The Sonic Euphoria PLC, by Jim Merod

Introducing a Winner

Jeff Hagler first let me in on his new creation more than a year ago: a passive line-control device that evolved into a virtually state-of-the-art preamp priced low enough for audiophile appetites on a tight budget while delivering sonic clarity that far outreaches its modest price tag.

A word about Jeff Hagler and his well-known, well-respected “Jeff's Sound Values” operation to begin. Sometimes, in the world of high-end reviewing, you come across a genuine professional in the retail business who impresses you with intelligence and integrity. We all seek such people and, when we find them, we consider the good luck to be an occasion for appreciation. Or celebration.

In the case of Jeff Hagler, both celebration and appreciation are in order. He has assembled a terrific working team to assist him, one that includes the somewhat legendary Dan Muzquiz (a man with genuinely refined artistic temperament and talent). He has also stocked his walk-in audio store with first-class gear that can be accessed via the web. Best of all, perhaps, Jeff Hagler's new passive unit, the Sonic Euphoria PLC, is immensely musical. Let me detail my experience with its enormous musical heart.

When I first heard a prototype model, I recognized a lion asleep in the guise of a lamb's fuzzy clothes. The market version of the PLC sports extreme class and eye-catching good looks. The first units were, as such things often are, somewhat less seductive... but the music it created was all one needed.

That first experience was enough to whet my chops for a longer, deeper look into the musical core of this big-hearted instrument. What I heard initially was the sort of “no-nonsense” sonic transparency that anyone who approaches a passive preamp desires. There it was—sonic transparency—in spades.

The only (slight) down side to the original unit was a touch of leanness in the upper-mid range bandwidth... not significant enough to blemish musical joy, but apparent enough to notice if you were listening to music that you recorded and knew well.

Maestro Hagler explained the reason for such and, since that prototype unit was a work-in-progress, my comments merely reinforced his own awareness and galvanized his already advanced commitment to continue the PLC's evolution.

Here we are now with the real thing, the full-blown, flat-out wonderful sonic beast itself... a lion that not only sounds lionesque, but that looks magisterial in its final cosmetic polish. In truth, I care very little how whiz-bang marvelous any great sonic unit looks. I care only for its musical authority. Thus, a great musical box that looks like a “box” does not put me off.

But, on the other side, I'm not the potential customer who has considerable aesthetic refinement-deserving attention, nor am I the fellow whose significant other demands a certain standard of interior decorative demeanor. You dig? I'm merely the sound-hungry, music-minded recording bloke who crawls around under expensive pianos, coast to coast, seeking perfect microphone and mic cable placement so I might be pleased ever after with the sound of two hands leaping beyond the instant thrill of mere glissandi.

I care about sound. Perfect sound delivered from a cardboard box would not offend my aesthetic nature. In fact, I once heard mind boggling amplification from a wood crate... but that's another story.

Listening Across Intervals

My experience with Jeff Hagler's remarkable PLC has been, from the first, a joy. In fact, I've learned a good deal about some of my own sonic reproduction equipment because of it.

Such knowledge is always news. It is, also, well-earned, since I work hard to make the most accurate recordings I can and, when I hear timbral or ambient nuances that otherwise escape attention, the boxes that generate such knowledge earn my respect.

The Sonic Euphoria PLC has earned my respect many times over. Hereby noting the rapture (and informative edge) that its sonic clarity and transparency produce, I'll confess that I had my review written twice before. The PLC kept intervening.

Twice, before this final review essay, I'd written up my experience with the PLC. Twice previously I was at the point of moving my text along the short path to publication. Twice, however, I did what I sometimes do to check my evaluation. I went back for one last confirmatory audition to be certain, absolutely sure that my written review was what I heard, thought, and wished to share with others.

Twice I returned, tail caught in the PLC's fan (as it were), needing to reassess the absolute degree of its subtlety.

Here I am. At last. Done with it. Finished for the moment. Sure of what I've heard over and over. “Subtle” might be the subtext that Jeff Hagler affixes to his unit's faceplate: the Subtle PLC.

The Sonic Euphoria PLC is a little classic. It delivers music as few other preamps of any sort, at any price, can accomplish. Its strength is its neutrality... more revealing of small (immensely small, infinitesimally slight) details than all but the most astonishing—often the most expensive—preamps one ever dwells with. Given the PLC's price, think hard before you drop megabucks for a skosh more sonic juice.

The PLC is enormously revealing of source material that is uncompressed. Stop a moment. Think about what I've just said.

Most music that you listen to and care about has been compressed (a) at the point of recording and/or (b) at the point of mastering. Most music loving people have very little experience with uncompressed musical sound, even if they attend live performances, since public address sound systems (PA systems of all kinds) lurk out in the Land of Live Music. What you hear is not at all uncolored and, often, not wholly untouched by compression artifacts that enter the so-called lived “acoustic” space via stage monitors, PA systems, and various sound reinforcements.

But, if you record live music that has a minimum (or an absence) of compression artifacts; if you record that sonic information without compression to tape or disc; then, you have a view of what genuine “acoustic” sound is. Then you are able to hear music close to the sound of real instruments in three-dimensional acoustic space.

When you listen to authentic acoustic music via the Sonic Euphoria PLC, something wonderful occurs. You hear the sound of “naked music” reproduced nakedly.

Concluding Semi-Scientific Postscripts

Twice I scrawled my thoughts and twice I had to revise them because Jeff Hagler's gorgeous PLC reprimanded my attention.

Ah, well. Such revisions, re-auditions, and other reality checks dog our lives if we care to do it right—the “it” being anything that counts.

And the Sonic Euphoria definitely “counts” for anyone who wants to hear deeply into music he or she loves... deep into a soundstage, deep into the soul of well-recorded sound.

The essential revisionary message that the PLC delivered to me in two forms of subtle reprimand was this: when a preamp gets out of the way of electronic grunge and circuitry (or gets those out of the way by minimizing and/or eliminating them altogether), you hear more details, more of everything that counts in the world of musical pleasure. So there was that unambiguous fact at work right out of the packing crate—the PLC getting out of the way of what I recorded, the PLC offering me ever-new clues about the subtlest dynamics of recordings that I thought I knew pretty well.

When my final extra-special visits with the PLC were done with me, I'd heard details that possibly no one but a diehard recording bloke who care to discover: the lingering thwack of bass strings singing almost silently to themselves in acoustic space left open by a pausing piano overhang; a barely audible “catch” in the throat of a superior vocalist, clearing her vocal instrument (unheard, she thought) as the band vamped behind... musical cues and nonmusical signals that make the vivacity of live music so utterly engaging.

Engaging to me, at any rate, and to those audiophiles who care to discern the nearly undetectable rumble of subway cars beneath a concert stage or the squeak of a violinist putting resin on his strings. Such details may not add color to Ravel's Bolero or depth to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. However, when you add them up, dozens of slight sonic itches, hundreds of added tonal emendations, you have a more vivid musical soundstage. Isn't that at the heart of an audiophile's essential quest for more sound, bigger musical happenstance, extra performative exuberance?

It is, I suspect, when the details added are “retrieved” from the recording and not “induced” by the gear. More information is beguiling and lovely as long as it is accurate and defined by the musical event itself.

That is what Sonic Euphoria's PLC does to one limit of the passive line stage art. Jeff Hagler's new creation may not offer the ultimate degree of transparency or the final extension of musical nakedness, but it comes awfully close to those asymptotic aspirations. For that achievement alone, and at the friendly price point it offers, the Sonic Euphoria PLC is more affordable than most magnificent preamps you'll find, no matter where you look. It is good enough instantly, as soon as it is linked with source feeds, so that few users are likely to search for more and better sound. Instead, you may find yourself seeking to improve the quality of the music you deliver to it. You may sense, with enduring certainty, that the sonic subtlety of this very-involving musical unit gives you greater musical detail and reproductive grandeur. You may find yourself, ultimately, searching for front-end source gear good enough to match, in audio clarity and musical nakedness, what Jeff Hagler's boffo box has now wrought.

Prices:

Single-ended $1195

Fully balanced $1795

Specifications

Attenuation: 1.8dB per full step
Half Step Switch: +0.9dB
Volume Positions: 24 full, 19 ½ steps
Inputs: 6 total
Outputs: 3 total

Options

Choice of ½ step switch - TBA
Increase voltage gain - TBA
Remote control (upgradeable) - TBA
WBT Top Line RCA - $30/pr
Tape Output (RCA) - $40
Black Diamond Racing Cones - $45/3
Captive RCA cable - $100/1m/pr
Captive RCA cable add. meter - $30/pr
Captive XLR cable - $120/1m/pr
Captive XLR cable add. meter - $50/pr