Constellation Inspiration Series

nc42acc

New member
Joined
Jan 20, 2016
Messages
1,131
Location
The Matrix
It is a shame the Constellation line doesn't get that much love. Call me impressed.
tSYA6yD.jpg
 
I've heard the Constellation gear a few months back. Both the Argo integrated and the Virgo preamp and Centaur monos. It's pretty amazing; I've love to own one of their integrateds.

Speaking of Constellation, a buddy is lending me his Inspiration integrated amp to borrow for a while, so I'll have some impressions to post soon. Really looking forward to it.
 
I would love to hear the 1.0 power amp. Anyone dare to describe the Constellation sound or make a comparison to another brand?

It is very, very transparent, quiet, and uncolored. It adds virtually no character of its own to the source. The Centaur amps have easy, relaxed power and will drive any speaker load. It also sounds the same from cold or "warmed up."
 
I'm interested in your impressions after getting some listening in. . Larry Greenhill reviewed the 1.0 for Stereophile, I like reading him as he is a Levinson guy and often used Salons which I'm familiar with,, He loved the mids/highs of the 1.0 but seemed to indicate the bass had less impact than a couple of his Levinson amps. But, one of the Levinson was the 534 at almost twice the price.

I think the 1.0 will have to be heard for me. I like defined bass but need the visceral. Also, I like transparent but didn't find myself liking the former Boulder amps, they are good but something about the type of transparency I couldn't get into. So with that and ending up not liking the Coda 8 I need to be careful what Transparent sounds like to me.

I've heard the Constellation gear a few months back. Both the Argo integrated and the Virgo preamp and Centaur monos. It's pretty amazing; I've love to own one of their integrateds.

Speaking of Constellation, a buddy is lending me his Inspiration integrated amp to borrow for a while, so I'll have some impressions to post soon. Really looking forward to it.
 
Magnificent amplifier. I've had it for four years until my move to Gryphon. Just one problem, your transformer is very sensitive to offset current and buzzes a lot. I think that this problem in the US is not so pronounced. The only way to avoid the hum was to use an Isotek Syncro cable, but it lost a lot compared to a Shunyata Sigma. In the end I got tired of that problem and bought Gryphon, but the sound was great.
 
So, the Constellation Inspiration integrated arrived today from the friend that is very kindly loaning it to me. My understanding from him is it's brand new with zero hours on it.

Here's a quick piccie taken with the iPhone 12. Right now it's sitting on a rock maple board but once I finish up the CJ ART 150 amp review in the next day or so, I'll pull the First Sound preamp out of the main rack, and replace it with the Constellation Inspiration (then I can send the First Sound's dual external power supplies to Emmanuel for their CCI-X update. Woot! 👍 😀...but I digress).

Constellation-Inspiration.jpg


After reading the manual, I connected my Lampi Baltic 3 DAC as source, fed by the Aurender N20 that's in for review.

First impression: very, very, very neutral and uncolored. Transparency and timbral resolution are pretty fab, as is the imaging. It's so clean and quiet it's kinda nuts. Zero hours on it, and just off the UPS truck, so it needs to settle and then rack up hours on the clock to open up to it's fullest extent. Stay tuned.
 
I spent all last evening listening to the Constellation Inspiration One integrated.

As it is literally brand-new with zero hours of burn-in on the clock, and as it was just off the UPS truck and had virtually no time to settle, for the first hour it was very clean and quiet, but a bit "closed-in" sounding with respect to imaging.

Right off the bat, noise floor (quietness), transparency, and resolution are really excellent, and I expect will continue to get even better. Neutrality, resolution, and tonal accuracy are amongst the best I've ever heard.

Over the course of the evening, the Inspiration started to open up and "clear it's voice". The soundstage is larger, more spacious, extended and airy and the ability to render subtlety of timbre and texture will give you goose-pimples. As a result, the presentation is more defined, complex, and most importantly, nuanced.

As I'm literally finishing up writing the review of the ART150 amp today, this bad boy will be getting some serious hours on it to get it fully "on the cam" as we say in motor racing.

Go ahead, Constellation Inspiration...twist my arm.
 
Looking very forward to your impressions. I am looking at a top flight integrated as my next purchase and the Constellation just came onto my RADAR screen. Your initial thoughts seem quite positive.
 
Looking very forward to your impressions. I am looking at a top flight integrated as my next purchase and the Constellation just came onto my RADAR screen. Your initial thoughts seem quite positive.

Hey, Kevin, I don't have extensive experience with integrateds, but its right up there with the best of the other integrated amps I have experience with, and that's DarTZeel and Viva. Both of those are sublime, and the Inspiration is right there with them.

And, my impressions have only gotten more positive over the last day or so; the Inspiration is continuing to burn in and become more spacious and open-sounding as well as increasingly layered and articulated in the presentation. It's still exceedingly neutral, but it has a naturalness and as Hans Beekhuizen says, "relaxed" quality to it that makes it very engaging to listen to.
 
Looking very forward to your impressions. I am looking at a top flight integrated as my next purchase and the Constellation just came onto my RADAR screen. Your initial thoughts seem quite positive.

Oh, and my understanding is that the Constellation gear is very stable and consistent when driving pretty much any loudspeaker impedance load.
 
What speakers are you using? How do you find the bass and how are leading edges?

Harbeth 30.2s with a REL sub.

The bass is superb, and well, so is the Constellation Inspiration integrated, overall. I'm once again spending a wonderful evening completely enthralled by the Inspiration integrated amp.

I've been running it in, as well. Now that its got more than 200 hours or so on it, I have to say the Constellation Inspiration is of one of 3 best integrated amps I've ever heard, the other two being the...Constellation Argo (no surprise there) and the mighty DarTZeel CTH-8550.

There was a review of the Inspiration in TAS by Neil Gader in 2018, IIRC, and those comments were spot-on.
Ref here: Constellation Inspiration Integrated 1.0 - The Absolute Sound

I had a buddy over around Thanksgiving, and he was very impresssed, too. We spent the evening listening to a wide range of content on the Inspiration, and he said it had the finest reproduction and resoluton of vocal texture he had EVER heard.

Anyhoo, I am very impressed with this integrated. I could live with it as the core component in my system, along with my Lampi Baltic 3 DAC, and a Rega P10 TT, forever and be a blissfully happy man.
 
Have you had the top off? I've seen some YouTube videos claiming that Constellation doesn't use top parts and over priced

I don't put much stock in that type of thing, there seems to be more and more of that popping up, sort of ambush trashing products tomake something else look good.
 
Have you had the top off? I've seen some YouTube videos claiming that Constellation doesn't use top parts and over priced

I don't put much stock in that type of thing, there seems to be more and more of that popping up, sort of ambush trashing products tomake something else look good.

Hey Bryan,
I haven't opened it up because I don't own it; it's on loan from a buddy, and out of respect for that, I'm not going break open something I don't own.

Yeah, I've seen the griping from some folks about "part this, and parts that". I don't know about that first-hand.

I see this likely as a "statistically significant" vs. "practically significant" kinda thing: "Should have used Miflex caps instead of Erse caps; Mills resistors instead of Vishay...blah, blah, blah." All those discussions are around what may be construed as "statistically significant", but in the REAL WORLD, all that matters is what is "practically significant".

And from a practically sgnificant perspective, all I can say is that the Constellation products I've heard sound f***ing fantastic. So...there's that.

Practically speaking, of course. 😉
 
Difference between people who listened to caps/resistors vs music.


Hey Bryan,
I haven't opened it up because I don't own it; it's on loan from a buddy, and out of respect for that, I'm not going break open something I don't own.

Yeah, I've seen the griping from some folks about "part this, and parts that". I don't know about that first-hand.

I see this likely as a "statistically significant" vs. "practically significant" kinda thing: "Should have used Miflex caps instead of Erse caps; Mills resistors instead of Vishay...blah, blah, blah." All those discussions are around what may be construed as "statistically significant", but in the REAL WORLD, all that matters is what is "practically significant".

And from a practically sgnificant perspective, all I can say is that the Constellation products I've heard sound f***ing fantastic. So...there's that.

Practically speaking, of course. 😉
 
Back
Top