hello Mac5u, I didn't mean to put down YOUR Jolida, I was just referring to mine... I guess now I have to stand behind my words. I know someone who has the Joilda 801...B I think, anyway, the version that has the bias pots on the bottom rather than the top. His was heavily modified (point to point internal silver wiring and everything else you can read about on Bill Baker's Response Audio site). He uses vinyl and is quite happy with the sound (driving a pair of hungry dynaudios).
I have the A version, with the pots on top and no modification other than selector pot bypass directly to volume pot, which made one hell of a difference in imaging capabilities.
So, on to the 'crap'. And I mean this with a grain of salt.
I used to drive a pair of Triangle Antal xs speakers with it. Those retailed for 3000$ new and won the diapason d'or back in 2003 or so, maybe 2002. The Jolida could not get the bass right under any circumstance. It was inarticulate when there was a lot of it in the recording, and absent when there was just enough to be reproduced. I had way more bass in my akg headphones and was going: ah, so this is the bass line of this song! Could not hear it in the system. Everything else seemed to be so so with the Jolida. In and of itself it did a decent job of imaging (after the selector pot was taken out of the way). The midrange was ok, highs were ok, music was powerful. Rock music sounded good. I listened to it then on my Audio Nirvana 10inchers and I am selling both my Triangle speakers and my Jolida. After I got the Audio Nirvana, the Triangles sound as if I covered the Nirvanas with a thick wool blanket, and I am not exaggerating. After I got the Mini Torii, the Jolida sounds kind of the same. The imaging on the Mini Torii is simply incomparable, so are the timbre, the bottom end, the midrange, the highs etc etc.... What can I say? The Jolida hits hard, but the torii hits right. I suppose I could use Steve's idea of the first watt that sucks. Some people buy the Jolida for around 700 $ (the aforementioned person got his for 800$ after full modification, which must have cost around 1000$ by itself) . I heard that they sound good once modified, but why bother when you can get a mini torii for exactly the same price for which I bought my Jolida new, that is 1500$. of course here in Canada the torii ended up costing 1800$.
If the Jolida was a steal in terms of price, I would not be harsh on it, but it camoflages itself as high end and I find it deceiving. I still like my hybrid Jolida 301 or so, which retails for 400$ and which some would call crap. I like the way it sounds for the money
With the 801 it is the opposite.
I am sure there are a million products out there falling in all of these price per value categories. And it is all pretty relative, as I am sure the Mini Torii can be improved upon. In terms of sound, yes.
I regret having used the term crap, I was eager to put down what had let me down. I thank my Jolida 801 for a few nights of pleasure and as we part I will not regret the many hours of trying hard to make out the bass lines on old Genesis albums.
ps: if you have power hungry speakers you can try cheap effective and fantastic sounding fullrange drivers from Audio Nirvana, commonsense audio, David Dicks is a great guy to email questions to. You can build your cabinets easily and cheaply and they are so simple that you can't go wrong.
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