About The Unison Unico Nuovo
The Unico Nuovo, like the Unico Primo, is an integrated amplifier that is based on a 'single triode stage per-channel' design. It uses 2 x ECC83 (12AX7) tubes with a new biasing solution and a parallel double-triode design in the preamp section. By doubling the number of triodes (compared to the Unico Primo) and employing a parallel configuration you get improves sonic performance. To me this is the better value in their Unico lineup. It is rated at 95 watts into 8 ohms. Oh yeah, it uses a 5x20mm 6.3A slow blow fuse.
As Stock
The Nuovo sounds Full bodied and rich, with a fantastic midrange, extended highs, and very powerful bass. In comparing it with my Modwright LS99 and KWA99 separates, it fairs very well in producing a relaxed and enveloping music listening experience. Taking out the sonic scalpel the Modwright combo is more refined and has more transparency in the higher frequencies. No surprise since the Modwright combination costs nearly $16,000, compare the the Nuovo at $3299.
System
Power: QSA Gold AC wall receptacle connected to a Bybee AC Purified power distributor.
Signal:
- Allo Fiber internet Modem Router connected to a QSA Gold Switch
- Innuos Statement Next Gen Music Streamer
- Garlubidor Divine DAC
- Aurai Z165 Speakers
- SVS SB1000 subwoofers x2
Cables:
- Fidata Ethernet Cable from QSA Switch to Statement Streamer
- Grand Activation HGA6000 power cords on Statement, Divine DAC and Nuovo
- Darwin Cables Enlightenment Extreme RCA interconnect from Divine DAC to Nuovo
Below are notes on the attempts to try and improve the sound of the Nuovo even further. All of the tweaks are easily user installable.
Tubes
Tube Upgrade #1: Gold Lion - The Gold Lion ECC83 was a significant improvement to overall clarity and transparency of sound. The stock tubes by comparison sounded "hazy". For $125 or so dollars, this is a very practical and high value upgrade.
Tube Upgrade #2: Ray Tubes Select - The Ray Tubes Select 12AX7 ($207 a matched pair) opened up the soundstage, improved the vocal range, and also improved high frequency transparency. These beat out the Gold Lions by a fair margin in my opinion. Enough to justify the price difference. If you are looking to get the most out of the Nuovo, this would get my recommendation as the first step.
Playing With Fuses
I had 2 fuses in mind for this session. Both from QSA. The Violet fuse ($711) was pricey, but I knew it's potential for improving things like naturalness and dimensionality, so if it performed well, I could justify the expense.
The Red ($1422) was more of a "let's hear what it can do" scenario. The price is almost half that of the amp, so it would really have to pull off something special to earn a recommendation based on price to performance.
Fuse Upgrade #1 - QSA Violet fuse improved low level resolution, and imparted a sense of naturalness, relaxation, flow, liquidity....Whatever you want to call it. I felt more relaxed listening to the Nuovo's presentation with the Violet fuse in. However, the amp already had a pretty relaxed nature, so I felt this could be too much of a good thing with some music. I was expecting more of a 3D presentation from the Violet fuse, and I was a little disappointed here. The presentation of width and depth was only slightly improved. I wanted to be more impressed with this fuse in the Nuovo, but maybe my ears were spoiled.
Fuse Upgrade #2 - The QSA Red Fuse shocked me with the level of dimensionality it brought to the amplifier's presentation. When I began my listening with the Red fuse in, I was immediately struck by the way the soundstage opened up in all directions, along with further improved resolution. Everything seemed to open up. Dimensionality and Dynamics improved and the presentation was enveloping, open and transparent. The Red made the Violet seem dimensionally flatter and compressed sounding by comparison. This fuse is crazy expensive, but I am going to say in this situation it really proves it's value. This would take the investment (amp + Fuse) to around $4500, and I think that it offers up a $6000-$7500 amps worth of performance. Meaning it took the sonic performance in many ways up to the level of the base Unison S6, which comes in at about $6000.
Conclusions
One could invest in the Nuovo integrated amplifier, the Ray Select Tubes and the QSA Red fuse and have in incredibly good sounding integrated that would compare to integrateds in the $6000 - $7500 range. With the aforementioned tweaks, the Unison Nuovo sounds a lot more compelling, with a more holographic, resolving and transparent presentation. I would say sonically the comparison, with the exception of raw power, to the stock Modwright KWH225i might give one pause. The Modwright is a powerful beast, and would be able to play louder and drive far less efficient speakers. But if you didn't need the power, I would definitely consider a tweaked out Nuovo.
Another interesting observation I had was that, even though I had Gold level QSA products in the system, adding less than Gold level fuses did not create any type of sonic bottleneck. The QSA fuses performed considerably better than the stock fuses, and that is the comparison we are making here. If I would have had a Gold QSA fuse to try in the Nuovo, I would likely had noticed an marked improvement over the Violet and Red. But that's not really practical to have a fuse that costs more than the component itself. But my point is, when adding QSA components, ideally you want everything to match, but if they don't , the lower level QSA fuse will likely always sound better than the stock fuse, and that is where the comparison should lie.
Cheers!