The Carissa has, at least temporarily, changed my listening habits. It’s got me pulling out Rock recordings that I either haven’t listened to in a while, or that were sonically too disappointing to use as part of the review process. Two such CDs suffer from a multitude of careless mastering sins: Bowling For Soup’s Drunk Enough To Dance [Silverstone/Jive 01241-41819-2] and Avril Lavigne’s Let Go[Arista 07822-14740-2]. Both exhibit no more than the usual amount of Pop CD midrange veiling – but the tremendously transparent Carissa does a superb job of minimizing that annoyance. The amplifier further produces a meaty and harmonically dense presentation that lends superb body to both CDs to help propel the music. Not only do vocals project as they never did before, but they emerge from a huge wall of highly saturated sound that perfectly serves the music.

By contrast, (to the Audiopax Stereo 88), the Carissa is a thick juicy cut of Delmonico, Pittsburgh Rare with Red-Chile Béarnaise and crispy onions on the side – rich, flavourful and highly satisfying in a sinfully gluttonous sort of way. Yeah!

6Moons | | October 2020