Simaudio Moon i-3 / Equinox

Hi all

Just wondered if anyone had experience of the Simaudio Moon i3 amp and equinox CD player. I heard a pair of JM Lab 927be speakers on the end of some Moon equipment at the Scotish HiFi show about 18 months ago and it sounded absolutely superb - I have heard a lot of kit but nothing that good. Pity JMLab didn't make more of the Elektra Be speakers - I understand the whole Elektra range is about to be replaced

Anyway - I'm now thinking of taking the plunge and am lining up a demo of the Moon i3/Equinox and JMLab 926 (but may keep my Epos Es22s for now due to financial constraints)

Existing CD/Amp kit is TEAC VRDS10SE through Audio Alchemy DDE3.0 into Moth 30 series active pre and Moth 30 series 100w monoblocs.

Any thoughts / comments much appreciated

Cheers

Rondo

 

Nobody?

 

Their CD players are well reviewed by many people for sure.

There are some things that bother me in their amplifier specifications however... For example, they state that the intermodulation distortion is unmeasurable on an amp with a THD figure of 0.15% which is highly suspect... IMD will always be higher than THD. Further, 0.15% is a pretty poor 1W distortion figure for a linear amplifier. I recently lab tested two mid-market (£300-£600 price range) linear amplifiers and got .006% or less on both amplifiers (from different manufacturers).

Of course, that's not the whole story. I've measured other amplifiers with higher distortion figures that sound better in listening tests. I have various ideas as to why. In general when I've heard Moon stuff it's been pretty musical and fun, but I've not had a chance to play with any at home and do critical listening.

 

If you buy the JM Lab, keep your front-end and buy a Lavardin amp.