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 Hi David,
I've been through the same upgrade as you did. I used to have a Mark 23.5 and replaced it
with a Gryphon Antileon (nb. The Antileon Signature you have is a new model over the already 5 yrs in the market Antileon). The Antileon eats the 23.5 like breakfast on my then
B&W Silver Signature 30. I've not had a chance to audition the Antileon Signature before but based on what my friend said, there's quite a big leap. Antileon Signature has overall
better control, a lot faster than the Antileon and ghee whiz, emits much less heat! But slightly less warmer sounding.
I've once used the Gryphon 'Elektra' preamp, the flagship before Sonata preamp was
released. Now there's a new flagship called 'Sonata Allegro'. The Elektra was very tuby and lush sounding. Sonata is another leap, more neutral and sound very much open cf the
Elektra. Note that Gryphon designs their preamp with quite high gain. Higher than most other brands of preamp. So, there's good reason to believe that their pre and power would
go better hand in hand than playing mix and match. I haven't own a lot of preamp before so I can't compare, esp with those big names such as FM, Goldmund, etc you mention.
However, as far as I know there was a Taiwan magazine once compared 3 state of the art preamps and Sonata was one of it amongst Mark 32 (yes, the now flagship) and
MBL6010C (again, the now MBL flagship) and the comment was there's no clear winner. Mark sounds very rational and a bit on the cool side while MBL is lush and almost to the
point of passionate. Sonata was said to be middle of the road. Pls note that there's only 1 RCA input for Sonata and the other 3 inputs are all XLR. The only 2 outputs of Sonata are XLR.
Joe Lee of 1388.com has better experience with FM Acoustic preamp, and he has
extensive auditioning experience on my Wadia 270 + dCS952 + Gryphon Sonata + Gryphon Antileon + Avalon Opus set up. He might be able to come up with some valuable experience as well.
Oh, by the way, it's unfortunate that US is a 110V region or you could consider getting my
Sonata. I'm going back to vinyl and need a preamp with phono state. So I'll have to sell off
my 240V (sorry, unswitchable "conveniently") Sonata which I've owned for only 2 yrs and in perfect shape....what a shame.....cause I'm selling cheap! Tempting, right?
Cheers and happy hunting.
Ben
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