savoy014

Introduction A very long time ago when I was a wee little audiophile, there lived a cable designer. His name was Chris Sommovigo and he designed a really famous digital cable that become the go-to cable for SPDIF use - The Illuminati D-60.  Now, wee little audiophiles don't have a lot of money, especially ones that did not have a part-time job, nor rich parents. Hence, I never got that D-60, and after much sleepless nights worrying about signal reflections as a result of impedance mismatches, I took the cheap way out and purchased some 75 ohm coaxial cable used for TV aerial use and soldered some RCA connectors on them.  Illuminati eventually got acquired by Kimber cable, and Chris ended up starting a few other companies such as Stereovox and Black Cat Cable.  I finished school, got a job and can thankfully now afford some audiophile toys for myself from tome to time. Recently, Black Cat Cable offered a limited run of a modestly priced RCA cable, "The Tube" with the very ...

Introduction As luck would have it, a kind soul lent me a Nagra BPS phono stage for a week to conduct an analog workshop for a small group. The BPS was handed over to me in a small plastic flightcase, which was a refreshing change from the equipment I have had to handle recently (which could double up as weights in the gym !) Description The Nagra BPS is slightly larger than the palm of my hand, and operates from a single 9V battery. It has a variety of loading and gain options, which should make it easy to mate with a variety of cartridges. MC gain is partly accomplished using in-house wound transformers. The top cover of the BPS removes easily using the supplied hex key, giving access to various jumpers and the loading board. A separate hatch allows you to swop the 9V battery easily without having to open the top cover.  The front panel has a single toggle switch with three positions, "on", "off" and "test" (for battery life). The rear panel has two pair...

Introduction You got to give it to Hifiman. It takes guts to launch a headphone system with a USD 50,000 price tag. Clearly aimed into Sennheiser Orpheus II territory, the Shangri-La headphone system consists of a fully balanced drive tube amplifier / energizer and a Electrostatic headphone. AV One, the local dealer for Hifiman arranged a private event to showcase the Shangri-La. Dr. Fang Bian, CEO and founder of Hifiman graced the event and answered any questions posed by the audience. Description The Shangri-La headphone amplifier is very large, with four 6SN7 tubes in the input stage, and four 300B tubes in the output stage. The amplifier is designed to offer balanced drive, and the microprocessor controlled volume knob activates a series of relay controlled resistors to set the volume level. Dr. Fang mentioned that they enjoy a very special relationship with TJ Fullmusic, the tube manufacturer, which is located just a short distance away from them in the Chinese city of Tianjin. A ...

Introduction I recently spent a few quality days with the Holo Spring Level 3 DAC, courtesy of Sound Affairs, Singapore distributor for Holo. There is plenty of chatter in various audio forums on the Holo Spring DAC, especially on the high level of performance it delivers for it's price. Description The Holo Spring is a really nice looking DAC (I adore those copper side panels), and is solidly built. It probably has the largest display I've ever seen, and the dot matrix panel is fully legible even from my listening position.  The Spring DAC is a  R2R DAC design. What differentiates the Spring from the rest of it's competition is that fact that DSD is decoded using a R2R circuit too. This is achieved by having two separate R2R circuits - one for PCM and the other for DSD. The front panel has four buttons. The first button puts the DAC in standby mode, while the rest of the buttons control the display intensity, oversampling mode and source. There are four oversampling modes,...

Frankie Pang, representative of Entreq Asia was in town recently to meet up with Entreq users. Frankie spent an afternoon at X-Audio, the Singapore dealer for Entreq, mingling with both Entreq customers and prospective ones. I have been using Entreq products for a while now, having owned and used the Minimus and Tellus grounding box (together with Eartha Silver grounding cables) for a few years now. I did a review on the Olympus Ground Box, Tellus and Eartha Silver grounding cables (click here for the Olympus Review, and here for the Tellus / Eartha review). Frankie shared with me information on some new products, in particular the K2, Everest and Tellus 2. The K2 and Everest are upgrades available to any Entreq grounding box user - you simply need to replace one or more of the binding posts with either the K2 or Everest. Frankie was confident that the use of either could significantly improve the performance of the ground box in question. He suggested that using one or two pieces sh...

Introduction R2R DACs seem to be all the rage nowadays. However, not everyone can afford the DACs from MSB or Totaldac. Luckily we do have some more affordable options now. Soekris Engineering brought discrete resistor R2R to the masses, with an affordable full populated board - just add a suitable power transformer and you were effectively good to go. Wait a minute - can't read a circuit diagram to save your life, and scared of handling potentially lethal voltages ? Have no fear - our very own local company, Vinshine Audio has come up with a ready made product utilising a Soekris board. My review model came with the Rev 3 0.02 % board. To an oldie audiophile like me, the fuss about R2R is quite amusing. When I started out in the hobby, all CD players utilised R2R DACs. A short while later, Philips started extolling the virtues of bitstream DACs. In fact, I secretly lusted after a Marantz CD 10 that used a bitstream DAC. Fast forward to the present, and the DAC in my main setup is ...

Introduction Italian hand-made things are beautiful - artistic, and made with passion and flair. You may not necessarily agree with their aesthetics, but they invariably make a statement ! Neutral Cable are a Rome based company that makes their cables by hand. The cable on test here is the USB Reference I (Improved) and is their flagship USB cable. The conductors used for data are made of teflon insulated 7N purity solid core silver wires. Meanwhile, the power supply conductors are shielded and spaced from the data cables to avoid interference. The new improved version promises better separation between instruments, better dynamics and articulation of low frequencies compared to the USB Reference. My review sample came in a nice velvet case. The 1.2m cable was sheathed in a nice bright yellow jacket and was neatly and well-made with a single USB head (Neutral Cable's website mentions that a double-head type cable can be made upon request).  The USB Reference I is Neutral Cable'...