Simaudio Moon Evolution 600i long-term ownership review

G

Guest

Guest
So after a spate of poor health I've been re-evaluating my priorities, clearing out a lot of "stuff" and generally changing direction in life.

One of the things that my beady eye landed on was the Moon / M-DAC combo in my living room. It's pretty big and clunky, and surely I could replace it with something more, err, dinky, and I wouldn't notice a difference.

It has to be said that before starting this change most of the time I can't tell a difference between the Sonos fed raw into the Moon, and Sonos -> M-DAC -> Moon. Very occasionally I felt there was a difference, but it was pretty subtle.

So, after an advertisement here on the 'wam I landed a Bel Canto C5i at a very favourable price. This is a 125w class D (B&O Icepower, I think) amp with excellent digital connectivity and a good built-in DAC. The Moon and M-DAC were unceremoniously unplugged and replaced with the Bel Canto.

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Listening consisted of

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Fun Lovin Criminals - Bag Of Hits

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Warpaint - The Fool

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John Talabot - DJ-Kicks

FLC sounded a bit tinny here and there. But there were some occasional nice bass touches.

By the time I got to Warpaint I was beginning to suspect that all was not good. The whole album seemed to have a constant background mush in comparison to what I was used to hearing.

So I wired the 600i back up, not bothering with the M-DAC. Now it was a straight shoot-out between the S/PDIF input on the C5i, and the Sonos phono outs into the 600i.

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Sure enough, listening to the Moon the rhythm section of Warpaint resolved itself. Cymbals sounded like cymbals and the rest of the band were easily distinguishable from each other.

The Fun Lovin Criminals fell into sharp perspective and the tunes rolled with an easy soulful rhythm (oops, pretension overload - sorry!).

You'd have thought that processed techno and electronica like a DJ-Kicks album would sound similarly poor no matter the amp used. Not so. The Moon had the obvious edge.

At this point I kind of gave up with the Bel Canto, and it was ejected from the main system. Nick Cave's Push The Sky Away on the Moon confirmed for me exactly what is does that I like.

So, I've bought an amp that, err, is nothing like as good as my current amp. Nice one, Gyro.

I mean no disrespect to the Bel Canto. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that one amp costing around 3.5 times as much as another should sound significantly better, but I thought I'd be able to get away with downshifting without sacrificing too much in terms of quality, and this simply wasn't the case. The Moon is staying exactly where it is. Although it has to be said I haven't bothered unboxing the M-DAC again at the moment. I'm still not convinced that it brings a great deal to the party - certainly nothing like the difference in amplification that I've been looking at.

All is not lost however. The C5i has proven to be an ideal companion to my PC for the desktop system, replacing quite a hot-potch of amps, DACs and cables. So it's certainly staying for the medium term, just not in the living room.

Thanks for reading.

/g

 

Mark F

Wammer
Wammer
Jul 11, 2007
58
6
23
Hutton, Essex
AKA
Mark
Damn, damn and treble damn. I was hoping you'd say the Bel Canto was fantastic and your Moon would soon be up for sale so I could snap it up.

Nice review by the way - thanks.

 
G

Guest

Guest
Damn, damn and treble damn. I was hoping you'd say the Bel Canto was fantastic and your Moon would soon be up for sale so I could snap it up. Nice review by the way - thanks.
Thank you.

That really was the plan. I had the advert written up and all, but then reality intervened.

 

josh

Wammer
Wammer
May 1, 2006
1,144
68
78
NW London
... Nick Cave's Push The Sky Away on the Moon confirmed for me exactly what is does that I like.
I find some of his tracks like Deanna (which can easily sound like a mess) to be very good at sorting out how well systems hold tracks together. I've got an upcoming demo with a Moon 340i (successor to the i-5) and my Dyns and Neats and intend to play some of his stuff to tell the difference.

 
G

Guest

Guest
I find some of his tracks like Deanna (which can easily sound like a mess) to be very good at sorting out how well systems hold tracks together. I've got an upcoming demo with a Moon 340i (successor to the i-5) and my Dyns and Neats and intend to play some of his stuff to tell the difference.
Nice - is this the 340i Neo? Where are you going for the demo? (if you don't mind me asking)

The 600i is, unfortunately, long gone to a better home. It was/is a very fine amp, and I've not really replaced with it anything; I've got a Sonos ampy-box and that's it. Other things have taken priority over the last couple of years - basically since I had "a lot of time on my hands" when I wrote the original review :(

 

josh

Wammer
Wammer
May 1, 2006
1,144
68
78
NW London
Nice - is this the 340i Neo? Where are you going for the demo? (if you don't mind me asking)The 600i is, unfortunately, long gone to a better home. It was/is a very fine amp, and I've not really replaced with it anything; I've got a Sonos ampy-box and that's it. Other things have taken priority over the last couple of years - basically since I had "a lot of time on my hands" when I wrote the original review :(
Bummer, sorry to hear that :( Hope you get it taken off your hands in a good way soon.

They are the Neo. I heard it with some ProAc D20R and D30Rs at Sonata: http://www.sonatahifi.com/ which is in NW London near West Hampstead. The guy who runs it, Rob is great, very friendly and helpful.

I tried a Nait XS and Leema Tucana II with my Dyns and couldn't hear much difference over my Nait5i. But then at his with the ProAcs, I heard a clear difference between the Unitiqute and 340i so I thought I'd try the 340i on my system and see how it compares. I've also got a pair of Neat Elites (I'll be selling one of the speakers) and will test it out on them to see how much of an improvement it is over my Nait5i.

 

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