Well, I jumped on the Aries Cerat Helene bandwagon and I’m glad I did! While my HOLO Spring 3 KTE sounded great (for the most part) I felt it was the weak link sitting with my VTL 7.5III and Dartzeel NHB-108 Mod 2.
The Helene cleaned up the short-comings of the HOLO and I can see myself being content with the Helene for many years. I have champaign taste with beer money, and while the Helene is the baby of the Aries Cerat DAC line, it’s sweet-sounding enough to keep me from missing TOO much from the remaining Cerat DAC line. It just sounds so well balanced from top to bottom, clean, no harshness at all, and completely non-fatiguing. Some things with the HOLO sounded artificial, the Helene just sound natural.
The VTL does have a phase invert switch and it does sound better with the phase inverted. Inverting with the VTL, The bass seems a touch stronger/deeper and the instruments have a touch longer decay. The instruments also have a bit more space between them. Nice little improvement just by hitting a switch...
Highly recommended! All you have to do is find one…