THE REVIEWS
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FRANCO SERBLIN ACCORDO ESSENCE - REVIEW
They played beautifully with the single-ended Lyric Ti 100 MkII (20 watts), with an expanded soundstage, beautiful midrange, and soaring highs in my medium-sized room at medium volume. The Air Tight ATC-1 preamplifier/ATM-1 amplifier (36 watts) combo extended low-end weight and gravitas while providing exceptional midrange tone and texture, and nicely extended highs.
HIFIMAN SUSVARA UNVEILED - REVIEW
There’s a new headphone in town and word is it’s the fastest in the west and so gosh darn clean and distortion-free, that headphones of all types, even electrostatics, are fleeing town in droves. Well, I should know. I’ve spent the past several months with this new fangled headphone and it is something special.
FERN & ROBY RAVEN III - REVIEW
The Raven IIIs are amplification-flexible—they play with 8 watts all the way up to, I’m told, 400 watts. This, given its other traits listed below, makes it a reviewer’s dream. And especially for a reviewer/audiophile/music lover who does not listen to loud, bombastic music, or who has attached his reference stereo system to his television or movie projector…just saying.
BORDER-PATROL SE-i DAC - REVIEW
The BorderPatrol SE-i DAC is a true gem that hides its wondrous capabilities beneath a simple, clean, unadorned facade. To look past it though is to look past the tattered, dirt-crusted Van Gogh at a garage sale, posing as nothing more than an amateur's well-intentioned, paint-by-numbers, work. Don’t do that. [Really!]
HEADAMP CFA3 HEADPHONE AMP - REVIEW
The HeadAmp CFA3 is a truly exceptional headphone amplifier and, dare I say, there are no other such headphone amplifiers that can compete at easily twice its price, if not far more. Its impressive 15-watts of power into 50-ohms allow it to easily drive even the most inefficient headphone on the planet, with headroom to spare.
AIR-TIGHT ATC-5S & ATM -1E - REVIEW
The Air Tight ATC-5s preamplifier and the ATM-1s amplifier provide an “old school meets new school” approach to rendering one’s music, which, as earlier mentioned, results in lush and beautifully textured music that is spatially astute, with superb transparency, resolution, detail, and brilliant musicality.
ATMA-SPHERE GEM INTEGRATED & “HEADPHONE AMP”- REVIEW
The little Integrated/HPA that could and did might well be the title for this review, as the Atma-Sphere GEM was exemplary with all material that was streamed its way. Further, as a “converted” HPA, it dealt beautifully with perhaps one of the most demanding and least efficient, yet superb headphones—the HIFIMAN Susvara (83dB)—that I have had the pleasure to listen with and review.