Still nobody listened Gryphon Kalliope?
I was lucky enough to walk into the Sydney Audio retailer who handles Gryphon and was told they had just received a Gryphon Kalliope and would I be interested in having a listen. They indicated that they had just received it and installed it in a system so they could run it in before giving people a chance to hear it but that I was welcomed to have a listen.
It was running through a pair of Martin CLX speakers and subs and a high quality valve tube amplifier and preamp. Once it had run in for a few hours they were going to set it up properly with Gryphon amplification and speakers to see what it was really capable of. Well I have to tell you that after the first few notes started coming out of the speakers I knew this Gryphon Dac was something special.
I wasn't intending to stay too long but once I started listening I didn't want to get out of my chair and asked for a few more tracks to be played ranging from blues, classical and rock before I realized just how good this dac was. I was reasonably familiar with the CLX's having heard them before and the only variable was the Kalliope so I can only attribute the improvement in sound to the dac. But just to be sure I asked them to substitute the valve dac that I heard previously in the system to give me a frame of reference. And I should qualify by saying that this other dac was a high quality well respected brand that cost three times the price of the Gryphon which itself was not inexpensive.
After the first few songs it became apparent that compared to the Gryphon this dac was not in the same league. The difference was so dramatic, particularly in the bass quality and extension, the soundstage depth and width and the detail retrieval that I asked them to go back and forth a few times so I could be sure. But each time it was pretty obvious that it just could not compete with the Kalliope, it was that good. What was really scary was that the Gryphon dac was not even run in and was not being used with other Gryphon components with which it would have even greater synergy.
So it would be an understatement to say I was impressed at just how good this product sounds. This is probably one of the few times that I have heard digital actually sounding better than a high quality vinyl rig and after more people have heard it I think they will recognize that it is a breakthrough product for digital.