UHF No 70 (Net).indd - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Moon W-5LE
for Limited Edition, an indication
that, after the 250 units
have been built, there won’t
be any more. You might wonder why
we’d bother reviewing an amplifi er that
will be built in such small numbers. The
truth is that a lot of high end products
are built in tiny quantities…even if that’s
not the company’s hope. For some high
end manufacturers, making 250 of an
expensive product would indicate nothing
less than dangerous overoptimism.
Simaudio, on the other hand, probably
will sell that many.
We are fully familiar with the W-5,
since we have been using one in our
Omega reference system since 1998
(it was reviewed in UHF No. 49). We
have long considered it to be among the
world’s very best high-powered solid
state amplifiers. Still, we knew that
Simaudio had made a lot of upgrades to
it, and we had been thinking it as time
we listened to a newer one. When this
Limited Edition came out, we jumped at
the chance to hear for ourselves what the
Simaudio gang could do with its original
fl agship technology.
It looks not unlike our original. It’s
the same size, with the same framelike
handles, though there are no longer
dimples atop to allow stacking. The front
panel is actually thinner, but still solid.
Listening Room The “LE” designation stands
50 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
The rear panel is identical to that of the
original, but for one welcome change:
the “on” button has been moved around
to the front.
The numbered name plate aside,
the LE version uses some exotic (read:
more expensive) parts, with one effect
being that the claimed power output
now reaches 200 watts per channel. Even
the power cord is better than the usual
molded cord set. Simaudio supplies a
Cardas cord. Curiously, it’s a 16 gauge
cord, one that Cardas itself recommends
for low-current gear, not power amps.
Our amplifi er was fresh from the
assembly bench, and though we would
give it plenty of burn-in time before the
review, we couldn’t resist a quick listen. It
sounded superb, with only a minor etching
of high end sounds. Within 15 hours,
even that was gone. We pushed on to an
estimated 100 hours before reinstalling
our own W-5 so we could compare. We
pulled out three SACDs, plus an LP.
The fi rst selection was Rachmaninov’s
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Pentatone
5186 114). We weren’t quite happy with
its sound using the older W-5. The piano
was somewhat less than natural, especially
in the powerful left-hand chords
Built for you and 249
lucky others.
at the beginning. The strings had an
attractive sheen, but they didn’t sound
the way they would in a real concert
hall. But that couldn’t be the fault of the
amplifi er, could it?
Well…it could, and it was. The new
amplifi er lifted a veil from the music, one
we hadn’t really been aware of, we should
stress. The piano took on a far more
natural tone, and it no longer got lost
even during busier orchestral passages.
Not only were the piano chords clearer,
but a number of quick notes from the
right hand emerged for the fi rst time.
The sheen on the strings? Gone.
That much was enough to surprise us,
though we suspect that the differences
would be less dramatic on lesser systems
than our Omega reference.
The W-5LE is very much of a muscle
amplifi er, more so than the usual toprated
audiophile amplifiers. Organ
music, if it is well recorded, is a challenge
for a power amplifi er, and especially for
the capacity of its power supply. We
turned next to Bach’s most famous organ
work, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,
found on Opus 3’s Organ Treasures
(CD22031).
The older W-5 rendered this exceptional
recording with clarity and brio, but
it was simply outmatched by its younger
descendent. The very low-pitched notes
from the big pipes seemed even deeper,
and leaner too, but it was the higher
notes that surprised us. “With the older
amplifi er you could distinguish the different
small pipe sets by their position
in the sound fi eld,” said Gerard, “but
with this one you hear all the harmonic
differences among the different sets. And
they’re very melodic even in those top
octave passages.”
Actually, we judged that all aspects of
the music were superior. The increased
clarity let us hear “the notes between the
notes,” as Reine put it. We could also
hear more clearly the space in which this
excellent recording was made.
We wanted to hear a human voice,
and we selected Eric Bibb’s Gospel Blues
song Needed Time (from Spirit and the
Blues, CD19411). The SACD version of
this favorite is eerily natural, but with
the W-5LE it is even more so. It made
the old amplifi er sound electronic, and
quite honestly we didn’t think that was