grand....bargain! Midrange is stunning and plenty of air around treble, bass is a tad weak though, It can't rock as well as the like of Graff GM50 but then you will never be able to pick Graff up anywhere near that cheap price. The Unison will partner well with most Opera speakers imo.
 

Audioholic

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cheers Thaiman for your comments. I've sent a pm to someone on another wesbite who bought a second hand Unison Research s6 so that I can hear of his experience and overall impressions having lived with it!
 

Audioholic

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Do you think that this amp is competent across a range of music or is lack of bass a big problem. My speakers also don't have the most bass at their price, but I'm not a big bass fan!

Audiophiles go on about Alison krauss, miles davis and the like, but I listen to quite a bit of mainstream pop and rock. I don't mind if the unison is not able to show off it's mid range ability with songs which don't exploit it - that's not really to be expected. I just don't want it to have the excesses which are sometimes associated with valves, which alter the sound so that rock with cymbal crashes or guitar riffs sound weak. It needs to be a good all-rounder and paint the music well with oasis, sterephoncics (rock musc heavy with guitars) or michael jackson & stevie wonder.
 

Thaiman

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It will be less colour than your Naim therefore the musical instruments will sound more realistic. (Good) Valves amp need to be carefully match with speakers and source but get that right and it will be hard to go back to similar price solid state amp.
 

Audioholic

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What in particular should I be aware of when choosing a source? if a unico cd appears s/h I think I'll grab it for the right price, but I was considering an arcam fmj cd33 which is said to be pretty neutral. Do you think this would work well? If it was you Thaiman, and you had a budget of £800 for a s/h transport dac combo or cd player what would you look at?

By the way does the Unison S6 have balanced inputs? Because if it does I'll look at cd players and dacs with balanced outputs. Tbh, if you think it can sound good with a decent dac I'd prefer to scrap cd playback because I've already got (almost) all my songs ripped in lossless and my iPod touch has most my songs on it. For that reason I was considering the wadia transport which has had a lot of talk recently on these forums. I was even looking at a DAC 64 but these are still selling for £1100 which is more than I want to pay.
 

Audioholic

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I can't melt into the music. There's no sense of the music being live on most of what I listen to and I find the sound goes from thin to overbearing when I adjust the volume.

That said, the nait can sound exceptional on some music, but there's quite a lot of stuff which at home listening to it, does not agree with it. I can actually imagine what I want to be hearing when I'm listening but it's not there most the time!
 

Thaiman

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Audioholic:

What in particular should I be aware of when choosing a source? if a unico cd appears s/h I think I'll grab it for the right price, but I was considering an arcam fmj cd33 which is said to be pretty neutral. Do you think this would work well? If it was you Thaiman, and you had a budget of £800 for a s/h transport dac combo or cd player what would you look at?

By the way does the Unison S6 have balanced inputs? Because if it does I'll look at cd players and dacs with balanced outputs. Tbh, if you think it can sound good with a decent dac I'd prefer to scrap cd playback because I've already got (almost) all my songs ripped in lossless and my iPod touch has most my songs on it. For that reason I was considering the wadia transport which has had a lot of talk recently on these forums. I was even looking at a DAC 64 but these are still selling for £1100 which is more than I want to pay.

DAC 64 have bags of details but can be a touch cold. the best value DAC on the market at the moment imo is PERPETUAL TECHNOLOGIES P3-A (Link) which sound smoother but never clinical, it hasn't got balanced out though (not sure why you would prefer balanced)
 

Audioholic

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I'm considering pairing the S6 with an at-tunes Sb+ www.at-view.co.uk/sb2 (a drastically modded squeezebox), which is actually two boxes, with the linear psu separated from the DAC. They offer a 30 day money back guarantee if your not satisfied with it, and people who have compared this to the Logitech transporter say that if upsampling is not required (so you don't intend to download often obscure classical music from Linn studio master reecords) and you don't need a digital in so that it performs solely as a DAC with another transport (that would seem like a waste of it's primary streaming function) than the sq from this is better, and on par with a Linn Majik ds, which itself is substantially better than the Sneaky ds, which people on the Linn forums believe to be the equal of the Akurate CD. The 'full fat' version of the sb+ which includes the built in DAC and offers both analogue and digital out, also costs £700 less than the Majik DS, and maintains the convenience of the squeezebox, but with all the standard components stripped out and replaced with no-compromise ones. I'll let you know what I think when it arrives.
 

Audioholic

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I hope so anyway, I've agreed to buy it at this price! I don't know how compares to the icon audio valve amps out there. UKD now sells the S6 for £3k new, but it's witnessed ridiculous inflation and I think it's real value is somewhat less, but hopefully it will fit perform well in my system!!
 
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Anonymous

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Just for curioisty, in the end did u buy S6?

Im owner of the new S6 version and sounds fantastic...really one of the best amplifier i've heard...with the right speakers it is fantastic...For my opinion one of the best CD partner is the Esound E5 signature or Reference version...I have the signature version with the aurion audio tweak...

and ur system?

Rah
 

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