AudioKeyREVIEWS! ISSUE 3 - MARCH 2022 by audiokeyreviews

AudioKey REVIEWS! HIGH FIDELITY PERSONAL AUDIO

STEREO MAGAZINE

MARCH 2022

MOLA MOLA KULA A FULLY LOADED INTEGRATED THAT COVERS ALL BASES

HEED THESIS LAMBDA & OMEGA PREAMP & STEREO AMP PS AUDIO DIGITAL STACK - FULL REVIEW ALTA AUDIO ALYSSA LOUDSPEAKERS FERRUM OOR & HYPSOS HEADPHONE AMP & POWER SUPPLY AUDIENCE FRONT ROW CABLES

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Music is art, art is music.

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE…

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112

HI-FI REVIEWS

TABLE OF CONTENTS PUBLISHER’S LETTER

AUDIENCE FRONT ROW CABLES

DEALER PERSPECTIVE 1 - THE VOICE THAT IS

MEZE RAI PENTA (REPRINT)

MUSICAL MUSINGS - THE CHOPIN PROJECT

INTERVIEW - ZACH & BEVIN ZEHRBACH

MOLA MOLA KULA

PS AUDIO TRANSPORT & DAC COMBO

DAYENS AMPINO SEPARATES

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JOAN OF AUDIO

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VIDEO REVIEW - CLARUS AUDIO CODA

MUSIC Copyright AudioKeyReviews 2022

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INTERVIEWS

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AUDIO ALTA AUDIO ALYSSA

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ASTELL&KERN SE180

136

HEED THESIS LAMBDA & GAMMA

148

FERRUM OOR & HYPSOS

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RECOMMENDED COMPONENTS - UNDER $300

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MAGICAL SYNERGIES

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AUDIO DEALERS

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COMING NEXT

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REVIEWS ON THE WEB

Front Inside Cover: Sir Frederic Leighton, Flaming June 1895

MUSIC REVIEWS

Back Inside Cover: Edgar Degas, Famous Ballerina The Other Art. It is my belief that the artist and the musician are not only creatives, but they access heart and soul and experience, perhaps, in the selfsame ways. My own love for art and music are inseparable. And so art, music, and those things which facilitate the music, shall share theses pages.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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VIDEO REVIEWS

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE…

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We offer the finest products available anywhere. Where else can you go and hear products like Audionet, YG Acoustics, Kronos, Kii Audio, Mola Mola, Soulution, Tenor and Veloce under one roof? We have been doing business since 1995 and have been into Audio on either the equipment or music side since 1978. We are located in rural New Jersey (yes there is such a thing) approximately 45 minutes from New York City and 1-½ hours from Philadelphia. Drop us a line and schedule your appointment today. Hours: Monday—Friday: 8:30AM–6:30PM | Phone 908.850.3092 356 Naughright Road, Long Valley, NJ 07853 av@gttaudio.com | gttaudio.com

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Air-Tight

Kii Audio

Screen Research

Audionet

KLIPSCH

Stewart Filmscreen

Auralic

Kubala•Sosna

Soulution

Datasat

KLAudio

TAOC

Devialet

Kronos Audio

Tenor Audio

Genelec

Mola Mola

YG Acoustics

JL AUDIO

ROON

Veloce

JVC Projectors

Sony 4K Projectors

Von Schweikert Audio

KEF JANUARY 2022

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EDITOR’s CHAIR

e’d like to thank our audience responsible for the viral growth in views and reads of the AudioKeyREVIEWS! Magazine, which posted

inspire one to listen more, chair-dance, or to experience joy. Believe me the right component or components can make all of this happen, quite easily. Chances are, if you have a system and you love music but you’re not listening to your music or it doesn’t hold your attention for very long, your current system is not reaching your heart, mind, soul, or bringing you joy. Time for a change then? Another incredible happening at the current time is the lightning-fast pace of technological development and how this is allowing for really incredible components and systems at a fraction of what they would have cost a few short years ago. And this is affecting components from speakers to integrated to headphone amps to turntables to DAC, DAPs and even CD players (whose demise is reminiscent of ‘vinyl being dead’). In other words, there is no greater time to find or upgrade one’s music system to better experience the music, and the ease, happiness, and the recollection of fond memories that wellrendered music can evoke. It is something that I experience literally everyday as a direct result of listening to music via incredible components and systems, across all price segments. Thank you ALL again for your support!

5.62 million views, 72k reads, and 60k visits to our Vimeo page from January 1st to February 15th. Thank you! “Out on a limb” is how I originally described my efforts to start the only ‘interactive’ digital magazine with embedded video content—music and component reviews, etc.—as ‘new’ is not always widely accepted. Further, the choice was to either write reviews for the approximately 22,000 recording engineers across music, film, video industries, with the appropriate technicalities and jargon, or for a broader audience with love of music as the focus. But how would it be received? Would sponsors find us viable? Would there be an audience? Well, with audio components sales dramatically up across the country and across various population segments, perhaps our risk came at the right time. And the broader audience—the millions upon millions of folks who love music and who seek to make their listening experience fun, more immersive and more engaging—is very active! And in this respect we are an unbiased source of information and seek to be a guide toward that end. Note: please follow us on Pinterest, Vimeo, Unbiased source? We don’t sell or distribute Instagram. or gain from the sale of any piece of equipment that is reviewed across our pages and nor will K.E. HEARTSONG we ever. This, of course, frees us to let our readers know how we feel about a given product and whether it was “ok, good, or great”. We don’t do negative reviews. What’s the point? We research and seek out those components that we believe might touch heart and soul and audiokeyreviews.com

OCTOBER 2021

THE CREW Publisher/Editor-in-Chief K. E. Heartsong Managing Editor Dr. Irina Kuzminsky

Oliver Masciarotte Columnists Dr. Irina Kuzminsky Roger Skoff Rain Jordan Chris Sommovigo Music Reviewers (Video/Written) My Nguyen Nathan Lathourm Matt Nielsen Dr. Irina Kuzminsky

MASTHEAD

Associate Editor(s) Andre Marc

Photographer K. E. Heartsong Graphic Design Wabi Sabi Design Group

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AUDIENCE FRONT ROW The Electrostatics of High-End Audio Cables! AudioKeyREVIEWS! V1 18

www.toruspower.com

By K. E. Heartsong

OCTOBER 2021

AUDIENCE FRONT ROW

remember like it was yesterday, walking into a high-end audio store in San Francisco’s South of Market area. The audio store that I had entered had once been located on San Francisco’s Van Ness Ave. As a

Having experienced a rather wide array of cables by this time, and their various pluses and minuses, I stood shocked for a second. Here was a salesman in a high-end audio store who was a) either completely oblivious to the fact that cables do indeed sound different, or b) he wanted to up-sell me on something other than cables? I began my brief rebuttal. “Would you agree that different metals—silver, copper, gold, nickel have different conductivities, different resistivities that are inversely proportional? The greater the conductivity the less the resistance?” I asked. A pregnant silence filled the air. “Thank you,” I said, and headed for another audio store to seek out my cables. This is, however, an argument—that cables young man I would look with an are “snake oil”—that I have also heard from unquenchable desire into its windows to have folks who should know better—audio what sat on the other side. Those in the know component manufacturers. will, of course, know exactly which store I refer I spoke with one gentleman, a noted to. manufacturer who shall remain nameless, who I was eventually greeted by a salesperson, was quite adamant that cables made no as I perambulated—as in passing or wandering difference at all, and that they were “snake oil”. through or over—about the South of Market “So,” I asked him, “I imagine that you run store. I was in search of wires and cables to lift RadioShack cable through your preamps/amps and/or free the music that I believed was being and assume that stock power cables are all held back by my current wires. your buyers will ever need?” “I’m looking for a good set of cables, as my “No,” he replied. “I use XYZ-Cable. It’s the current cables are limiting the music,” I said. best I’ve come across. You should check it out. His response, “All cables are the same, don’t It has just the right mix of ‘properties.’” you know? There’s no difference between A pregnant silence filled the air. them at all. Hype, snake oil.” It has become quite clear to me across any number of professions, sciences, socio-political

By K. AudioKeyREVIEWS! I1 E. Heartsong

JANUARY 2022

Vincent VanGogh - Irises

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AUDIENCE FRONT ROW belief systems, etc, that some folks may be proficient, skilled, even exceptionally competent in a given area, in which they may hold a valued puzzle piece or even two. However, even in a ‘sub-domain’ of their own field, they may be completely bereft of a single puzzle piece or the wherewithal to find one. Such is life and to this we are all victims. In my experience, there are differences both great and small between various cables. I would imagine a good part of this are the materials, metals used, the implementation and construction of said wires/cables, the proficiency of that construction, and the experience and expertise of the person/ company making those wires/cables. Snake oil? No. Perhaps the reverse argument that might shed some light on the quality of the above “snake oil” comment would come from, say, a cable manufacturer. “All preamps and amplifiers sound exactly the same. It’s snake oil to think otherwise”, he might say. And that would be very foolish, of course. This brings me to my review of a cable loom stemming from a rather renowned lineage—Audience’s Front Row Cable (AFRC) —which offers a profound rendering of the musical signals that pass through the loom of wiring. That said, these cables are not inexpensive and for most they might well be qualified as ‘Unobtainium’. However, for those able to afford them, please read on.

REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the equipment actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various accoutrements, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Queen’s Gambit, In the Shadow of the Moon, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way back to the beginning. THE SOUND & SUCH The journey, generally, begins at the source. Or more specifically, at the power cord. This time, however, I went in the opposite direction—the digital cable. We reviewers must continually experiment. I had just received a full loom of the Audience Front Row Cables and it was time to begin its review process in what was a very familiar high-end, electrostatic headphone

AUDIENCE FRONT ROW system—Roon Nucleus Plus streamer, Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC, STAX SR-X9000 headphones, and STAX SRM-T8000 headphone amp. I began the stepped implementation of the Audience Front Row Cables with the USB cable, which immediately stood in another

world compared to previous USB cables in every respect—timbral accuracy, weight, transparency, naturalness, transient speed, and detail (if you can only afford only one of the AFRC cables, get this cable!). I then implemented the AFR singledended (RCA). The difference between it and the previous cables was again stark and the affinity to electrostatics grew. And it continued to grow with the implementation of the balanced interconnects (XLR). I sat listening agog—highly excited by eagerness, curiosity, anticipation, etc.—to this cable loom that was putting up an incredibly convincing demonstration of cable as component and as an electrostatic component at that!

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Then I compared the AFR singled-ended (RCA) and balanced cables (XLR). There were clear differences between them. The XLR cables dug deeper into the musical mix pulling up waves of information, banishing even more noise to some distant realm, fleshing out timbre and texture, while expanding the soundstage. The RCA cables on the other hand were a marked improvement over all of the previous cables, but there was a slight lessening of weight and transparency and quiet by comparison, though they were still incredibly communicative, transparent and natural. I then replaced the power cables to each of the electronic components with the AFR power cables, save the Roon Nucleus Plus, which is not equipped to take an aftermarket power cord. I powered things up and with the briefest of respites, I listened.

Transparency reigned. And its children— resolution, clarity, space, and air—were all present on a level the previous wire looms

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AUDIENCE FRONT ROW could not equal. However, in terms of bass response the AFRCs were very dependent on the quality/quantity of the system to which they were engaged. In particular, the AFR

power cords were far more susceptible to this factor than the AFR USB digital cables or AFR RCA/XLR cables, which performed flawlessly in a top to bottom implementation, across the width of the frequency spectrum. Let me explain. In this review I began with the placement of the AFR USB digital cable first which immediately distinguished itself as a profound advancement over all other inhouse digital cables. There was simply no contest. And with the implementation of AFR RCA/XLR interconnect cables there came a synergy between the two layers of AFR cables that, seemingly, transported one to an electrostatic awareness and rendering of the music being played. This was truly uncanny. At times, I sat mouth agape as my pen fell away,

and all I could do was listen. I do not ever recall a cable being this profound in its ability to well, free a system. And while the final implementation of the AFR power cables sustained this electrostatic rendering, there was, nonetheless, a fall off in bass response potency, depth and weight, depending on the amp in question. With the Enleum AMP-23R, a Titan of bass response in every respect, there seemed to be no diminishment or only very slight diminishment in bass when the AFR power cables were employed.When the STAX SRMT8000 was brought in the diminishment was a bit more pronounced, but a slight raising of the volume appeared to somewhat compensate. However, with the Linear Tube Audio (LTA) Z10e there was a marked fall off in bass response in terms of the ability to reach into any of the sub-bass stratum. In this respect, the AFR power cords, unlike the other AFR cables and wires, are very system dependent. This was somewhat mitigated with the LTA Z10e when the XLRs were engaged as they brought better depth extension and tautness to the music, but the sub-bass regions could still not be breached. The midrange, however, across all genres of music and all configurations was magic. Have you ever been captured by a smile, a voice, a piece of art, a ‘something’ that just wouldn’t let go? Yeah. And the treble via the AFRCs was so doggone sweet and silky, extended, and electrostatic-like in revelation, that there were

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AUDIENCE FRONT ROW times when I just had to stare at the assembled system components and ask, “So you wait until now?” Tone and Timbre of the AFR cables and wires were superb. So exacting and good at parsing tonal/timbral subtleties that it seemed possible to discern the mass of an instrument or even one triangle relative to another. This was the first time that I had ever felt as if a cable had allowed me to discern the mass of any instrument.

missing. With the removal of layers of distortion and a dramatic lowering of the noise floor; frontRow will allow you to hear increased dynamics and more low-level information retrieval; with air, space and 3dimensional holographic imaging unlike you have experienced before.” As I have mentioned before, it is a rare thing when a company’s marketing materials validate an experience or, in this case, an extended review.

Electrostatic? This was a question that needed to be answered. I substituted the Enleum AMP-23R integrated system in place of the STAX SRMT8000 headphone amp and the Meze Empyrean Elite headphones in place of the STAX SR-X9000 headphones. And the answer came quickly, as this system also exhibited a greater transparency, which brought with it the attendant resolution, engagement and a wonderful sweetness, that together conjured an ‘electrostatic-like’ listening experience. Cables are, decidedly, not “snake oil.” In the words of Audience regarding its Front Row cables, we have an example of truth in marketing going hand in hand with reality: “frontRow cable design and development opens up a musical performance that is startling in its life-like presentation; removing veils that obscure the essence of the artist’s intention and bringing you into the center of the experience. Each and every frontRow cable added to

The Audience Front Row Cable’s volumetric cube—sound stage—is vast, even cavernous when called for, and it renders an intimate space fully observed, with its every nuance attended, catalogued. As mentioned above, its transparency, resolution and threedimensionality are easily and uncannily reminiscent of the world of electrostatics. Positioning and layering, and the air between give at least subjective proof to the notion that the components have been left unwired and we are at some later stage of evolution, a century forward perhaps, and the cables are now ‘air’. Bravo!

your system will reveal just what you have been

themselves like the STAX SR-X9000 had done,

CONCLUSION The Audience Front Row Cables pulled a very convincing electrostatic imitation on me in the sense that every scintilla of information—data, music—was beautifully revealed and noise was banished to some other distant, non-parallel dimension. Or, at least, it certainly seemed that way. The Audience cables distinguished

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Imogene Cunningham - Two Callas

which ultimately led to the SR-X9000 winning and award them our—HIGH NINES award— one of our highest awards for 2022. I do not for excellence via an incredible synthesis of know what, if anything, will displace the transparency, resolution, sublime tonal/timbral accuracy, musicality, and sweetness! Pros: Electrostatic abilities to reveal the totality of one’s music in, literally, any system in which the Audience Front Row cables are employed! Cons: The bass is a bit understated for my taste, but no doubt, there are those who would find it perfect, regardless of configuration. Expensive. Audience Front Row cables from establishing themselves as one of several Best Products of the Year for 2022, as they are truly that good. There is not another cable, in my experience and to date, that has come close to delivering the kind of transparency, comprehensive resolution and excavation of detail of the AFRCs, in unison with a compelling and immersive musicality and sweetness that I had not thought possible with cables. These cables are not inexpensive by any means, though what they have achieved and what they offer beyond their like-priced peers or even their more expensive peers - is so distinguishing that it places them a generation removed in technology from their wire and cable brethren. That they are not more widely known, utilized and lauded, remains for me a mystery. We, AudioKeyReviews, very highly

THE COMPANY Audience Audience Front Row Cables: Digital—USB: $1,300/m Interconnects RCA (single-ended): $3300/m Interconnects XLR (balanced): $3800/m Power Cords: $6200/6’(ft) 120 N. Pacific Street, K-9 San Marcos, CA 92069 www.audience-av.com info@audience-av.com

AKRM

recommend the Audience Front Row Cables MARCH 2022

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MEZE RAI PENTA The Synthesis of Art and Beautiful Music A WEBSITE REPRINT

By K. E. Heartsong

JANUARY 2022

MEZE RAI PENTA

ften reviews like this begin with the process of physically “undressing” the product, in this case headphones, until they and their respective accoutrement are revealed in all of their “eyecandy-engaging” splendor. Or not. Suffice to say, that the RAI PENTA ($1,099) went well beyond simple “eye-candy” to high, functional art. And of its sound—form has clearly followed function, as “there be

REFRAIN: Again, unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the headphones actually sound and not the process of physically “undressing” them and/or laying out their various parts, specifications, design aesthetic, etc (though that will come later). Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Irreversible (though incredibly troubling), Amores Perros, etc—that,

beautiful, engaging music” emanating from these small works of art. Note: They are addictive in the extreme. So beware. Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the headphones actually sound and not the process of physically “undressing” them and/ or laying out their various parts, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill,

likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

Pulp Fiction, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

brings a word and a phrase to mind —“subjective,” as all reviews truthfully are, and

THE SOUND As I write this section, I am listening to Olafur Arnalds’, Island Songs (Mercury, Universal France) and it is spellbinding. Poignant, ethereal, melodic, layered, crystal clear, and engaging as rendered by the RAI PENTA IEMs. The album while panned by critics

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Henri Cartier Bresson - Cat

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AntiCabless.com

MEZE RAI PENTA “over-exposed cynicism,” something that every reviewer must guard against. That said, it is an album for mood, reflection, and just plain being. I have listened to it over the years and have never quite heard a IEM dance with it the way that the RAI PENTA now dances and

what a “bass-head” might consider the “holybass-head-grail.” Though slightly enhanced (the mid-bass), the RAI PENTA’s bass does not cross the boundary line into the midrange, indeed, an accomplishment in and of itself, that so many IEM’s of the “holy-bass-head-

sings its music.

grail” variety cannot match. Midrange

BASS

MIDRANGE

Maxwell’s “Sumthin’, Sumthin’” (Maxwell’s

The RAI PENTA’s have a musicality, naturalness, clarity, and body, that brings both female and male vocals to life with wonderful detail and depth. I listen to Sarah Jarosz’s “Back of My Mind” (Undercurrent, Concord).

Urban Hang Suite, Columbia) now plays as I write. The RAI PENTA’s presentation of this bass is refined, clear, detailed, tight, and of the highest caliber. One immediately notices the accuracy and control, the detail from sub to mid-bass and the ever so slightly warm and wonderful tonality, which for the music lover is exceedingly addictive. What the RAI PENTA isn’t is overwhelming, bloated, nor, however, does it extend into the stygian depths of say,

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Her voice is clear, engaging, intimate, halting— in that it has become difficult to continue writing this review… The RAI’s bring to vocals natural texture, musicality, and, again, a clarity, that finds previously unrevealed words, phrasing, nuance

MEZE RAI PENTA clearly and exquisitely rendered. This is, of course, about the RAI’s astute attention to micro detail, articulation, and transparency which are superb. Omar Sosa’s “Aguas” (Calma,

present a more aggressive attack, one does not often find the kind of transparency, the level of detail, the naturalness, nor the degree of separation demonstrated by the RAI PENTAs, World Village) now plays and the tonality of regardless of price range. Annie-Sophie the piano is clear, detailed, powerful, and rich. Mutter’s “Allegro Moderato” (Tchaikovsky/ The voices of the children splashing about in Korngold: Violin Concertos, Deutsche

the water is itself beautifully rendered, natural, and reverberation and decay are sublime. The balance throughout the midrange is quite exceptional, as is the layering, the breath, and width of the soundstage. Separation is, no doubt, a strong point of the RAI PENTA’s. Bravo! TREBLE+ The RAI PENTA’s treble is airy, transparent, and extended, which renders vocals more engaging “breathier,” imminently musical, and, as a result, there is a greater sense of space or separation. And while there are those IEM’s that are more extended in the treble and

Grammophon) case and point for a sublime treble, wonderful separation, incredible layering and musicality, and dynamics, as the repartee between solo violin and orchestra transpires. Finally, there is a complete lack of sibilance, harshness, brightness across the treble.. CONCLUSION It will be difficult to return the RAI PENTA IEMs, as they have extended my listening sessions well into the night and early mornings. Fit (extremely comfortable) and finish are, as mentioned above, superb which

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go hand-inglove with regard to extended listening. Suffice to say, that the number of albums/ playlist for auditioning the RAI PENTAs grew

maker—(Sony NW-WM1Z, HIBY R6 PRO, CAYIN N8, CAYIN N6II, WOO AUDIO WA8) —seductive in the extreme! Very Highly Recommended! THE COMPANY Meze Audio Luliu Maniu str., nr. 38, 1st floor, ap. 2, Baia Mare, 430131, Romania info@mezeaudio.com www.mezeaudio.com

considerably AKRM over my time with them and are listed below, for your reference. In the end, the RAI PENTA’s are beautifully tuned, balanced, textured, and exceptionally detailed works of art. They provide a very natural, airy, and fluid listening experience with captivating musicality and superb tone and timbre. The sum of this is fatiguefree, longterm, listening, that, again, is quite addictive and, dare I say, with the proper music

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HermanMiller

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MUSICAL MUSINGS By Irina Kuzminsky

ho said

classical music is moribund? Or even oldfashioned for that matter? Just because too many recordings of the old great composers - great for a reason as they have survived the passage of decades and centuries - have been presented as museum pieces, all imperfections edited out, does not mean that is all that they are. These works live and breathe in the hands of each new interpreter, that is, as long as that interpreter is not just a proficient musician but, above all else, an artist. An artist able to enter the beating creative heart of the composer and participate in that original act of creation through their own act of cocreation.

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This is something that Icelandic electronic musician and composer Ólafur Arnalds has achieved in collaboration with German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott in The Chopin Project. Arnalds’ own compositions, inspired by and based on Chopin’s pieces, are interspersed with music by Chopin, aptly often called the poet of the piano. As part of their mission to bring to the fore the heart, the direct poetic touch of Chopin’s music, Arnalds and Ott researched older, less perfect recording techniques, different microphones and venues, and, importantly in my eyes, older pianos. Importantly, because as a former pianist myself giving recitals, I still remember being blown away by playing an Erard grand from the mid nineteenth century for the first time at a friend’s house. I was

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Vincent Van Gogh - Sunflowers

immediately struck by how much softer and less brilliant it was than a modern concert grand, but at the same time, how much more subtle to the touch, and how many more colours were at my disposal. I am now the proud owner of a small Bechstein grand from the 1920s and fully understand why Bechsteins were the preferred pianos of Liszt and Debussy. The pianos Chopin played would have been closer to my Bechstein, and much much closer to that Erard, although Chopin himself preferred the Pleyel, which is not far removed in terms of quality and sound. In any case, these old pianos somehow free more of the poetry and colours of the music from the perfection and light brilliance of most modern instruments, inviting one into a more intimate ambience and drawing the listener into Chopin’s passionately dreamy melancholy. I have always loved listening to (and playing) Chopin’s Nocturnes (and his Scherzos … and … and …), so for me, this album which features the Nocturnes in C sharp minor, C minor, G minor, and D flat major as originals and inspirations, is a delight. Apart from the concept, a lot of the success of the album is down to the playing of Alice Sara Ott, who

seems to have a particular affinity to the music of Chopin - and to Debussy, Satie, Ravel, all favourites of mine. It was Ott’s recording of the Chopin waltzes that actually inspired the project. That, and the fact that Chopin was Arnalds’ late grandmother’s favourite composer. I like the way Ott shapes and phrases the music - nothing is rushed, there seems little concern with virtuosity per se, and every note and nuance is allowed to speak for itself with the space to do so. Also featured on the album are Arnalds’ electronic keyboard textures and a live string quintet, of whom I would like to single out Mari Samuelson for her exquisite violin solo on Track 3, the Nocturne in C sharp minor as arranged by Nathan Milstein. The opening track, “Verses”, and also track 7, “Written In Stone”, are both based on the Largo from Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, which is itself the second track of the album, beautifully played by Ott. (I shall be checking out more of her recordings for sure.) A delicate meditative atmosphere and ambience are established straightaway and are carried through the album. The Nocturne in C sharp minor begins conventionally for piano,

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then launches into a solo violin taking on the breathtakingly beautiful right hand melody. Hearing it unaccompanied like that removes some of the familiarity and reintroduces one to that beauty. The piano returns to frame the piece, transitioning smoothly into Arnalds’ “Reminiscence”, which grows organically out of the Nocturne material. The Nocturne in G minor is accompanied by the sound of rain, which takes you to the heart of a musician playing for themselves, or for, perhaps, a small gathering. The piano’s sounds blend with outside noises in the way so many of us experience when making music, not in a sealed studio isolated from the outside world but subject to its whims and sounds. As I am listening an absolute downpour sets in and adds its own ‘music’ to the music. “Letters Of A Traveller”, melding Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat major with Arnalds, is a favourite, the beginning particularly evocative with the gorgeous low bass and cello grounding the plucked harmonies. And the Raindrop Prelude to end with, bringing back by association the sounds of the rain from an earlier track. Exquisite.

This is one of those albums I cannot believe I did not discover earlier, an album I shall be returning to time and time again. Classical music - and modern classical - is not only alive and well, but it is opening up new vistas while honouring and incorporating the past and leading the way into a subtler, more harmonious future, which, maybe only it and a few others can see for the moment. But the fact of seeing it means it is there, waiting for us to step into. Maybe that is the job of artists now - to imagine, and, even more, to see and to reveal that better future AKRM

(2015 Mercury Classics, a division of Decca Music Group Limited)

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JANUARY 2022

AudioKeyREVIEWS! I2

INTERVIEW

Zach & Bevin Merhbach ZMF AUDIO Conducted by K. E. Heartsong

JANUARY 2022

INTERVIEW: ZACH & BEVIN MERHBACH

y research brought me to the website of ZMF headphones and their unique and quite gorgeous headphones that are handmade and constructed of different types of premium, kiln-dried hardwoods, various stains, and metals. The ZMF headphones are also tunable via different types of earpads of which there are a number of options. The top headphone in the ZMF line is the Limited Edition Véríté African Blackwood. The entry level ZMF is the Atticus. ZMF was founded and is run by Zach and Bevin Merhbach. Who are Zach and Bevin? I’ll let them tell you in their own words.

everything else and especially so in a business. Zach, Bevin were are you both from? Bevin Mehrbach: I’m from Connecticut. Zach Mehrbach: I’m from New Hampshire. Kermit: Was their music in your homes? Record Player? CD player? If not how do you think that affected you? Zach: My father and I bonded over 60’s Blues,

“Zach is the founder, President and designer of ZMF headphones. Zach's love for individually crafted items started with a love for vintage and modern hand-built acoustic guitars, and he translated many of those ideas over to our headphones.” “Bevin is the saintly partner of Zach, CoOwner of ZMF and longstanding HR/PR/QC representative who maintains order, in the face of ever menacing entropy.”

Rock—Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall—Buddy After reviewing the ZMF Atticus and learning Guy and Muddy Waters when I was a very more about this ‘Mom & Pop’ manufacturer of young. And my fascination with music and guitar took off from there. My father is a high-end headphones based in the US, I dedicated artist/painter who spends countless wanted to interview them. Despite their hours in his art studio. He has a sizable CD incredibly busy schedules, Zach and Bevin catalogue which he plays as he paints. My happily agreed to the review. father had a pair of Sony 7506s that were a Kermit: Well, first I’d like to set the tone in that prized possession. And he always took such I’d like this to be a review about the two of you great care of his gear. I was also trying to get as and not about the tech and manufacturing, but much time listening with his headphones that the personal. As I believe the personal drives

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INTERVIEW: ZACH & BEVIN MERHBACH I could. My mother is a dancer who trained at There I listened to an incredibly diverse range the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Music was of music/genres from delta blues to non-pop also an integral part of her craft and it was music, etc. clear, early on, that she enjoyed it and that it inspired her very much. The exposure to the music led me to take guitar lessons when I was 12. Bevin: My father is a professional musician who spent 9 years touring with Arlo Guthrie. He was a pit musician in many Broadway Musicals, and has performed on stages from Carnegie Hall to The Grand Old Opry. My mother had a children’s band that released many records. She spent the weekends playing gigs all through my upbringing. I grew up in a very musical household which had a room dedicated to music called “the music room.” It housed a piano, a pedal steel guitar, a heap of Kermit: I’m where you were then, completely guitars and recording equipment. without TV. What were your very first systems Kermit: It seems that you both lived in very then? How did you listen, in terms of Digital or rich musical and creative environments. Analog? How did it make you feel? Beautiful. How did music affect your early life? Bevin: My first ‘system’ was a Sony Walkman Was there a family member or another person, that played cassette tapes. After that I who inspired your love for music, performing? graduated to a Sony discman for CDs. Zach: I grew up without mainstream TV until I Zach: My first system was an old receiver with was in his teens. I spent the majority of my a headphone output that my father gave me. It ‘formative years’ listening to radio and music. was from the 70’s and as it was new, I'd have to My father had a very large collection of CDs, ask my dad every time I wanted to use it. The which in many ways had become my own, at first “proper” hifi system I had was the OG least for listening. I also lived close to Schiit Mjolnir and a LYR 1 from Schiit that I Dartmouth College (New Hampshire) where I got after I'd been modding the t50’s for a would attend concerts at the Hopkins Center while. I also used IEMs a lot in grad school, for the Arts or “The Hop” as it was called.

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INTERVIEW: ZACH & BEVIN MERHBACH

like the Westone UM2 and Heir audio IEMs when the Wizard was at the helm. Kermit: What musicians did you admire then, enjoy, love when you were younger? Why? Bevin: I was very immersed in 90’s hip hop. I was enthralled with the work of the Fugees and followed the solo careers of each of the members. Other artists that I liked were Tupac, Notorious BIG, Puff Daddy and Ma$e, Dr. Dre & Snoop, Jay-Z and the Rockafella ensemble, Nas, The Ruff Ryder establishment with DMX, and Eve, etc. Zach: Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Tim O’Brien, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bryan Sutton – they just emoted through their playing and were also technically capable.

Kermit: That first Fugee album was incredible. It’s one of my favorites too. What was the most memorable epiphany that’s come from listening to music or turning a good friend or a significant other on to music? Or playing music for people? Bevin: “Music is not heard, it’s felt.” I don’t know who said it, but when you feel the music, you have approached the true magic of what music is. Zach: For me always having fun playing old time music with people and then listening and understanding how different instruments blend together is a true joy. Kermit: I agree, music for me is also very much felt. Zach, I imagine that knowledge gained

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from playing music and then consciously listening to its various relationships has been very helpful with the tuning of your headphones. Tell me, what catalyzing event put you on the road to high-end audio? Zach: I was in grad school at the time and I

headphone design from the ground up. I also had a strong interest in acoustic instruments, notably, acoustic guitars. I studied their construction and decided that I wanted to use wood as a medium for my design of the headphone cups and the inner baffle assembly as well.

had to do a tremendous amount of writing, so I looked for something to balance, to keep my Kermit: Biggest mistake you ever made, mind relaxed, free, and yet still contemplative. personally and then with ZMF? And what did you learn from it? Bevin: I had used sub-par but accessible personal audio equipment for quite a bit of time. When I heard what Zach’s gear was able to produce, I realized how amazing the experience was and wanted to support this endeavor.

Zach: We have learned a lot with ZMF. It began as an enthusiast side project and not a business, so there was lots to learn along the way. It has been a continued evolution of growing and reflecting. It is hard to say anything was an obvious mistake, as there was value in all of the learning curves. The most notable lesson has been that collaboration is such a valuable way of working and that challenges are often best solved with a few minds at work.

Zach: I began ZMF modifying T50 RP

Bevin: I would also say that Zach and I do our best work when we compromise or collaborate on a solution to something. Handling a problem, a trouble, or worrying by oneself can be very isolating. Having a supportive team or partner to dialogue with is always a more successful and healthy way to address a challenge.

headphones and learning the ins and outs of acoustic design. Once I had a real mastery of

Kermit: Working together in a collaborative

Kermit: How did ZMF begin and what were your initial motivations?

the design of the T50RP headphone, I began work on creating his own proprietary

environment is certainly key and as you both, no doubt, work so close and live together, I imagine it mandatory. And true, there are no OCTOBER 2021

INTERVIEW: ZACH & BEVIN MERHBACH mistakes, really. What do you believe sets ZMF apart from the other high-end audio retailers/ manufacturers?

Zach: Our goal has always been to put out

headphones that we personally love. We use really high-quality materials: wood, metal, and leather and are always focused on getting Zach: ZMF is unique in that our headphones better- reinvesting into our company and our are all hand constructed and finished with real headphones. wood. We don’t use veneers, our baffles are wooden, and the entire process starts from Kermit: Opening the case that the Atticus blocks of lumber that we CNC. We have been came in stimulated multiple senses. The sense obsessive in our tuning and R&D to try to of smell via the fragrant camphor wood that achieve a presentation of music that sounds was intoxicating. The sense of sight via the natural and live. We have a lot of experience exceptional woodworking and construction, both playing and being around live music and which is of heirloom quality. And then the want to capture that lush and enthralling sound came later, after burn-in which experience in our headphones. motivated one of our highest awards. The music that the Atticus renders is incredible and rich and immersive. The love for what you both do truly comes out via your headphones and the music that they bring. Bravo. I’ll bring this part of the interview to a close with a question on ethos and philosophy. Tell me, what is ZMF’s overall ethos. Zach: Our overall ethos is to think of any future ZMF owner as making something for ourselves or a family member. Make it quality. Try to make it something they will love and be excited by. In the shop we make headphones for people, not for the shelf of a store. I know we all feel a huge element of pride in hoping Kermit: I have to say that your headphones are what we have made is giving someone a joyful gorgeous, truly and the pictures, though good, experience and bringing them closer to their still don’t do them justice. What is ZMF’s music. driving philosophy, its goals for the future?

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INTERVIEW: ZACH & BEVIN MERHBACH Duhks—self titled album. Movies – have fond memories watching Donnie Darko and reference systems or your best high-end Clueless as a kid, and then Freaks and Geeks is system of all time? Why? my favorite TV show of all time. Favorite recent Zach & Bevin: Current favorite amp of all movie is probably Night Crawler or Drive, at time is also my newest, it’s a custom made amp least from the last 10 yrs. by L0rdGwyn on head fi, and uses 45 tubes Bevin: Joni Mitchell Album: Blue. Modest and 5687 tubes. It as a super deep and wide Kermit: Okay. What is/are your current

sound, with lush midrange and nice full impact. It works great with ZMFs. For solid

Mouse Album: The Moon and Antarctica. Pixies Album: Surfer Rosa. Fugees Album: The Score. Kanye West Album: The Life of Pablo. Movies: The Squid & The Whale, Garden State, Contact, Aladdin, I am Sam. Kermit: Is there anything that I’ve not covered, that you like to share or address concerning ZMF? Zach & Bevin: Thanks for reviewing the Atticus and for all your time spent with ZMF 😊

Kermit: It was and continues to be my pleasure. Zach, Bevin thank you both very much for taking the time for this review, greatly state I have always loved the ECP Ravenswood appreciated! And I wish you both the very best. amps and also the JDS Labs Element. The Pendant comes in at a close second to the AKRM custom 45 amp for tube amps. Kermit: What are your five favorite albums and five movies of all time and why? Is art a part of your lives? Zach: Ben Harper album: Fight for Your Mind. Second choice for a more current album—The

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MOLA MOLA KULA Integrated Amplifier w/The Works! By Andre Marc

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MARCH 2022

MOLA MOLA KULA

ased in the Netherlands, Mola Mola has already had a major impact on the world of high performance audio. Belgian born founder Bruno Putzeys is a legitimate legend in the industry. He pushed Class D amplifier technology light years into the future, with his NCore designs competing

design, with the basic unit costing $13,800. The optional DAC module, the same found in their standalone Tambaqui convertor, is $8200. The phono module comes in at $3000. So the “fully loaded” unit will come in at $25,000. With the DAC module installed, you also get a ROON ready streamer, with Ethernet input.

with the very best amplifiers in the world, regardless of topology. These accomplishments just scratch the surface of Putzeys’s resume. In addition to changing the landscape of amplifiers, Putzeys has co-founded Grimm Audio, and designed one of the world’s elite DSD Analog to Digital convertors. He also cofounded Kii, an active speaker company, and Purifi, designers of innovative speaker components. If that was not enough, Putzeys owns numerous patents, and continues to forge ahead with new ideas. One of Mola Mola’s more recent products

The review unit arrived with all of the above! There is a cigar shaped steel remote control, and the Mola Mola app allows for extensive setting options and full input and volume control, via Bluetooth. Looking at the physical aspects of the Kula, it is a hefty 25 lbs, but has a very manageable footprint. The casework is exquisite, but not in any way gaudy. The unit exudes precision and is a beautiful example of modern industrial art. There are 3 analog inputs, and, very cleverly, the inputs can accommodate both single ended and balanced cables, selectable via a

is the Kula integrated amplifier. It is a modular toggle switch. The DAC module accepts both

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USB and AES/EBU connections, and there is an RJ45 Ethernet jack for connecting to your network. A pair of very high quality speaker outputs complete the picture.

amplifier simply brought music to life with some of the most transparent, organised and life-sized sound we have ever heard. One of our all time favourite albums is In Search Of

SET UP & PROGRAMMING:

The Lost Chord, the Moody Blues 1968

After downloading the Mola Mola app on my iPad, and connecting to the Kula via Bluetooth, setting it up to my desired parameters was extremely quick and easy. You can assign inputs, adjust gain on each input, and set the phono stage up for your cartridge. I ended up using 72 dB of gain for my Rega Planar 6 turntable outfitted with Ania Moving Coil cartridge. With a Rosewill CAT7 cable connected, I was able to enable the Kula as a ROON endpoint. The DAC decodes virtually every resolution up to Quad DSD. I was left wanting for nothing. The Kula drove both Magnepan 1.7i speakers, and Alta Audio Alyssa stand mounts (review forthcoming). The Kula outputs 150 wpc into 8 Ohms, and a whopping 300 wpc into 4 Ohms, and had no trouble at all filling up a large room with high ceilings without as much as breaking a sweat. Indeed, its power seemed effortless. We left the Kula powered on at all times for maximum performance. We used an Audio Art Cable power cable, and set the Kula up on Symposium Rollerblock+ pucks, with a Symposium Svelte Shelf. We cycled through albums we had been listening to recently with our usual electronics, and immediately our ears told us we had struck sonic gold. The Kula as a DAC and

psychedelic opus. We have numerous versions, including the sublime SACD, the 50th Anniversary Edition download, which includes a fresh, superb sounding 24 bit, 96 kHz remix, and numerous bonus tracks. We also have several original Deram vinyl pressings. The Kula presented the acoustic guitars, mellotron, flute, and the vocals with such pristine texture it was hard not to have the album on repeat. We then cued up several late 60’s Fairport Convention albums, including rips of the Japanese SHM SACDs of Liege & Leaf, and Unhalfbricking. These pioneering British folk rock albums came across as amazing time pieces, with Sandy Denny’s sublime vocals and Richard Thompson’s modal guitar lines having a hypnotic effect. The Kula provided holographic images and brought out the drama in renditions of “Matty Groves”, “Tam Lin”, “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” and “A Sailor’s Life”. A young artist out of the UK, Joshua Burnell, has taken up the British folk rock torch and carried it forward with great skill. His albums are available on Bandcamp and his Patreon page, and all are worth exploring. He mixes in excellent original compositions with classic British folk tunes, like “Blackleg Miner”, “Lowlands Of Holland” and “She Moved Through The Fair”. His recordings, done with

JANUARY 2022

MOLA MOLA KULA a friendly cast of superb musicians, are We have not had a chance to hear the Mola extremely good. The Kula got to the heart of Mola Tambaqui DAC, which is priced at the organic nature of these recordings, and around $13,000, however. But for those allowed a certain authenticity to shine through. purchasing a Kula, the DAC option makes Magical! perfect sense.

To further put the Kula DAC module through its paces, we spent a few weeks with high resolution downloads and lots of SACD rips. We cued up everything from the 24 bit, 96 kHz AC/DC catalogue remasters, the 192 kHz Rush remasters, and then transitioned to lots of excellent jazz, like the recent 192 kHz and SACD rip of the sublime Art Blakey archival recording, First Flight To Tokyo, and new releases like the sonically and musically excellent Art Moves Jazz, a 96 kHz download

SPINNING THE BLACK CIRCLE: We had a stack of vinyl ready to put the Mola phono module through its paces. Spoiler alert, to be perfectly upfront the Phono stage was absolutely superb in every way. It took literally a minute to select and assign the input and set the gain setting. Then we spun vinyl for days on end. We ended up starting with one of the albums we streamed from our library, the Mobile Fidelity CD version of The Low Spark

Of High Heeled Boys by Traffic. We have an from the Quentin Baxter Quintet. original pink label Island pressing, and to say Without exception, at all resolutions, the we were both stunned and delighted with the digital side of the Kula was stupendous. In fact, presentation would be an understatement. it rivals and maybe even surpasses many Chris Wood’s flute, Steve Windwood’s vocals uberexpensive standalone units we have heard. and Jim Capaldi’s drums were so nicely placed

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MOLA MOLA KULA The Kula ran slightly warm to the touch in the mix, and had so much texture, it caused when left powered on, hardly a cause for quite a stir among several visitors who concern, but common sense dictates a decent requested LP after LP. amount of ventilation. The design of this We then dove into our Beatles stash and

cranked up numerous albums, including Magical Mystery Tour, Beatles ‘65, Revolver and

integrated amplifier assures it is headache free. Connect your cables, jump on the app and get tunes. At this price point we should expect Abbey Road, all original US pressings. There was plenty of joy to behold here. These albums nothing less, and Mola Mola delivers the goods, both ergonomically and sonically. sounded wonderful across the board, with The Kula also had the ability to bring out vocals, stereo separation, and bass all being the natural character of speakers. When rendered with that all important human paired with the Magnepan 17i, the natural character. As with the DAC, adding the phono stage coherence and superb transients the speakers is highly recommended if purchasing the Kula. are known for were taken to a new level. In In our experience, the phono module easily fact, we normally use a pair of JL Audio subwoofers with the Magnepans, but did not competes with pricey dedicated boxes. Fully loaded, the elegance of this one box miss them at all with the Kula. We had all the bass we desired and it was very controlled. solution is essentially without equal. Of course, if a prospective customer has invested With the Alta Audio Alyssa monitors, the depth of image, immediacy and resolution quite a bit in a standalone DAC or phono these speakers provide became even more preamp which they prefer, the Kula, used strictly as an amplification device, is as good as apparent. We can simply call it an ideal it gets in the world of integrated amps in our estimation.

pairing. With Kula driving the Alyssas, there was a certain grip on the music, and the

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MOLA MOLA KULA

amazingly low noise floor will be missed when For those who can afford to swim with the we have to ship the speakers and amp back! big fish, the Mola Mola Kula is recommended without reservation. In fact, it allows one who CONCLUSION: desires to downsize from a stack of boxes and The Mola Mola Kula integrated amplifier is, to cables to do so without compromise. Along our ears, a state of the art in one box with that, you will have enough power to drive amplification solution. The rich midrange, the virtually any speaker, even in the most perfectly articulated and controlled bass, along demanding rooms. If seeking a 21st century with the amp’s overall grip on the music and truly integrated turnkey solution for those who speakers, makes it one of the great integrated can afford the best, the Mola Mola Kula is a amps of our time, and we have heard a few. must hear. And without further ado we award Add the absolutely superb, user configurable the Mola Mola Kula our DIAMOND AWARD phono stage, and the state of the art DAC and for unparalleled excellence. streamer module, and you have a package that THE COMPANY would dazzle even the most jaded audiophiles. Mola Mola As a bonus, it is captivating visually. Mola Mola Kula ($25,000, Fully-Loaded) It is not often for components that are as sophisticated as the Kula to be easy to set up THE DISTRIBUTOR and enjoy hassle free. This is important as GTT Audio these types of products should have their +1 908 850 3092 owners spending more time listening to music av@gttaudio.com than fussing. The Kula had us reaching for www.gttaudio.com records deep in our collection, and mining our NAS on a daily basis.

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PS AUDIO SACD TRANSPORT/DAC CD Playback is Back in the 21st Century In a Big Way!

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By K. E. Heartsong JANUARY 2022

PS AUDIO SACD TRANSPORT/DAC

he Compact Disc (CD) Player made its market debut in 1982. It was ‘science fiction’ made flesh with laser beams, ‘contactless’ playback, and the promise, I paraphrase, of music forever. Of course, the early adopters, of which I was one, had to have one. It was after all the latest, greatest gadget to have or so we thought. There were those, however, who were not fooled by the marketing frenzy and via early comparisons to their turntables, they quickly discovered that CDs were a poor third in terms of musicality and almost all other music related stats as compared to their turntables. Nonetheless, in the US alone between the years 1983 to 2020 approximately 15.1 billion Compact Discs (CDs) were sold. One can only guess how many CDs have been sold worldwide in this timeframe. Fifty billion CDs, perhaps 100 billion across the world? I’ve explained in one of my earlier reviews that it was only sometime later, after I had sold my albums and opted for the shiny plastic discs, that my epiphany arrived. It came to me via a girlfriend who had held on to her decades old turntable which would put my high-flying, expensive digital setup to great shame. All it took was just a very few notes. And my world was rocked. It is a moment that I will not soon forget. Suffice to say, that there are, perhaps, tens of billions of CDs across the planet, some, no doubt, in landfills, some in deep storage, and some in use. This begs the worldwide question and not just in the US—are CDs dead? The volume alone would say no. And what if for

some quite unfortunate reason, which I will not detail here, the internet of all things should be, well, rendered extinct? Then the media that one can hold in one’s hands will be king. Got albums? Cassettes? CDs? Eight-Tracks (tapes)? It may well come to pass that the death of the CD was, perhaps, as exaggerated as the death of vinyl. I have several friends whose CD collections are vast on a scale that few would imagine—10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or more— stored in offsite facilities with a matching number of albums or even more. Fortunately, the frail, harsh and unmusical days of CDs are a long time ago. Today it takes a rather expensive turntable to beat a Top-of-theLine (TOTL) CD player. Things have, indeed, changed and dramatically so. This takes me to my review of the PS Audio PerfectWave SACD Transport ($6,499) and the PS Audio DirectStream DAC ($5,999) in combo, and decidedly a TOTL CD player. How far has the playback of CDs and SACDs come via rapid technological innovation and do they pose a challenge to streaming media in terms of sheer musicality? REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the components actually sound and not the process of physically “undressing” them and/or laying out their various parts, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie— Memento, Kill Bill, Arrival, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

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PerfectWave SACD Transport

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PS AUDIO SACD TRANSPORT/DAC THE SOUND Ah, burn-in. The PS Audio PerfectWave SACD Transport and the PS Audio DirectStream DAC will need to be run for a long while (200 hours stated) before it hits optimum stride and then it will need to be powered and ready to go at any one of the 31,557,600 seconds in a given year. The lack of burn-in will result in a premature determination that will not see the combo at its best, nor serve the purchaser well. When the necessary burn-in was accomplished (300 hours in my case), I began combing through my cache of CDs, a ghost of a ghost of its former self. I picked out the treasures, those pieces long known to me, which would tell me in a very short time how well or poorly they were being rendered by a given system. Among them Shirley Horn’s You Won’t Forget Me, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, Pat Metheny's New Chautauqua, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Janos Starker’s Rachmaninoff/Brahms, Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West and a host of others. The PerfectWave SACD Transport was quite demanding of its partnering DAC and the DirectStream DAC was always up to the task. Though when utilizing other DACs it boiled down to this bit of knowledge—pair it with high-performing DACs in order to get its best performance. Not necessarily the “Duh” you think this is as pricing of the various DACs was, in fact, of secondary concern, while inherent abilities were primary.

combo—this was, decidedly, not how I remember CD playback. The thinness, the shrill treble ‘resolution’, which would fluctuate between “Scccsssshhhh” to “something in a frying pan at high heat with a thin layer of oil”, or ‘invisible irritation’ and the inability to relax into the music were a thing of the past. No, what this combo was rendering was a naturalness and musicality and resolution easily comparable to TOTL turntables and their playback of albums. Paradox? Irony? Or the karma of the Ying Yang continuum? With regard to the ‘baddies’ of earlier digital playback, the PS Audio SACD Transport/DAC combo bore no relation to them. Instead there is a paradoxical analog ease, exceptional treble resolution, a frequency-spanning weight, gravitas, texture, and naturalness, as mentioned above. This provides for an organic, engrossing and, again, analog-like rendering of one’s music. The PS Audio SACD Transport/DAC combo’s volumetric cube—its soundstage— offers up great depth and width and very good height. Layering and positioning are impressive and solid from the combo. There is also exceptional transparency and resolution, and detail seems to float up from below the noise floor making itself available in a way relevant to the track or song in question. The PS Audio SACD Transport/DAC combo was paired with the Roon Nucleus Plus, STAX SRM-T8000 HPA, LTA Z10e HPA/Integrated, Enleum AMP-23R HPA/Integrated, Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC, and DENAFRIPS Pontus II

The takeaway, after spending several months DAC. As this was an all headphone setup, my with the PS Audio SACD Transport/DAC wheelhouse at present, the headphones used MARCH 2022

PS AUDIO SACD TRANSPORT/DAC were the STAX SR-X9000, STAX SR-009S, Dan Clark VOCE, Meze Elite Empyreans, Meze Empyreans, Meze LIRIC, ZMF Verite, ZMF Atticus, and Rosson Audio RAD-0. Wires. Cabling throughout were Audience’s Front Row Cables (review coming) and power was RSX Power8 Power Box with the RSX BEYOND AC Power Cord. A balanced (XLR) connection brought more to the experience in every possible way—transparency, detail, air, bass weight, transient speed, etc. This was my preferred way of listening for the review, though I had also listened with RCA and I must say it too was very good.

Audio combo delved deeply into the stygian depths of the Holy-Bass-Head-Grail to come away with the prize every time. Bravo! MIDRANGE Voces8’s “Vesper (All-Night Vigil), Op.37: Bogoroditse Devo 1915” (Lux, Decca Music

Group Ltd.) plays and the stage is high, broad and deep, with singers fixed. The harmonies are beautifully rendered, rich, suffused with detail and air sufficient to enable a feeling of an incredibly immersive experience. Ethereal at times, holographic at others, the PS Audio SACD Transport/DAC combo blurs the boundaries of analog, whilst offering up BASS seemingly every scintilla of information Eiji Oue’s “V. Infernal Dance of King contained therein. It is one of the most Kashchey” (Stravinsky, Reference Recording) beautiful renderings of this piece and this first. Relative to the streaming setup, the bass album that I’ve heard. And that counts for response of the PS Audio PerfectWave SACD streaming of, at least, the CD version of Lux Transport and the PS Audio DirectStream DAC (didn’t have the SACD version)! The midrange was thunderous, powerful, and as tight as the is both exceptional and beguiling. And this I did seven employed tympani drums! That said, a not expect. CD playback has, indeed, come a particular streaming combination via the very long way. Enleum AMP-23R (now gone) met the response My all-time favorite CD for sussing out a blow for blow of the PS Audio combo, and one component or an entire system is Shirley can only imagine the tumult that the two— Horn's “Beautiful Love” (You Won’t Forget Me, Enleum AMP-23R and the PS Audio combo Verve). I took this CD with me to every audition, would have rendered together across the bass to friends’ homes so as to understand his or her region—monstrous and exacting! Via the “incredible system,” in short everywhere. “Infernal Dance of King Kashchey” the PS Suffice to say that most of these systems, in my Audio combo brought transparency and subjective opinion, were… okay, not incredible. excitement and all were married to that Now Toots Thielemans’ harmonica enters and it paradoxical analog-like musicality. I could find is somber, tonally/timbrally honest, wonderfully no fault, whatever, across this region as track textured. The rendering of this alone would after track revealed the ease with which the PS confer “keeper” in an audition. Then Shirley’s

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Henri Cartier Bresson - Today’s Obsessions

PS AUDIO SACD TRANSPORT/DAC voice and the clarity of phrasing, the palpability, the nuance and richness, the texture, with not a quark of sibilance is intoxicating. I want more. I repeat the track. This would, of course, signal “keeper” while so many components and systems over the years did not. TREBLE+ Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” (Time Out, Columbia-Legacy) cues and plays through. Joe Morello’s cymbals sing with a crystal clarity, air, and fine, detail-rich resolution, that says ‘inhouse’ baby. I cannot tell you how many super, high-priced systems fail to deliver on this! Nor do they deliver on the tight, transient quick, drum-skin whacks and black-quiet in-betweens as Joe goes to town. Dave’s keys have required weight, tonal ease. And here comes Paul Desmond’s sax and it is vibrant, textured, tonally rich, and compelling. Always there, Eugene Wright’s beginning to end bass licks are the foundation for all that lies above and, seemingly, nothing lies below. The air and space, the impact and speed are delicious. Like triple chocolate cake and a Rutherglen Muscat (Campbells Merchant Prince) after a fine dinner. Another exceptional rendering via the PS Audio SACD Transport/DAC combo. Bravo! CONCLUSION

resplendent musicality, and beguiling engagement. Who’d of thunk? Seriously, if you have a mountain of CDs like a number of my friends and consider yourself a connoisseur of media—CDs, SACDs, downloads—the PerfectWave SACD transport and the PS Audio DirectStream DAC represent a one-stop powerhouse that will keep you seated in the listening chair for countless happy hours with its transparency, its detail and richness, its startle factor, and its engaging musicality. The PerfectWave SACD Transport and the PS Audio DirectStream DAC are highly recommended in a day and age when people actually think that CDs are dead. The nerve! Remember, these are probably the same people who said that vinyl was dead, as vinyl now experiences a renaissance across the world. When will we learn and listen to our hearts and our souls, not the naysayers. And should the internet of things go, well, south… We, AudioKeyReviews, happily give the PerfectWave SACD Transport and the PS Audio DirectStream DAC combo our GOLDEN KEYNOTE Award for outstanding musical excellence. Pros: Incredible transparency, resolution, musicality, and engagement..

Wow! CD/SACD playback has, indeed, come a very long way whilst providing for a paradox that can, perhaps, only now be seen for what it is—CD playback comparable to exceptional

Cons: Expensive. Not small.

vinyl playback or CD playback with soul,

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DAYENS SEPARATES Ampino Preamplifier & Monoblock Amplifiers

AudioKeyREVIEWS! I2 By Andre Marc

JANUARY 2022 Photo Courtesy Hörgenuss für Audiophile

DAYENS SEPARATES These days quality HiFi products are made all over the world, with large numbers of manufacturers located in Asia and Eastern Europe. One such small firm is Dayens Audio, located in Serbia. This artisanal manufacturer makes a full suite of attractive gear, including preamps, integrated amps, power amps, and even speakers. Rob Fritz of Audio Art Cable, a man with a good ear for under the radar gear, imports the

the size of a shoebox, with a very smart front panel layout, high quality connectors around the back, and a full function remote control supplied. There is a nice silver volume knob that provides plenty of adjustable range. There are four RCA inputs, along with dual RCA outputs, which makes it easy to use with a subwoofer. The Ampino amplifiers are as elegant in their simplicity as the preamp. A front panel power toggle switch, a back panel RCA input,

speaker terminals and IEC inlet adorn each amplifier. These amps pump out 50 watts per channel into 8 Ohms, and it doubles to 100 watts per channel into 8 Ohms. The case work is nice, and pleasingly plain. At this price point, customers should be thankful designers allocate resources to components as opposed to opulent appearance. And indeed, Dayens uses Mundorf input capacitors, a beefy toroidal transformer, and other high grade parts. A tidy Dayens line from Europe. He also brings in the package that should have no issue with driving Sonnet line from the Netherlands. You can can the vast majority of loudspeakers on the read the review of their streamer and DAC market. here. Fritz is also a manufacturer of excellent SET UP & LISTENING: cables. We used them to evaluate the Sonnet The Dayens combo was installed in a system gear, and also for the Dayens components comprised of a Sonore microRendu streamer, under review here, the Ampino Preamplifer a Marantz HD-DAC1, a Rega Planar 3 and Ampino Mono Block power amplifiers. turntable, and a Lounge Audio phono stage. The preamp retails for $900, and the mono Speakers were a pair of Spendor Classic S3/5R block amps go for $1650 a pair. The Ampino line are designed with a small monitors. Cabling, as noted, was from Audio Art Cable. Everything was plugged into an footprint, high value and reliability in mind. Audience power conditioner for good measure. The Ampino Preamp, like the amps, is about

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The first phase of my time enjoying the Ampinos was spent listening to quite a bit of vinyl. Everything from great reissues like the Intervention Records recent Kevin Gray’s mastered Look Sharp! and Night and Day by

Dayens combo had good control of the speakers. We also thoroughly enjoyed a backlog of high resolution digital releases. The recently released First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, was a pure joy to behold.

The 24/192 download captures Blakey and his esteemed sidemen in peak form at concerts in Joe Jackson, to well-curated original pressings. Tokyo. The source was long lost tapes that were What became apparent immediately is that the somehow discovered, then carefully digitised and edited. The solos are tantalising, and the Ampinos had very nice transparency, and energy level is what one would expect from excellent soundstage depth. We have heard such an inspired band. The Dayens Ampinos amps with wider soundstages, but not at this locked in and organised everything sonically price point! with great flair. A stunning reissue find was the We Want An overlooked gem in the David Bowie Sounds vinyl remaster of legendary Egyptian catalogue, Black Tie, White Noise from 1993, guitarist Omar Khorshid’s Giant + Guitar. I just received a 24/192 remaster. It is filled with was not prepared for the immediacy, classic Bowie explorations that range from transparency and complete involvement that the Dayens combo produced with this release. soul, futuristic funk and even avant garde pop. The new remaster sounds spectacular, and the With a beautifully recorded Middle Eastern music just exploded out of the speakers with ensemble as backing, Khorshid weaves a web the Dayens in tow. Nimble bass lines were easy of noir guitar melodies and mysterious passages. With a sprinkling of organ, tabla and to follow, and the layered production was the bedrock for Bowie’s vocal excursions. The other exotic instruments, the listener is taken album even contains an extremely catchy on quite a journey. The impactful and articulate bottom end really showed the

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single, “Jump They Say”, and a well executed cover of Cream’s “I Feel Free”. Matador, by jazz legend Kenny Dorham,

received an excellent SACD release on the Impex label. This highly anticipated jazz reissue arrived in a timely fashion, and it was given a thorough listen through multiple times. The Dayens combo presented this beautiful recording so well, with the natural timbres of the instruments coming through, including Dorham’s gorgeous trumpet tone. A quick ergonomic overview: The Ampinos were left powered on at all times, and ran at room temperature. As with all mono blocks, installing the amplifiers with a decent amount of physical separation is recommended to avoid any potential transformer interaction or hum. Perhaps the only additional feature I would like to have seen is a 12V trigger connection so that the whole stack can be turned off with the remote. CONCLUSION: The Serbian designed and built Dayens Ampino preamplifier and mono block amplifiers deliver a heck of a lot of good sound for their modest prices. The preamp is a nononsense clean sounding, transparent linestage, and the amplifiers will drive most speakers without breaking a sweat. Both sets of products do benefit from good cabling and proper placement. It is always a pleasure to spend time with products made by small manufacturers who have a passion for building great sounding

audio gear for sane, real world prices. Dayens fits that bill, and then some. For well under three grand, the Ampino preamp and mono amplifiers are a great find. SPECIFICATIONS: Dayens Mono Power Amplifiers: $1650 Continuous Power: 100W/CH (into 4 Ohms) 50W/CH (into 8 Ohms) Frequency Response: 1Hz – 200Khz (-3dB) Sensitivity: 220mV. Input impedance: 100kOhm (RCA) S/N Ratio: > 100 dB. Dimensions (H x W x D): 90 x 150 x 330 mm. Weight (pair): 8 kg. Finish: Special powder-coated enclosure. Dayens Ampino Preampliifer: $900 Type: Active (solid-state) RCA outputs: 2 Power: 50 watts / 8 Ohm; 100 watts / 4 Ohm Input (RCA): 1 Frequency response (Hz): 4Hz - 200kHz SNR (dB): >92 Dimensions (mm): 150x330x90 Weight (kg): 4.5 Manufacturer: Dayens https://www.dayens.rs/en_index.html Contact: Rob Fritz, Audio Art Cable www.audioartcable.

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JOAN OF AUDIO By Rain Jordan

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH HI-END AUDIO “I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.” ~ Igor Stravinsky

n the January issue, I wrote about the serendipitous nature of my introduction to hi-end audio. and the immeasurable significance music has had in my life. In short, prior to my introduction to hi-end audio, I had no real technical knowledge or interest in audio technology. I simply loved music, as most people do. The discovery that the “right” audio components could play recorded music as the artist intended it to be heard; life-like, dimensional, emotive, palpable, immersive, soulful, gave me the means to immerse myself in a vast array of extraordinary music in the immediacy of my own home. My creative life expanded. Music in many ways is the most powerful form of communication we have. It is the language of feeling, of heart and soul. It transcends time, mind, culture, politics, age,

sex, race, and creed. Like a gift from a higher realm, music is a boundless and benevolent force of creative expression that both liberates and heals. Musician and songwriter Billy Joel puts it plainly, ”Music is the explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.” The universality of music makes it accessible to all people. Thus, the joy and unity it engenders needs no translation. All it requires is that you feel it. That you listen with your heart. So, how to get started with hi-end audio: 1.) Go to the source. Listen to more live music. Try to visit venues that are designed for musical performances. Notice what you like or don’t like about the live experience. Pay a little attention to the environment, the stage set up,

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JOAN OF AUDIO the instruments, the position of each instrument, the speakers, the room size, dimensions. This is just a natural noticing; you don’t need to bring a measuring tape. Are you sitting in a “sweet spot,” a few rows back of the center of the stage? How do you feel? What is making you feel excited, emotional, awed, inspired? Are there things that are disruptive? This is simply an exercise in bringing more awareness to your listening experience. Your

and discern what you love. If you have a good experience and find components that you love, you will be back after a few considerations. 3.) Consider your music collection. A survey of your music will reveal not only the genres you most listen to but the nuances and particulars of those genres. I found that jazz dominated my music collection, and that, surprisingly, the guitar comprised more than half of that

collection. I would have bet on the horn or piano. Vocals were another major presence in my collection. I also had a significant classic 2.)Visit your local hi-end audio dealer. This is rock collection as well as classical music. the most direct and intuitive way to experience Being aware of the kinds of music and/or hi-end audio. You need to hear what music artists you love to listen to is one of the most sounds like on hi-end audio. You need to hear important factors in your audio buying what you are missing! You can take an decision. Your music preferences will exploratory walk around the store and ask determine the kinds of audio components that questions, or in some cases you may need to will most optimally deliver your music to you call ahead and schedule a time for an in the way the musicians played it live. You’ll appointment or consultation. Either way, the also want to consider the kind of music media owner or staff will guide you in selecting that is in your collection. Are you listening to components that match your music mostly CDs, or largely streaming digital media preferences and set them up for you in one of through your phone and headphones? Or their listening rooms and allow you to listen albums on a turntable? Or some combination for a while. If the customer service is stellar, of them all? Each type of media has a different which it typically is, they will switch out sound quality, and many music lovers will various components for you so that you can gravitate toward a particular media based on listen and compare. There is no need to feel sound and lifestyle preferences. Your media rushed or obligated to buy. Take your time and preference will also dictate what audio listen to a variety of components using a good components will best suit your music cross-section of your own music collection. collection and lifestyle. The more you listen the more you will hear awareness will expand on its own once you expose yourself to more live music.

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JOAN OF AUDIO expanded my awareness. Just as books and the go, traveling often, moving around, living in literature expand your knowledge and smaller quarters, perhaps with other people, a understanding, music has a unique non-linear dorm, a bedroom, a studio etc. then a portable way of imparting creative content and invoking a plethora of inner realizations. Music has hi-end audio system or a small audio system deepened my joy and experience of life. And will work best. If are living in a larger private space or have a dedicated listening room then for those reasons it is priceless. If you are a music lover, trust that your love for music will there are many options from two channel intuitively and pragmatically guide your buying systems to multi-channel systems. You’ll also decision. want to consider the way you listen to music. 4.) Keep your lifestyle in mind. If you are on

Are you sitting down in your living room in front of your system or do you listen at your desk, in your office, car, etc. You want to choose an audio system that matches your lifestyle so that listening to music is highly accessible and will give you ample years of enjoyment.

6.) Repeat step 2. Remember to bring a

sampling of your own music collection with you. Listen again. Listen for a while. Music memory can be short initially. Ask the dealer to switch out components again, so you can compare the sound of different components. Some dealers will allow you take a 5.) Decide on a budget. Hi-end audio isn’t component(s) home with you for a few days to cheap but it’s also not expensive relative to hear it in your own space. Ask your dealer what you are buying. Well-built and welldesigned audio delivers exceptional sound and about their return policy, upgrade policy, and if needed, financing. Some businesses allow you performance for many years, sometimes a to buy using Affirm, Paypal or other 0% lifetime. And much of it can be repaired or interest buying plans. Most importantly take upgraded. As well, it has resale value. If your your time with your decision. Like meeting the budget is limited, as most are, start small. Meaning, you can start with quality “personal” right love interest, when you finally hear the right component(s) or system for your taste, hi-end audio. These are components that are you will absolutely know it. largely portable but can be your main way of listening. From this point you can deepen you appreciation of music and more easily discern AKRM how and if you’d like to expand. I had no budget for hi-end audio when I bought my first system. I found a way to afford it because of its importance in my life. Music has always

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VID EO CO MPO NEN T SHORT & SWEET REVIEWS

elcome to AudioKeyREVIEWS! Magazine’s video component review, our first. In this respect, we ask for your patience as we feel

things out and adjust to the tenor of the ‘video reviewing’ times. That said, we will approach the reviews from a perspective of brevity, efficiency, and, as always, getting to the dessert of the review—the sound—as quickly as possible. The various reviews will include products of all types—speakers, DACs, amplifiers, preamplifiers, headphones, IEMs, portable audio, etc.—and from manufacturers across the wide world. And in holding with our review philosophy, if a given component does not review well, rather than flame it or write a bad review we will return it to its manufacturer with the caveat, that, perhaps, our system synergy was not able to show it in its best light, or our quite subjective criteria was not met. And nary will a negative word be said against it. There is far too much negativity in the world and we do not wish to contribute to it. The reviews, in general, will be no longer than 5 minutes, as it is not about us but the product under review. Please do see our written component reviews for more detail.

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ALTA AUDIO ALYSSA MONITORS An Exceptional Loudspeaker! AudioKeyREVIEWS! I2

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By Andre Marc

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lta Audio, located in Huntington, New York, is headed up by Michael Levy, an industry veteran with an exceptionally colourful background. Levy showed an interest in sound, electronics and DIY at a very early age and eventually achieved a degree in electrical engineering from NYU. He became immersed in the discipline of speaker design in the early 1970s, and eventually founded Alta Audio in 2013 to make his vision of high fidelity loudspeakers come to life. Speaking with Levy, it became clear he is a music lover above all else. He attends live music events and is well versed in numerous genres. He has even helped produce an audiophile recording and has a keen ear for talent. Why is this of importance? Well, because his love of live music, along with a very distinct set of design parameters, has been the guiding force behind his designs at Alta Audio. We received a pair of his Alyssa stand mount monitors to evaluate, and they arrived in an impressive piano black gloss finish. They retail for $5000, with premium finishes available at extra cost. It would be an understatement to say the Alyssas are not a cookie cutter design. In fact, Levy uses his favourite recordings, and most interestingly, a panel of sorts composed of listeners whose ears he trusts implicitly, including recording engineers. Yes, there is a lot of listening done, as well as traditional methods of calibration and voicing.

One thing should be made clear, Levy is of strong mind that bass…deep bass, and quality bass, are essential for satisfying listening on a high end home playback system. It provides the weight and foundation to anchor the sound and makes it believable. I don’t disagree in principle at all. DESIGN The Alyssa is outfitted with a 6 inch bass-mid driver which is custom manufactured for the Alta. The 2.5" ribbon tweeter is integrated with the cone driver by a 3rd order crossover. The speakers’ published specifications include a nominal impedance of 4 Ohms, and the sensitivity is listed at 87.5. This would indicate a decent amount of power is needed, 50 wpc at a minimum. Where it gets really interesting is the cabinet design, and bass performance. The cabinet has a sloped pyramid / triangle shape that is as much form as function. Levy’s secret weapon is the internal XTL transmission line, which Levy says removes the need for excessive internal padding. We have all witnessed the myopic drive by some speaker designers to make the cabinets as inert as humanly possible. In my (and Levy’s opinion), this is somewhat misguided. He does however believe that a rigid front baffle is important. There are just a few strategically situated pads to combat standing waves. In the end, Levy sees speakers as their own kind of musical instrument. There is a port at the top rear of the speakers, behind the tweeters.

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Henri Matisse - Still Life with Oranges

ALTA AUDIO ALYSSA There are port plugs supplied, but I had neither the inclination nor the need to use them for any reason. That is enough technical talk, on to listening!

handover was. Maybe it is the ribbon tweeter, or the front baffle, but we heard the transient speed, detail, coherency and delicacy we so love about our Maggies. There were some differences of course, but it was the bass that SETUP AND LISTENING really stood out. The bass was a different kettle The Alyssas were set up on 28 inch stands, of fish altogether. approximately six feet apart, and ten feet from The low end performance of the Alta the listening position. Sturdy stands are a monitors was something we could only get must, as the speakers are deep and weigh 28 close to with panels by using a stereo pair of lbs a side. They are not lightweights. There was JL Audio subwoofers. The Alyssas presented plenty of space away from walls and bass in a rock solid, articulate and pleasing way, boundaries. I started with a very modest toe in but not at the expense of anything else. The then ended up with roughly a 20 degree angle. room and the Alta speakers were a perfect The speakers came with nicely made grilles, match as well. The speakers breathed, they but after a few minutes we promptly removed sang, and they drew you in in a way that few them and never used them again until it was other, if any, two way monitors we have heard time to pack them up. in our listening space have been able to do. The speakers were connected to the Mola We listened to everything from our usual Mola Kula integrated amplifier with DAC and classic rock, jazz and folk, to up to the minute phono modules. The Kula puts out 300 wpc releases. For good measure, we streamed a slew into 4 Ohms and was an excellent match for of Joni Mitchell albums, all remastered at the Alyssas. Towards the tail end of the loan 24/192. These albums, including For The Roses, period, we drove the speakers with the Audio Ladies Of The Canyon and, of course, Blue, were Hungry Qualition X200 (review in process) rendered as beautiful timepieces, with integrated amp. It puts out 100 wpc with Mitchell’s voice having a clarity and a presence KT120 tubes. It was also a superb partner for rarely as satisfying on other speakers. Her the Alyssas. I used Black Cat speaker cables unique guitar and piano performances also and Audio Art Cable power cords. Everything shone through, with the texture and tone of was connected to Bryston and Audience power each instrument having a genuine sparkle and conditioning products. realistic attack. The most important thing was When changing over from our usual that the true character of her voice was on Magnepan 1.7i panels, we were expecting a bit display. of a transition period for our ears, but we were An album released in early 2022, Hell on greatly surprised by just how seamless the

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ALTA AUDIO ALYSSA example of Americana, folk and bluegrass, executed to the highest order. It is the group’s fifth album, and a high watermark in their remarkable career. Chris Thile’s voice and mandolin are in exceptional form, and the choice of material is a direct duplicate of the songs on Church Street Blues by bluegrass

The Alyssas do require some forethought as far as set up goes. In my estimation, they will not be at their best crammed into a tight space. They need some air around them, as most great speakers do, but even more so here because of the unusually good bass extension. Good stands and a quality amplifier and speaker cables are essential, as one would not legend Tony Rice, one of their biggest influences. Their versions of “Pride Of Man”, put cheap knock off tires on a Ferrari. A little “Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald” and “The experimentation with toe in, and you are in for Last Thing On My Mind” capture the drama of very satisfying listening sessions. the originals, while happily adding a bit of a CONCLUSIONS unique flavour. The Alta Audio Alyssa is an exceptional I put on one of my very favourite loudspeaker in every way if you covet true to recordings, the acoustic portion of Seal’s Best 1991-2004, a 24 bit rip from DVD-A. It is rare, life imaging, authentic texture, and genuine, foundational bass without compromise. If one very rare, for me to get goosebumps while can do them justice spacewise, and you are the listening to a home playback system, but it happened here. I was about to leave the room type of listener who appreciates coherence and for a quick errand when “Colours” started, and natural musical expression, these are a must audition. Michael Levy and Alta Audio in our I stopped dead in my tracks… The Alyssas estimation have a class leading product on made the sheer beauty and soul of this their hands. We can’t think of another two way recording so apparent, it was impossible to leave. I had also never heard the bass line from monitor at its price point we prefer. We award the Alyssa the GOLD KEYNOTE Award “Bring It On” sound as supple, elastic and precise as this. Next up was the young UK based folk rock band Meadow Argus, who dazzle with a stunning debut album, Silvering. The mix of

THE COMPANY Alta Audio Alyssa $5000

altaspeakers.com female and male lead vocals, acoustic guitars, heavy bass lines, and acid guitar flourishes filled the room with great joy. The Alyssas AKRM provided a very transparent window into the 48 kHz Bandcamp download, and there was a beautiful shimmer to the quaint arrangements.

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ASTELL&KERN SE180 The Cutting Edge of Digital Audio Playback!

By K. E. Heartsong

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he speed of technological progress is quite profound in this day and age in the audio industry. I am learning this across all manner of High Fidelity (HiFi) components, from IEMs to headphones to

heard any of its products. I was always curious.” The reason that I had never heard any of its products was that, at the time, I was firmly entrenched in the HiFi Stereo—two channel

amplifiers to DACs to speakers. In this respect, and no doubt others, we truly live in very interesting times. As I had mentioned in the review of the Astell&Kern SR25:

(speakers)—world and could not ever anticipate not being so entrenched. It is said that everything changes, great and small, and so it does. These past two years, I have embraced, though reluctantly at first, the Personal HiFi world. Soon after landing in this ‘alternative reality’, I discovered that which I had spent a lifetime searching for. It was the search for a very specific experience, an experience via an assemblage of components that would communicate to me fully the truth of a given recording. I had that experience when I journeyed into the world of electrostatic

“As one of the very first developers of the Digital Audio Player (DAP) Dreamus— Astell&Kern was ever-present in conversations, across websites, and certainly in the audiophile and headphone communities. The Astell&Kern brand had been known to me for quite some time, though I had not

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headphone amplifiers. But that was only the beginning. Thereafter, I discovered other types of headphones—dynamic, planar magnetic—and IEMs and the attendant amplification that would bring me closer to the music in many unexpected ways. And then, there were Digital Audio Players (DAPs) that have pushed the technological process forward at near dizzying speeds. This, of course, brings me to the review of the Astell&Kern SE180 and yet another compelling experience and technological leap in the world of Personal HiFi. REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the equipment actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various accoutrement, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Terminator, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning. SOUND It was but a few notes before it was clear to me that the Astell&Kern SE180 was something new, different, and a good deal more than met the eye. It was as if the SE180 in those first few notes was masquerading as something other— a top-flight, high-end desktop system, a HiFi component—far far removed from its SR25 sibling as well as other DAPs. The SE180 not only performed beautifully with all manner of IEMs, it also performed

exceptionally well with topnotch headphones —Meze Empyrean Elite, Meze Empyrean, Meze LIRIC (review coming), Rosson Audio RAD-0, ZMF Véríté, and the ZMF Atticus. And to a one they were all incredibly well served. This in and of itself says a great deal about the SE180 as headphone impedances ranged from 32Ohms to 300-Ohms and there was not even the slightest hiccup in driving any of them to optimal levels. Instead, there was a commanding sense of high fidelity reproduction every time. What does that mean? It means a noise-free, black-quiet background and letting loose a transparency and resolution that easily uncovers detail, even the microscopic variety, from venues small and large, voluminous and the nearly volume-less to one’s ears. As though you were in the crowd, sitting, standing and able to hear all the nuances which together said ‘real’. The SE180 provides a delicate, nuanced musicality and a naturalness of tone and timbre, that beautifully parses instruments and their textures. If you’re one who listens with heart and soul but also needs resolution and detail, you will be embraced and well served by the music via the SE180. Further, the SE180 resolves—makes abundantly clear— the natural sounds that cymbals, hi-hats, brushes across cymbals make that are very much different from the “scchccchchcc” or food “sizzling” away on the grill sounds that many components make. DAPs are not supposed to do this and

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certainly not at this price level. But then there was also the stratospheric, clear and silky reach of violins via the SE180 that many desktop systems/components and some HiFi components cannot match! Suffice to say, that this came as an absolute and complete shock to me! This is a DAP, after all! And when one adds the SEM2 module, the short answer is that nearly everything— transparency, detail retrieval, soundstage, and even its sweet musicality— improves! Another quite unexpected development of which the SE180 was chock full. One does not expect a DAP to perform at this level. I have now listened to a number of DAPs— Cayin N6II, iBasso DX220 (with various modules), Shanling M8, etc.—over the past couple of years. The Shanling M8, at the end of the day, stood above all the previous DAPs, in my subjective opinion of course. However, the distinction between the Astell&Kern SE180,

Shanling M8 cedes a very clear victory in favor of the SE180, which betters the M8 in every perceivable way. No contest. The SE180 performed beautifully across all genres—Blues, Choral, Classical, Classic Rock, EDM, Folk, Jazz, etc.—and there was always incredible transparency, copious inner detail— positioning and staging cues—and incredible engagement, which together brought more ‘life’ and engagement to track after track than any previous DAP. Again, one does not expect a DAP to perform at this level. The Astell&Kern SE180’s volumetric cube —its soundstage—width, depth, height—is broad and deep, its background black-quiet, and its staging cues—layering, positioning, separation, microdynamics—truly impressive. The SE180 was at its finest, its most powerful, and its most musical with the SEM2 module, though even its SEM1 module handily dispatched the former king of the hill—

with either module—SEM1, SEM2—and the

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Robert Doisneau

ASTELL&KERN SE180 Shanling M8—with outstanding transparency and resolution. The Astell&Kern SE180 for the purposes of this review was partnered with the Vision Ears ELYSIUM and the Obravo EAMT-2C, IEMs, the Meze Empyrean Elite, Meze Empyrean,

impressive. The thunder of “V. Infernal Dance of King Kashchey,” potent and resolving, reached deeply into the stygian depths of the Holy-Bass-Head-Grail via the Astell&Kern SE180. Christian McBride’s “Fat Bach and Greens” (Conversation with Christian, Mack

Meze LIRIC, Rosson Audio RAD-0, and ZMF Véríté, and the ZMF Atticus. Its 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone outputs were used.

Avenue Records) gave the interplay of upright bass and violin a dynamic, tight, wonderfully detailed rendering, with lickety-split transients, and with a reach out and touch texture. And BASS Regina Carter’s violin, sweet as a caramelEiji Oue’s “V. Infernal Dance of King coated, red-candy apple, soared into Treble+ Kashchey” (Stravinsky, Reference Recording) is region freed from its earthly bounds and any a great ‘decider’ for me of a component’s bass associated nasties—sibilance, glare, harshness. response and bass resolution and its transient How is this $#@%*& possible with a DAP?! speed. The SE180’s bass force, its noninterference with the frequencies above it, its speed, resolution and decay were truly

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ASTELL&KERN SE180 MIDRANGE Andy Bey’s “Angel Eyes” (American Song, Savoy) cues and his baritone voice is immediate, rich, textured and engaging. Each word is clearly articulated, each instrument firmly positioned with clear separation at varying depths across the soundstage. And the music is incredibly engaging. I saw Andy Bey

perform this song at Pearls in San Francisco, as I sat at most ten feet away, and it was incredible. The SE180 has captured a great deal of that performance and that experience. Joan Shelley’s “Teal” (Like the River Loves the Sea, Absolute Anthem Music (BMI)) sidles in poignant, heartfelt and it too engages immediately. The stage is wide with clear separation, placing instruments and singers in their relative air-suffused spaces via the Astell&Kern SE180. The SE180 is very communicative with both female and male vocals, whilst maintaining a transparency and resolution that should not be possible with a portable player, a DAP. Joan Shelley’s “Cycle”

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moves in with a smooth ease and plays out, though it was not intended for this review, but I play it through, as it is so inviting, so musical. And “When What It Is” sneaks through, I let it play as well. TREBLE+ As I mentioned above, Branford Marsalis’

“Gloomy Sunday” (Eternal, Marsalis Music) from start to finish was rendered with a musicality and texture that no other DAP that I’ve reviewed, and certainly those returned unreviewed, has matched. That some desktop and HiFi systems have not matched either. One’s jaw did drop at this revelation. But then smiles followed the Eternal performance of the SE180 as it got down to business time and time again. For a triple check on Treble+ resolution I enlisted Patricia Barber’s “Invitation” (Nightclub, Premonition Records) and then Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” (Time Out, Columbia-Legacy) and both were flawless. Never was there the slightest portent of the

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“schhhschcccchh” or food-sizzling-on-the-grill cymbals or some other annoying effect—there was just beautiful music. CONCLUSION A DAP that travels and that does not leave one yearning for one’s home-based desktop or even one’s HiFi system! I would have thought the SE180 the Astell&Kern TOTL DAP when judged by its abilities, but it is not. Are those above it that good? Or does the employment of new technologies in the SE180—TERATON ALPHA Audio Technology and Astell&Kern’s Next Generation AMP Technology—push it beyond them? I have sat before HiFi systems well into the six figures that could not resolve drums tapping, or cymbals, or the rise and fall of HiHats, or brushes swept across cymbals, or the resultant air of each ‘transaction’. The resulting “sounds” were not music, but could have been mistaken, again, for food frying due to the schcchhhhss they produced. How does one say to the owner of such a system, “This sounds like garbage.” One does not. One simply writes about it in an anonymous fashion some time later. The SE180 with both modules—SEM1 and SEM2—was incredible, though by preference, I lean, heavily, in the direction of the SEM2, which stood even above the performance of its sibling, in a more musical and analog-like fashion. Amazing.

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Without further ado, we highly recommend the Astell&Kern SE180 and present it with our GOLDEN KEYNOTE Award. Truth be told, I had to think long and hard before doing this. Why? Because it is not even close to Astell&Kern’s own reigning TOTL DAPs in terms of price and generally, one imagines, their performance as well. One should leave space for the possibilities posed by the TOTLs of a given line. In the end, however, the SE180 fully deserves the award, regardless. Pros: Transparency. Resolution, Musicality. Soundstage. Style. Relative Cost. Cons: 10 hours of playback. It will not fit in one’s pocket. Heavy. THE COMPANY Astell&Kern Retail: SE180 $1499 Retail: SEM2 Module $349 18-gil 5, Bangbaero Seocho-Gu Seoul, Korea, 06664 support@theinvixion.com www.astellnkern.com AKRM

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LL2.1 DELUXE LL2.1 DELUXE

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lamm.industries@verizon.net

Alta Audio is proud to announce the Alyssa monitor is the recipient of an Editors’ Choice Award from The Absolute Sound. “Longtime readers know that I rarely go gaga over anything I review, but I must admit the Alta Alyssa loudspeaker is something special. For many audiophiles it could well be the loudspeaker that enters their listening rooms and never leaves. It is simply that good.” —STEVEN STONE, The Absolute Sound

THANK YOU FOR THIS ESTEEMED HONOR.

For further information, visit altaspeakers.com.

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HEED THESIS LINE Lambda Preamplifier & Gamma Amplifier

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ost audiophiles who desire to expand their horizons beyond integrated amplifiers at some point exhaust themselves searching for affordable, great sounding separates. This audiophile included. The price of many well received

One manufacturer, Heed Audio, may have what many seek: the Lambda remote controlled preamp and the matching Gamma power amp. Heed is located in Budapest, Hungary, and all their products are designed and manufactured in the EU. Each unit is

preamplifier and power amplifier combinations can seem out of reach to those entering this arena.

priced at $2500 and they are featured in the Thesis line, which also includes a CD transport, a phono stage, a DAC, mono block amps, and a power supply.

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HEED LAMBDA & GAMMA The Lambda and Gamma are very stylish in appearance, with a minimalist, modern flare. The build quality is terrific, and more than one would expect at these prices. In function, both units are beautifully simple as well. The

power amplifier, housed in a chassis identical to the Lambda, offers up 110 wpc, and is outfitted with high quality speaker binding posts and RCA stereo inputs.

Lambda is adorned with two chunky knobs on the front panel, one to select input, and one for volume control. There is a full function remote control as well. There are five single ended inputs around the back, and, happily, a tape output. There is also a connector for an optional outboard power supply. The Gamma

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We situated the Heed duo in our den system, with sources including a Sonore microRendu streamer feeding a Marantz HD-DAC1, and a Rega Planar 3 turntable, with a Rega phono stage. The speakers were a pair of Spendor A2 floorstanders (review forthcoming). Cabling

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was all Audio Art Cable. Everything was plugged into an Audience power conditioner. No other special tweaks were used. We started off streaming a ton of classic rock from our networked library, powered by ROON, and it honestly took very little time to understand the Heed electronics were exceptionally clean, open, and wonderfully transparent sounding. There was no particular coloration or tonal inequalities that we could detect. We streamed mostly CD rips in the beginning and were pretty dazzled by how excellent plain old Redbook digital sounded. We cued up a string of classic European progressive rock, leaning toward the off the beaten path and obscure artists for good measure. We enjoyed everything from Goblin, Banco De Mutuo Soccorso, Atoll, Pancake, Golden Earring, Circus, Walrus, and some more familiar bands like the great Renaissance. Not to overlook some of our favorites, we also mined the superb Fairport Convention seven disc archival box set, The First Ten Years. Not much of this music has been released in high resolution, but all these CDs have been mastered with care, most as a labour of love, and without exception they all sounded very organic, with all of their analog goodness preserved. But most importantly, the Heed gear allowed the music to reveal itself out of the mist of time, and made one long for an era when there were real instruments and mysterious compositions to challenge the ear and provide an escape from the mundane.

We wanted to also listen to modern music, which we rabidly consume, so we cued up recent albums from alt-J, Punch Brothers, Eddie Veddor, Big Thief, Josefine Lindstrand, Cate Le Bon, Wovenhand, Walker & Wylde, Lars Bygden, Erdogan Emir, and far too many more to mention. The majority of these albums are 24 bit downloads, and are well recorded. The Heed amplification allowed these new recordings to shine bright, and helped get to the heart of the artist’s intentions. The Veddor album, Earthling, was a bit of a challenge, as it was produced like a “big” rock record, with more commercial sounding mixes than Veddor’s band Pearl Jam is known for. Clearly, his voice is in superb form, and right up front in the mix. The Heed combo helped produce a coherent picture, with very controlled bass and a very wide soundstage fitting for some of the epic rockers on this album. The Dream, alt-J’s latest work, is the sound of a band in full creative overdrive, with quirky time signatures, off beat vocal harmonies, and overall experimental spirit, but delivered in a tighter package, with enough left turns to dazzle. The 48 kHz download, with a bit of squashed dynamics, is still a great listen. Hell On Church Street, the new release from Punch Brothers, is a career highlight, with great, natural sounding production, and varied material, including songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and even Gordon Lightfoot. The interplay between Chris Thile’s mandolin and

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Ralph Gibson

HEED LAMBDA & GAMMA vocals, and the sympathetic arrangements were We recently bought the Esoteric label CD/ all served very well by the Heed and Spendor DVD-A remasters of four titles by the

combo. Meadow Argus, a recent Bandcamp

legendary German progressive rock outfit, Van Der Graaf Generator. The DVD discs include both the original mixes and new stereo mixes discovery, are purveyors of “handcrafted of each album in 24/96 resolution. To say these psychedelia” in their own words. Their hazy, were the definitive digital versions of these dreamy take on folk rock, Silvering, is their debut full length release after several EPs. It is classic albums would be an understatement. Tracks from “Still Life,” “Godbluff,” and the quite simply a sonic trip with flanged and fuzzed out guitars, organ, mysterious melodies, others were given new life, making overlooked subtle instrumental and vocal passages easy to and chanted choruses. The Heed stack made enjoy. This music is avant-garde even 40 years this 24 bit download come to life with three later. The Heed amplification made complete dimensional spacing between instruments, sense of vocalist Peter Hamill and company’s while the mind bending arrangements and strange and wonderful musical vision. fantastical lyrics and vocals, enhanced with plenty of reverb, were certainly far out.

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HEED LAMBDA & GAMMA We of course also connected our Rega turntable and phono stage to the Heed preamp and spun vinyl extensively. The recent Blue Note all analog reissue of McCoy Tyner’s opus, The Real McCoy, was a thrill in every way. The

analog inputs and a high quality volume control on their preamps, and crave honest, transparent and meaty sound from their power amps. You get all that and more here. All in a nice tidy package, a manageable footprint, and built to a very high standard. Both Heed Lambda and Gamma managed to get the components ran cool to the touch, and the pacing, texture, and overall gestalt of this Lambda remote control was well laid out. recording just right. Tyner’s piano was We are hard pressed to think of separates at beautifully presented, with the wooden this price point that perform as well as the overtones and percussive attacks perfectly Heed Thesis components. The Gamma has preserved. The same goes for the legendary more than enough power to drive the Spendor band. Ron Carter’s bass, Elvin Jones’s drums, A2 speakers we used, and we loved the volume and Joe Henderson’s tenor sax all had their range available on the preamp. For those own position in the mix, but it all came upgrading from an integrated amplifier and together as a cohesive sonic tapestry. looking to delve into the world of separates, Delving into more far flung territory, boutique label We Want Sounds has produced the Heed gets our highest recommendation and a HIGH NINES Award! two excellent reissues of legendary Egyptian guitarist Omar Korshid’s With Love and Giant + Guitar. The music is transcendental, with belly dance rhythms anchoring both Western and North African instruments, creating a bubbling stew of exotica. The Lambda and Gamma produced startling realism, with Korshid’s stratocaster lines navigating their way through the intoxicating arrangements. These albums brought home the fact that the Heed duo just made music fun to listen to.

THE DISTRIBUTOR Profundo 2051 Gattis School Rd., Suite 540/123 Round Rock, TX USA 78664 510.375.8651 info@profundo.us profundoaudio.com

CONCLUSION: The Budapest designed and made Heed Thesis AKRM Lambda and Gamma preamplifer and power amplifier are sonically pure no nonsense components. They are for purists who want

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San Francisco

A PUBLIC SERVICE BY AUDIOKEYREVIEWS

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legionofhonor.famsf.org

profundo.us

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FERRUM OOR & HYPSOS An Exceptional Headphone and Power Supply Combo!

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By K. E. Heartsong JANUARY 2022

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EM, an audio technology company based in Warsaw Poland, was founded nearly 20 years ago. HEM has done projects for the Polish Government and also for notable audio companies in the United States. One of the companies that its founder Marcin Hamerla has worked with is the Mytek company based in New York. In addition to manufacturing Digital Analog Converters (DACs) for Mytek, HEM has also

toward, as Ferrum states, “unrivaled detail (musical information)” in the reproduction of one’s music. Ferrum’s second product, the OOR, is a fully balanced analog Headphone Amplifier/ Preamplifier (HPA) that comes with sufficient power reserves—8 watts(!)—to drive, literally, any headphone on the planet. I spoke with Roy Feldstein of VANA Ltd, the US distributor of Ferrum Audio, and asked

distributed the Mytek brand in both Europe and Asia. HEM’s other pursuit is highresolution audio and Master Quality Authentication (MQA). In 2020 HEM’s R&D Software Programming Division developed the first product of this subsidiary company—Ferrum —the HYPSOS hybrid power supply. In short, the HYPSOS power supply was developed to optimize a component’s power needs/demands

for review samples of the Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS. Roy kindly obliged and within a rather short time, a single box arrived that housed both units. Petite, I thought. I unpacked the OOR and HYPSOS from their small boxes. And found quickly that they were very well designed. But of course, the key question with any audio component or more specifically with one that looks this good is, does it sound as good as it looks?

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FERRUM OOR & HYPSOS REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the equipment actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various accoutrement, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Queen’s Gambit, In the Shadow of the Moon, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

musical passages the Ferrum combo also excelled at transient response, its parsing of fine detail, the positioning of performers, and their relative positions and layers, front to back, across a given soundstage. The weight across the frequency spectrum reflected the Ferrum combo’s neutrality. In this sense it was less full, had not the rumble, nor could it reach consistently into the Holy-Bass-Head-Grail, as this latter was clearly headphone dependent. The Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS’s combined volumetric cube—sound stage—is THE SOUND of very good size in terms of its depth, width Neutral. Resolving. Detailed. Dynamic. The from stage right to stage left, and its height. It Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS combo is indeed is possessed of a quiet background and a noise neutral, as it will let pass the voicing of its up- floor that allows for the freeing of copious line bandmates with little to no editorializing, amounts of detail that few headphone amps and as far as I could discern it was not at all are seemingly capable of freeing. It can be ‘perniciously neutral’. Pernicious in that a intimate, though its neutral voicing may well ‘neutral’ component can actually steal away the keep one back from a deep, immersive musicality, the sweetness and warmth, and engagement. This was true for headphones sometimes even the ‘soul’ of the music passed that are considered natural, rich, sweet, and through it. This is not the Ferrum OOR and incredibly immersive—Meze Empyrean, ZMF HYPSOS combo as it let its various Atticus, Rosson Audio RAD-0. The combo’s ‘bandmates’ speak in their own voices. intimacy was quite natural, nonetheless. Transparency and resolution were quite Separation, layering and positioning were all good across the bass, especially good across quite good and at the combo’s price point very the midrange, and exceptional at the edge of competitive! treble heights—cymbals, Hi-Hats, brushes The Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS were drawn across cymbals—where it was clean, partnered with the ROON Nucleus Plus detailed and extended. Streamer, the DENAFRIPS Pontus II DAC The Ferrum combo handles itself very well and the Border Patrol SE-1 DAC. The across the various media with which I had headphones used were the Meze Empyrean sought to challenge, trip up and expose it but Elite, the Meze Empyrean, the Rosson Audio could not, as the Ferrum combo was RAD-0, and the ZMF Atticus. Cabling was undaunted by the challenges. Across dense

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ANTICABLE. Power conditioning was handled by TORUS RM20. BASS Eiji Oue’s rendition of Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite (1919 version): V. Infernal Dance of King Kashchey” (Stravinsky, Reference Recordings)

head-bopping as it is more of a professional listening, left-brain experience. Its bass is, nonetheless, detailed, transient quick, highly resolved, and very nicely layered. MIDRANGE Olafur Arnalds’ “Árbakkinn” (Island Songs,

Mercury (Universal France)) begins, and as with all the most transparent and resolving components, the Ferrum combo renders the detail of the birds outside of the building at the very beginning (00:00:04), as they sing in unison to Poet Einar’s recital. It is an exemplary rendering, via the Ferrum combo’s transparency, that finds Einar’s voice clear and resonant, and his words articulate and easily discernible. There is less texture than I am used to both in Einar’s voice and in the and it too via the Empyrean is tight, fast and accompanying instruments—piano, violin, relatively potent, though it misses a certain cello. In this respect, the neutrality of the warmth, due to its very neutral nature, that combo has brought forth wonderfully good puts one at arm’s length. In this respect and for this song the Ferrum combo is more a ‘tool’ detail and insight, but the textural components that conjure a richness and threefor playback that an audio professional may find compelling and, well, spot on. For me this dimensionality are not present. Regardless, it is a wonderful rendition of this song that I have lack of warmth stalls out chair-dancing or begins. Tympani strikes with the Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS combo via the Meze Empyrean headphone are tight, propulsive, and reach deeply. On this occasion the Ferrum combo as allied to the DENAFRIPS Pontus II assist the Empyrean with its journey to the Stygian depths of the Holy-Bass-Head-Grail. Transparency is also quite good as is separation across the stage and into the stage’s depth. Marcus Miller’s “Power” (M2) powers in

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FERRUM OOR & HYPSOS come to know so very well. Shirley Horn’s “Beautiful Love” (You Won’t Forget Me, Verve) follows and Toots Thieleman’s harmonica is clear and clean, stage left. Shirley’s voice enters and it too is crystalline and precise, and her words more easily discernible than most amps far above this price point can render. But, again, there is not the engaging texture, nor the richness, nor the weight to which I have become accustomed. However, it is a decidedly clear perspective on the song and a superb overall rendering with wonderful transparency, resolution and detail. TREBLE+ Dave Brubeck “Take Five” (Time Out, Columbia-Legacy) begins and the Ferrum combo displays a transient quick heritage which captures, defines, and resolves the high treble energy of the various cymbals easily, but while the drum solo and the bass are both clearly resolved, there is a slight diminution of both impact and weight. Don’t get me wrong, it is still a very good rendering with very good treble+ transparency and resolution and exceptional layering and positioning. Most may well find this rendition quite becoming.

for those who prioritize neutrality above all else. The Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS are two beautifully designed components that together render a truly transparent, highly resolving, neutral, though engaging platform that lets one’s music be. There is exceedingly little to no editorializing, though the combo offers a wealth of options should one seek to ‘editorialize’ one’s music. The Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS represent our latest HIGH NINES AWARD WINNER and together they are highly recommended! Pros: Transparency, resolution, transient speed, neutrality, highly configurable, etc. Cons: Sub-bass reach dependency which requires transducer system matching. THE COMPANY & DISTRIBUTOR Ferrum Ferrum OOR HPA ($1995) Ferrum HPYSOS PSU ($1195) ferrum.audio info@hem-e.com

CONCLUSIONS

DISTRIBUTOR (US)

The Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS headphone amplifier and power supply combo seem, in truth, via their neutral voicing a ‘bare wire’ for communicating the relative ‘truth’ of a given recording. And in this sense it can also be a tool for professionals and, perhaps, the grail

VANA LTD Nesconset, NY sales@vanaltd.com (631) 246 4412

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Stereophile’s Herb Reichert says the Z10e “might be Linear Tube Audio's finest achievement so far.”

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Stereophile’s Herb Reichert says the Z10e “might be Linear Tube Audio's finest achievement so far.”

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RECOMMENDED

COMPONENTS

elcome to AudioKeyREVIEWS Magazine’s

Recommended Components, which will become part and parcel of each of our various issues. The purpose of this section is to acquaint the reader with products—speakers, DACs, amplifiers, preamplifiers, turntables, headphones, IEMs, streamers, portable audio, etc. —that we feel are quite exceptional and rise above their like brethren. There will be three categories—Budget, Mid-Tier, and Top-Of-The-Line. In our Budget Recommendations there will be products that compete far above their respective price point and are, generally, also built to reflect this.Our Mid-Tier Recommendations will encompass those products within arms reach, in terms of relative affordability, that present value and a challenge to the vanguard of their respective product niches. Finally, our TOTL Recommendations will be composed of those products that are at the cutting edge of technological advancement now happening across the world. The three categories of recommendations will rotate across the various issues of our magazine and there will also be a fluidity to the products within the various lists. Things change and especially now given our current technological epoch. The various lists, however, will be fixed on the AudioKeyReviews.com website.

Joan Shelly

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Claude Monet - Water Lillies Yellow and Green

BUDGET COMPONENTS RECOMMENDED 30 29

BELOW $300

1. iBASSO IT00 $79: Its match will not be found within its price range, but at, perhaps a three to four multiple of its retail price. This, of course, speaks to the fact that there is quite a lot packed within these tiny shells. 2. AudioQuest DragonFly Black $99: The DragonFly Black represents a beautiful solution for those wishing to rescue their computers and ‘smart devices’ from the purgatory of ‘unmusicality’ to the ‘garden,… of musicality, plain and simple. 3. iFi Hip-DAC $149: The iFi Hip-Dac ($149.99) is, indeed, a smooth, musical operator and though not the last word in transparency, it will not embarrass itself in any genre or over any piece of music and that is, indeed saying a lot! 4. FIIO Q3 $149.99: The FIIO Q3 ($149.99) will lift any and all smartphones and computers and iPads to stellar heights. And at its current price point, it should be written upon anyone’s short list, who is looking to upgrade the sound quality…. 5. AudioQuest DragonFly Red $199: The DragonFly Red represents the next elevator stop up from the Black in terms of its dynamics, transparency, and how it engages. For those who seek to go beyond the limitations of their computers…

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BUDGET COMPONENTS RECOMMENDED

BELOW $300 (CONT’D)

6. Nordost Sort Kones 3 for $267: I dare you to place a set of three SORT KONES under each component in your system and then try to take them away. Hint. Once you have heard the change, you’re going to need the help… to take them away. 7. FIIO FD5 IEM $299: The FiiO FD5 from a design, aesthetic, build, and operational perspective is, indeed, a flagship product. It also provides a wealth of accessories that few flagships have, to date, matched. 8. iBASSO AM05 $299: The AM05 is very well made, aesthetically quite beautiful, and provides for one of the most easy to place and most comfortable fits for an IEMs that we have ever reviewed. 9. AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt $299: Music via the DragonFly Cobalt will very much engage heart and mind and soul, above that of both its brethren, with a rich, natural, and transparent musicality that is highly addictive. 10. Clarus Audio CODA $299: The Clarus CODA is much more than anticipated, For the price, its decoding Strengths, its musicality, solid build, the CODA has few if any competition at its price point., very highly recommended!

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MAGICAL SYNERGIES 33

Magical măjʹĭ-kəl▶ Of, relating to, or produced by magic.1 Syn•er•gy sĭnʹər-jē▶ The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.2

or us a Magical Synergy represents two foremost and not professionals who produce components or more, that together music or movies for a living and require make music far above what either make different synergies, nor do measurements separately. Generally, we’ve discovered Magical come into determination for us of what is a Synergies via reviews, where we mix and good Magical Synergy and what is not. No, for match a good number of components to this we determine by ear, heart, and soul, that determine how one of the components—the which moves us, provides for that “vibrational” component under review—sounds. comfort food, and a rich and engaging musical And while there may be strengths and experience. The experience should, of course, weaknesses between the various combinations, come with sufficient detail and resolution and the Magical Synergy represents that fidelity to recreate venue and/or the experience combination which has very few if any of listening to live music, when appropriate. weaknesses and a wealth of combined After a long and trying day in this topsy-turvy strengths. world, wouldn’t it be wonderful if some small In this respect, we’ve done the homework measure of nirvana could be achieved through for the reader by evaluating numerous one’s music and the components that play it combinations to uncover the Magical Synergy, back? as many of you may not have the time, options, or financial wherewithal to make these determinations. And Magical Synergies are not always uncovered in our reviews and or our research, as they tend to be, well, rare. A note on the various Magical Synergies that we uncover. We are music lovers first and

In other words, our Magical Synergies do not render music that is dry, unengaging, subtractively neutral (see dry, boring, etc.), flat, or lacking in dynamics, when called for. Please find for your review a number of Magical Synergies below.

1, 2 The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

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MAGICAL SYNERGY BELOW $500 The iBASSO AM05 ($299) brings a sweet, detailed, musicality to midrange and treble, while its bass may be just a hair’s width south of neutral and absent the sub-bass rumble, together its attributes facilitate a very engaging and detailed listen. The AM05 is very well made, aesthetically quite beautiful, and provides for one of the most easy to place and most comfortable fits for an IEMs that we have ever reviewed. Suffice to say, that it scales very well and should be on one’s very short list and if you’re a newbie an even shorter list. Recommend! The iFi Hip-Dac ($149.99) is, indeed, a smooth, musical operator and though not the last word in transparency, it will not embarrass itself in any genre or over any piece of music and that is, indeed saying a lot! And at its price point the iFi Hip-Dac represents a rather amazing opportunity for those exploring better sound from smartphone and computer alike. Should you have bass light IEMs/ headphones, be on a rather tight budget, and consider yourself a “music lover” of the first degree, then the iFi Hip-Dac deserves very strong consideration. AKRM

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MAGICAL SYNERGY BELOW $1,100 30

The IFI Neo iDSD ($699) was able to parse the differences, subtle and distinct, between the various DAPs to which it was paired. This spoke to a “neutrality” that passed signals along with but a sweet kiss. It did not, at all, suck the soul from the music as some “neutral” components are likely to do. The Neo iDSD was also quite dynamic and faceted with quite good transparency, treble extension, and an edible musicality. And this is not just at its price point but, perhaps, at even double its price point. The review today is of the Meze 99 Classics ($309) another beautifully designed and appointed headphone, where, once again, form follows function follows technological wherewithal. And again, like its brethren the 99 Classic has been created as a musical instrument intent on letting the music flow in order to engage, enthrall, and entertain. A true Magical Synergy in that this dollar-shy of a thousand clams (dollars) system is, indeed, a Magical Synergy AKRM

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The Cayin Audio N6ii ($1099) abets a broad synergy with IEMs and Headphones alike, in that it is able to tame the screech monsters, breathe fresh life into the living dead, and find symbiotic musicality with its kith and kin. Coupled with nearly class leading battery life, quick charging capacity, bitperfect playback via Direct Transport Audio (DTA), sufficient power for all but the monstrously inefficient, and the ability to facilitate ‘tuning’ via the exchange of motherboards —E01, T01, E02—all make the Cayin N6ii an incredibly easy recommendation The RAI PENTA’s ($1099) are beautifully tuned, balanced, textured, and exceptionally detailed works of art. They provide a very natural, airy, and fluid listening experience with captivating musicality and superb tone and timbre. The sum of this is fatigue-free, longterm, listening, that, again, is quite addictive and, dare I say, with the proper music maker, seductive in the extreme! Very Highly Recommended! AKRM

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