Archive Review Index

CLASSIC CARYATID
LISTENER MAGAZINE, Summer 1996, Vol. 2, No. 3
Cary Audio Design SLP-94
by Art Dudley


Cary SLP-94 preamplifier: $2095 for line level only, $2495 with built in phono section. Manufactured by Cary Audio Design, 111-A Woodwinds Industrial Court, Cary, NC 27511 (919) 481-4494

How influential, really, is a preamplifier on the sound of a quality home music system? What with all the recent attention given to passive controls (devices that take the place of active preamplifiers, and which provide only source selection and volume and balance controls – but no signal amplification), you might well wonder.

But if you want to know the truth of it, passive controls have yet to impress me as musically worthwhile things, notwithstanding their sonic strengths (transparency, apparent timbral neutrality, and a general absence of artificial, non-musical textures). It seems that with every one I've tried, the listening experience is one of disengagement – the music doesn't hold my attention very well, seductive though the sound may be. Whether this is due to the fragility of each note's attack-sustain-decay envelope when music exists only as an unamplified, low-voltage signal (likely, I think); a consequent deficit in dynamics in gainless devices (also likely); or an absence of distortions that I find perversely appealing (un-likely – but then I would say that, wouldn't I?) is anyone's guess, I guess.

As far as my own system is concerned, all this has led to the search for if not a perfect active preamp (I doubt if I could afford any such thing, even if it exists), then at least an awfully good one – awfully good defined here as musically involving and informative as well as sonically appealing. Toss in flexible enough to work well with a variety of sources and amps (I do, after all, write about audiostuff for a living) and you'd push me over the edge into glee.

To make a long story short, I've found it – and so you might want to read this not as a typical Listener review but rather as an un-abashed recommendation, news of a product I've been really happy to find. The Cary SLP-94, a true active preamplifier released just last year, is all that and more. Besides which, I consider it a remarkably pretty thing for a piece of hi-fi gear. I remember suggesting that this company's 300SEI amplifier was so beautiful that, were it a woman, it might tempt me away from my wife – a remark which earned me a full week of experimental vegetarian dinners. So let's just say that an anthropomorphized SLP-94 is the sort of thing one might set up in an apartment on the other side of town.

Actually, given both its appearance and sound, this top-of-the-line Cary preamplifier deserves to be set up in a place of honor in your listening room, said installation being very straightforward indeed. The SLP-94 is smallish relative to other perfectionist hi-fi components, taking up a mere square foot of shelf space. It is somewhat tall, though, its pair of 6CA4 rectifier tubes accounting for said height. (All the more reason to kick something else out of the way and let the Cary take over the top shelf of your rack.) Ensuring that lots of air can get to those tubes is always a good thing, I suppose, but then I should mention also that the Cary's signal tubes in particular run remarkably cool: You can, in fact, grab bold of any of its four 12AU7s during operation with no un-due pain, although now I forget what in the world led me to ever try such a thing.

The only other thing a prospective buyer has to supply (apart from electricity) is space for the Cary's external power supply: a sturdy black metal box which houses a frame-type mains transformer, heatsink-mounted voltage regulator, capacitor (to suppress turn-on thumps, presumably), and a couple of other doodads. Some miscellaneous observations: The power supply does not hum audibly, except when you put your ear right next to it; it doesn't get terribly hot; and putting a VPI brick on it has no apparent effect on performance. The external box is tethered to the SLP-94 by means of a meter-long cable, removable at both endsvia threaded multipin connectors.

Once AC power reaches the preamp it's rectified by the above-mentioned 6CA4 tubes, one for each channel; a quartet of top-mounted polarized capacitors (a big 560 microfarads each) provide additional smoothing and isolation. In the line-level version which I auditioned, the four signal tubes are all 12AU7s – two for each channel, one cathode follower and one voltage amplifier. All four have DC, rather than AC, tickling their filaments.

Folks who opt for the version with a phono section get two more tubes for their money: selected low-noise 12AX7s (enclosed in aluminum shields, and also DC-heated), providing an additional 43 dB of gain beyond the line stage's 16 dB. Of course the higher price also covers RIAA equalization circuitry, along with an additional pair of input jacks. The line-level version of the SLP-94 can be upgraded at the factory to line-plus-phono status; otherwise, two non-ugly metal plugs occupy the holes that those phono tube sockets might some day fill.

The Cary's source-switching arrangement deserves special mention. This involves a series of gold-plated DC relays mounted on a chunky circuit board at the front of the unit – one for each of five (maximum) input sources. plus tape monitor loop. The result: commendably short, non-Baroque paths for vulnerable low-voltage signals, without resulting to a clunky mechanical switch link-up.

Apart from the above-mentioned relay board, all circuitry in the SLP-94 is point-to-point. That's right: This is a hand-wired preamp, with all passive components either glued to the inside of the chassis or "suspended" by their own leads from tube socket contacts. Now: Whether point-to-point wiring really imbues a product with better sound than a circuit board is anyone's guess. In any event, and bearing in mind the sorts of foolish hostilities one is exposed to on rec.audio.hindend, I don't care to open this particular can of worms (visual pun unintended) at this particular time. Suffice it to say, many of my all-time favorite music products – the Cary 300SEI and Audio Note Ongaku integrated amps, the Marantz Seven preamp, and, yes, even my beloved Fender Vibro-Champ – are all hand-wired, coincidentally or not. What I will say, though, is this: For a product to be hand-wired at this price point is at least a little bit remarkable. Bravo, Cary.

And: For a product based on such a decidedly retro construction approach, the SLP-94 is not without its decidedly modern conveniences – including separate switches for muting and tape monitoring and a funky-but-cool listening level system with one (double) pot for volume and two individual attenuators for adjusting channel balance. Additionally, the master switch goes beyond mere on-and-off to provide a standby position, in which the signal tubes are kept warmed by sending DC to their filaments, while giving everything else in the box a rest. That makes it a bit easier to enjoy an up-to-speed preamp on demand, but without excessive wear and tear.

The sound of a worked-in SLP-94 (it seems to take weeks to really break in, by the way) is beguilingly though not excessively sweet – and wide. wide open. It is musically adept, yet with equally pleasing sonics all the same, sounding neither grainy nor airless as can certain otherwise musical amplifiers. I haven't consulted my High End Decoder Ring, but I think this means the Cary is, um, liquid, (Good Lord: Do we really distrust our hearing so thoroughly that we have to raid the larders of the other four senses – even touch! – just for all our audioweenie adjectives?).

But mostly, the Cary is simply musical – it gets the notes right. and presents them in a manner suggestive of the real thing. Last issue I described the Audio Note Kit One as a product that lets the music ebb and flow dynamically in a way that very few hi-fi products seem to do – and Cary's top of the line preamp is in the same hallowed league. Used with certain basic amplifiers, like the conrad-johnson MV55, the Cary lets that openly dynamic, almost "organic" quality of the real thing pass through unsullied. Used with the Kit One, that effect becomes exponentially more evident: Now the music really breathes. The effect is hard to describe. Equally hard to forget.

"Here's an affordable product – affordable by perfectionist standards, at least – that on some counts goes beyond excellent into unexcelled."

The notes themselves seem well respected by the Cary. There was none of the ponderousness, lack of involvement, or flat-out fatigue that I associate with amplifiers that can't do pitches, pitch relationships, or proper musical timing. Swapping one of Naim Audio's preamps – an obvious choice in this regard – directly into the system for comparison isn't possible for reasons of cabling/grounding incompatibilities, but while I suspect that the top of the line from Salisbury might wring even more temporal accuracy from my system, nor would the unusually nimble Cary be disgraced by the comparison. Listen to almost any track from the Dead's American Beauty for proof: This is what I think of as a "borderline" recording, one that's pleasant overall but which is especially gear-sensitive, and which can be pushed over the edge toward boredom by gear of ponderous musical abilities. (Maybe it's Phil Lesh's precariously loose bass playing that accounts for this.) Not so with the Cary/Audio Note, though, via which this music never failed to engage.

And timbrally, as I hinted above, the SLP-94 is pleasantly sweet. There's just a touch of midrange warmth here, I think – though not so much as with the first "modern" tubed units of the late 70s – and to be frank, I like that quite well. The overall spectral balance seems right, though, being neither etched nor egregiously soft at the top end, and with an appropriate sense of bass weight. If I had to find fault at all, I'd wish for a bit more detail and open-ness in that bottom octave, as at least one other preamp and two integrated amps of my experience are more informative as to precisely how such instruments as electric bass and orchestral drums are being played down there. (Perhaps that tinge of warmth works its way into the lower registers after all). Maybe if I tried that oil-filled signal cap option Cary quietly mentions in their brochure... See? This solid, sweet lil' thang already has me playing Owner, even before letting daylight hit a new page in my checkbook. And when last my accountant saw me (Hi, Blaine), I was trying to figure out some honest way to buy one.

What it all boils down to is this: There are lots of at-least-decent preamps on the market, and some are even halfway cheap. But here's an affordable product – affordable by perfectionist standards, at least – that on some counts goes beyond excellent into unexcelled. It makes beautiful music, it's easy on the eye, and it's always a delight to work with (uh-oh, I almost said "use," which while true to my already overwrought metaphor might surely put me right back on the Tofu Trail). To be in the market for a tubed preamp at any price and not consider the SLP-94 would be like having the phone number of the prettiest, sweetest, smartest girl you've ever met (women: Feel free to substitute handsomest, sweetest, smartest, handiest-around-the-house guy) and losing it in the wash. So don't screw up: Audition the SLP-94 before Cary takes all the praise to heart and plays hard to get. Meanwhile, assuming I can afford it by the time you read this (and I have to admit, I'm already more than pushing the envelope of Listener's self-imposed time limit on review sample loans), consider the Cary SLP-94 my reference preamp.