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It is know that in addition to basic tastes (I believe bitter, salty, sour, sweet) of the Western culture those “different”  Japanese people recognize another taste they call  it “Umami”. Umami, if I am not mistaken, is a sense deliciousness or sense of prettiness…

I spent last night many hours deep into the night trying to make sure that before I finally admit Placette into my installation this preamps would do what I need from it. I was using my techniques that I described in “Reviewing preamps by imbeciles” article. I knew already that Placette was absolutely transparent in term basic sonics. This time I was trying to identify the Placette signature in term of Umami-transparency.

Among all audio that I ever own, ever used or ever experienced in other playbacks there is nothing that has such a high concentration of Umami as Sansui TU-X1, particularly with all my new discoveries how to use it. So, I was driving my playback (and headphones) from Sansui directly and then juts inserted Placette in the middle. The TU-X1 is not such a superb driver. Of course in my both TU-X1 the Sansui’s default output attenuators are disconnected but still Placette is much more powerful driver. However, the sonic differences due to insufficient Sansui "drivability" more affected the basic tastes of sound (bass, dynamic, harmonics etc…) but not the sense of “sonic prettiness”...

It is important to notice that “sonic prettiness” or the Audio-Umami is mostly not understood by audio people and mostly do not exist in audio.  It does not exist not only because the immunity of most of audio people to sophistication of sound but because audio generally is not transparent to audio-Umami. Last night I spent an hour witnessing how non-transparent Placette was in terms of Audio-Umami. Driven from Sansui sound has zillion “points of prettiness” and “moments of vividness”. As soon the Placette was injected the particulars of the prettiness were subdued and the Umami sophistication of deluded. How big my surprise was when I eventually recognize that I head not the Placette’s contribution but the contribution of the interconnect that used between Placette and Sansui. I did use a very good 12 inches short cable and I do have (as many other foolish audio people) a full closet of all imaginable “better” cables. So, I was sticking the different cables in order to milk Audio-Umami out of Placette, until I found the one, the ugliest and the less convenient to use – the older PAD’s Dominus -  not a big surprise to me  - but I thought that I would be able to go away without it during this test. So, with Dominus reported to duty it was VERY interesting to see how Placette deal with Audio-Umami.

I had a number of very good broadcasts doing on at that time – and the conditions where perfect. The Placette did fine. It was some very-very minute (I man absolutely microscopic) difference between Audio-Umami from Sansui and Audio-Umami from Sansui. However, whatever tiny difference was it was in the realm of “being different” not in realm of “being less”. The difference itself was at so negotiable level that it is absolutely ignorable. In quantifiable terms I would describe the difference like this: if change of my Dominus to Radio Shake cable is responsible for 1000 relative points of Audio-Umami redaction then injection of Placette is responsible for 1% of the same relative points differences. So I think I can discard the Audio-Umami difference, particularly considering:

1)      The Sansui itself is not as good driver and Placette
2)      Placette is driver from random and no condoled power source
3)      I do not know if Dominus is an absolutely transparent  in term of Audio-Umami
4)      Placette need a few days to be powered in order to give out it’s best

Anyhow, I amplitude of the Audio-Umami differences that I observed and the level of sophistication of Audio-Umami difference that the new Placette supports is absolutely indicative to me that the New Placette is fine. (BTW, I shorted Placette output caps and resistors and run the oscillations tests – I was clean). So, the project is officially over and the New Placette is welcomed back home…

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