The Consonance Orfeo CD Player and Tristan Integrated Amp

Forbidden Pleasures…

For me though, the sheer musicality of the Orfeo drives a system in the right direction. And it will do this with any system. What the Tristan brings to the party is honesty and neutrality, the perfect foil for the potentially brilliant but possibly frustrating Orfeo. Of course, that makes the Tristan sound like it’s a sort of audio Switzerland, with visions of Orson Welles doing the cuckoo clock speech from The Third Man. Nothing could be further from the truth; the Tristan is a dynamic and capable amp, more than handy enough to keep up with the expressive freedom of the CD player without keeping it too much in check. The amp also has enough power behind it to make music spring to life, something that happens often with the Orfeo.

Opera’s ability to blur the lines between valve and solid-state might have been better used here. The Tristan cries out for a valve or two in the input stage to add that last degree of sparkle to an already dynamic and powerful presentation. It would then loft the Tristan from being a very good front-runner to being on the podium at every audition. There again, it would also turn it into a little Calaf, with a price to match. Let’s put this into some kind of perspective. In the Orfeo, Opera has produced one of the most exciting CD players available, and in the Tristan an extremely good amplifier to go with it. The CD player’s sparky personality is tempered by the amp’s calm neutrality, Katherin Hepburn to the Tristan’s Keira Knightly, Pablo Casals playing the Bach Cello Suites as opposed to Yo Yo Ma. Together the contrast works, but apart there are those who might find the amp a little too “pale and interesting”, the CD player a little too characterful for their taste. Of the two, the CD player is the star – it wears its heart well and truly on its sleeve, but assuming you want what it does, there’s nothing near the price that does it better. The amp is more of a sleeper, and easier to overlook. Taken together and rather like the styling, these products make perfect sense as a pair. The CD player will find its way into more systems as a stand alone unit than the amp, where its individual appearance will make as bold a statement as its musicality. The Chinese invented fireworks, the Orfeo continues the tradition…