Such sound can be appreciated and perceived as straight away as genuine and devoid of artificiality. This specific quality is intimately related to the integrated Black Knight that I listened many times both separately and jointly with the Black Knight Reference.
The special feature of music perception is that prior to when musical sounds, rhythms, timbres, consonances, and spatial patterns begin to take shapes of completed musical thoughts and images the sound is perceived as complex acoustic energy stirring up one or another hearing sensation and various emotional responses.
S.A.Lab "Germans" sound quality felt most natural due to evaluation listenings. The amps establish so to say a friendly acoustical environment.
It is acoustically "ecological". Even more, it excites emotions similar to those one feels admiring the scenery, beautiful architecture, nice face or anything else really sweet...
The S.A. Lab Black Knight Reference's 400W let the moments of musical culminations fulfilled providing the dynamic relief when it was needed to be expressed in all of its magnitudes. The muscly power of amplifiers reflects the spirit of their name — Hercules. The extensive and gradual intensification of sound in Ravel's "Bolero" comes to the only tone modulation in score and culmination of powerful fortissimo at the end of musical composition. This very dramatic point in the presentation by "German" was 100% convincing. Just as a very quiet beginning when dry drumming of the snare drum is superimposed on the underlay of absolute silence.
The Black Knight Reference possesses all arsenal of sound instruments. Dies Irae from Verdi's "Requiem" was presented in such a way that though musical plasma literary spread out in the room. The dense orchestral and choral have issued their painful mood throughout the large-caliber kettledrum fougasses. The whole mood corresponded to the visions reflections of the Last Judgment. And Verdi simply excels.
Immediately after, In Paradisium from "Requiem" by another composer, Gabriel Fauré, was presented most exquisitely. Lace or filigree: against the background of the wavy figures in the orchestra, the sound of choir flowed like an enchanting paradisiacal light from Heaven.
When evaluating and describing the audio component, everyone will most likely want to listen to music he likes and prefers. Authors of the audio reviews are not an exclusion. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays Debussy: Préludes Book 1 (1978)
Among other things, I've listened to piano music on vinyl: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli performs preludes by Claude Debussy from the first book, Glen Gould plays Goldberg- Variationen by J.S. Bach (1955 recording), Vladimir Horowitz interpreters pieces of Robert Schumann ("The Last Concert in Hamburg") and Emil Gilels performing the 3d Piano Concert by Ludwig van Beethoven with the Cleveland Symphonic Orchestra conducted by George Szell.
Except for the formal presentation of the piano, everything is different: music, maestros of fingerboards, pianos, time of recording, sound engineers, artistic spaces... Every single time I've heard the system with Black Knight Reference average out nothing reduces nothing to a common denominator and deduces no average temperature over the hospital.
The amplifiers reproduced music with its genuine aesthetic charge. Not only the sound of different pianos were easily distinguished, but also the individual sound of Michelangeli (the art of chiaroscuro and amazing touch subtlety), of Gould (pervasive expression), of Horowitz (unique Hamburg Steinway the "last romantic" performed in concerts and recorded during more than half a century) and of Gilels (inimitable golden sound, wisdom, generosity, and perfection of interpretation)...
The absence of sound sketchiness is the most precious quality of Black Knight Reference that became apparent in the presentation of various music.
The amplifier demonstrated its ability to transmit the broadest timbre palette in all frequency registers and to form diverse unique acoustic spaces, including vast dynamic resources and perfect control of lower case while the records from excellent Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm organ series were played back. The records themselves and how they sounded was real festivity for organ music lovers.