What a lovely surprise.
Gestures of kindness, especially among colleagues, are especially welcome and extra especially so when coming from someone who helped steer my hifi path in its formative years. Tom Gillet—who most of us know as Sam Tellig and his column “Sam’s Space” that appeared in the pages of Stereophile—reviewed a lot of cool gear including the Sun Audio SV-2A3 amplifier and the Rega Planet CD Player which helped lead me to own a Sun Audio SV-300BE amp and Rega Planet CD Player to name but two.
Here are some of Sam’s words, a little reminder of his (still) refreshing point of view and excellent writing, on the Cary Audio CAD-805 Anniversary Edition mono amplifiers from Stereophile (c.2003):
Assuming you can afford them, should you buy a pair of CAD-805 Anniversary amps? I don’t know. It depends on your speakers and your priorities. Some speakers and some rooms may simply need more power. You may want even more tightly articulated bass—or whatever. Tubes may give you the heebie-jeebies.
But I’m sure of one thing: Any audiophile worth his or her salt—thank you, DO [Dick Olsher], for that cliché—should make it a point to audition this amp. Even JA came around, eventually—and this was before the Anniversary Edition.
One more anecdote.
At one of Stereophile’s hi-fi shows—or maybe it was at CES—I was all fired up about getting a pair of CAD-805s to audition. Then I encountered my confrère Martin Colloms—according to his card, he is a “chartered engineer” (BSc, IEEE). Martin is usually a very straight-ahead, serious, test-bench sort of chap. I wish I possessed such credentials. I could have pursued a proper career.
“Martin, you have to hear these!”
Being a good sport, Martin accompanied me to the Cary exhibit. He was flabbergasted. He didn’t know what to make of the CAD-805s. I believe that he called them “curious antiquities,” or some such.
But much to his credit, Martin suspended his disbelief and actually listened. That is what I recommend you do with the CAD-805 Tenth Anniversary Edition.
As an aside and another Sam intersection, I wrote about the Cary CAD-805 Anniversary amps for 6moons on one of my Road Tours (c. 2007).
While Tom’s letter is short (and sweet), I wanted to share it here because I’m certain a lot of TM readers will welcome his words and they reinforce my very positive impressions of the Atoll SDA300 integrated amp (review).
Dear Michael,
It’s good to see Atoll get the attention the marque deserves, here in the US. Bravo for an excellent review.
The little Atoll AM100 power amp — their smallest and least expensive — is my reference. The sound quality is stunning — it reminds me of dartZeel.
Regards,
Tom/Sam
