The Perfect Marriage

Choosing a preamp/processor and power amp combo for home theater applications can sometimes be a difficult task for a consumer in a market flooded with an almost infinite selection of competing products. There are many instances where a particular company may excel at producing an excellent digital preamp/processor, but offer only a mediocre 5 channel power amp to compliment it, or vice versa. Aragon blows that notion out of the water with the Soundstage and 8008X5 dynamic duo. Together this Batman and Robin team offer an impressive package, that is unstoppable in performance, fit and function.

Watching familiar DVD's again has been a rediscovering process for me. I was blown away by the limitless dynamics the 8008X5 was able to deliver while all channels were placing heavy demand on the power supply. In the 4th chapter of the DVD movie First Contact, there are several minutes of explosive combat scenes between the Federation fleet and the Borg cube panning throughout all of the channels. The Soundstage assimilated all of the information from the DVD and honorably reproduced it. Never before have I heard such realism filling my living room, making me feel as if I were in the battle scene myself. The Soundstage did a fantastic job maintaining channel separation in both Prologic and digital formats supported on this DVD.

The Soundstage also decoded DTS music CDs with a sense of clarity and depth that until now, I have been unfamiliar with. A prime example of such extraordinary performance was from the DTS CD "On Air" from the Alan Parsons Project. Normally, I listen to a few tracks on this CD and then move onto the next. However, I found myself listening to the whole CD with the Aragon equipment. Vocals were exact, imaging pinpointing, and dynamics from the 8000X5 limitless. In fact, it took me longer than expected to write this review because I had so much fun with my demo.

Conclusion - All Good Things Must Come To An End?

If you are looking for the best in home theater and audio, based on engineering design principals, build quality, ergonomics and fidelity, than I highly recommend the Soundstage digital preamp and 8008X5 multi-channel power amp. There are many excellent products in this price range and you owe it to yourself to at least demo this package, compare it to its competition, and determine if this gear is the right choice for your needs and budget . I put my name on the fact that you cannot better the overall performance of the Aragon combo for the mere price tag of 8008 clams.

It really burned me up inside that I would have to let these beauties go after my 3 month evaluation, and return to my humbled integrated DSP amp. Instead, I pleaded with my wife, after I filled her belly with Italian food from our favorite local restaurant, to persuade her into keeping these remarkable machines. My wife, being the understanding woman she is, accepted my plead bargaining, under the terms that I would not do any more upgrading for a very long time. I went to bed that night with a smile on my face, while the rumbling of the Starship Enterprise soothed me to sleep, knowing that I would be waking up every morning to my dream home theater system. Life is good!