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On bacon and Bakoon, you certainly could fry the porcine stuff on it (but not on the power supply). Unlike gas stoves which go hot in a literal flash and instantly cut off, the AMP-11R is a modern full-contact burner. It takes time to heat up but stays so well after shutdown. Its class AB Mosfets direct-coupled to the monolithic chassis dissipate copiously. That's likely a function of compact form factor and perhaps also high class A bias prior to transition. Sonics are such hot stuff too that I doubt any experienced listener who'd recognize both status and rarity in the same breath would remain quiet, certainly not as deathly as the circuit itself.

I had suspicion of top-class excellence already in my night-stand headfi rig where the Bakoon made the first rounds whilst another assignment concluded in the downstairs system. That turned déjà vu when my FirstWatt SIT1 monos which had returned for a day of personal reset vacated the stands between the speakers. Amp stands duly piggybacked to host the singular but stacked AMP-11R in its own mini rack with integral ceramic ball bearings, I still could have supported four Bakoons on the HeartSong's slightly larger than standard surface. Don't let size fool you. The Bakoon is dead serious. Soo In's insistence that their showroom's Rockport Anka were fair game translated to my sealed Boenicke Audio B10. With dual opposed sidefiring 10-inch woofers loaded into a 12cm narrow wood enclosure, they're inefficient and current hungry. To appreciate one 11R highlight at max resolution simply requires a tweeter like the Raal ribbon with Audio Consulting transformer in my Aries Cerat Gladius. That's because Bakoon has one of the best top ends I've yet heard from transistors.

But the bass-heavier mostly omni radiating Boenicke whose woofers reach well up into the midrange already crossed off maximally extricated depth dimension of each sonic event to produce very deep relief for holographic-type staging. Such specificity which chisels out the performers from the background to nearly render them freestanding rather than attached to sonic mass seems to mandate low phase shift/wide bandwidth. Very low self noise then also makes visible those subliminally embedded details of the recorded venue to cast space different from your own. On all those counts the Bakoon proved to be an ultra-resolution component. Without going into endless detail to make that point, I'll simply say that the only amp through my system which plays at that level is the Nelson Pass SIT1. Refer to its review for the long version.
Left column top to bottom: Esoteric UX1/APL Hifi NWO-M with Audiophilleo 2 | Trafomatic 101D | Bent Audio Tap X
Right column: 27" quad-core top-line iMac | Esoteric C-03 | Eximus DP1 | ModWright LS-100
One unique feature of the SIT1 is its 2nd/3rd-order harmonic gear box compliments of that novel operating-point (bias) adjust. The Bakoon counters with something on the surface far more ordinary but in practice just as practical. The volume control. Precede the 11R with a superior preamp like Sasa Cokic's SM101Dn single-stage direct-heated triode line stage. It's a single-input amp after all. Now use Bakoon's horizontal volume wheel to assign percentages: this much preamp contribution, this much amp. Works splendidly. If you favor the peculiar elasticity I call waft & wane factor that seems intrinsic to direct-heated triodes, this maximizes it. Run your DHT preamp mostly or wide open, dial back the Bakoon a lot. Presto, more dominant valve flavor. However, Bakoon's circuit speed and lucidity are such that I'd personally be leery of preamps unless you had a similarly brilliant execution which will only contribute, not take away. Weighing down the 11R with ballast to drag along would really defeat the purpose. It's not a harmonically bleached sound by itself. The only thing it hasn't got—because transistors can't do it—is that tubular elasticity. Which can be injected if you fancy it but for just that will require a very special preamp indeed. My ModWright wasn't up for it.
On not got, the only other item would have to be LF headroom. 15 hi-gain watts only go so far. I had zero complaints. But that's a townhouser speaking. Massive historical building walls notwithstanding, neighbors are on my mind. My hifi journey over the last four years has been about maximum satisfaction at lower to civilized levels (which I reckon must be true for many audiophiles). That means a very early curtain rise. Useful ingredients are minimalist crossovers, higher efficiencies and minimalist quick circuits to jointly come on song at low volumes. In the real world that's the most important quality a hifi must possess. Yet it's barely talked about. That's because most hifis aren't good at it at all. The Bakoon meanwhile excels. That's true resolution just as headphone listening had already indicated!


As with the SIT1, fanciers of premium SETs (there's a vast swath from mediocre to brilliant, most somewhere in the lower middle) should recognize the same type of electrifying immediacy. Naturally there are textural differences. Valves light up 'more reverb' by being more focused on the decay. Transistors go for the transients. Unlike much class D which acts overdamped particularly in the bass, the 11R is far less stiff if not as supple as an Emission Labs solid-plate 45. On microdynamic reflexes for lots of ripples atop plenty of small waves, the Bakoon once again matches a quality SET even though it's a push/pull class AB circuit. That needs to be put aside lest it predicts things like more amorphous mass and minor indistinctiveness which simply don't apply. Self noise here appears vanishingly low. Even on my 100dB Voxativ Ampeggio the Bakoon was inaudible. That's a major asset for low-level listening against suitably low ambient noise. If you enjoy entering the zone late at night while family members are already sleeping, the Bakoon makes for the perfect exploratory space pod.

Back on treble and ribbons, the Bakoon is very pellucid and wonderfully adept at tintinnabulation which the dictionary tells us is the ringing or sound of bells. Metal molecules scintillating, upper piano keys tinkling, violin flageolet climbing the harmonic ladder, very short pan flute pipes overblown at max air speed to capture even higher overtones... these and similar events the R11 executes brilliantly without getting flashy about it. I think that nonchalance is the elimination of phase shift in the upper frequencies.

While on personal thoughts, I think that the best of D/A converters and amplifiers have currently reached a type of impasse. Unless we get a technological breakthrough—speakers need this more than anything else—we seem to have hit the limits of the currently doable. In the low-wattage realm Nelson Pass' SIT1 and Akira Nagai 's AMP-11R strike me as being that and there. Curiously enough they have arrived by quite different means. Yet the path of either designer represents many decades of constant refinements and maturation. The chosen approach seems to matter far less than the right combination of vision (knowing where the peak is), talent (knowing how circuit/parts choices impact the sound) and stubbornness (constant improvements to claw up that mountain for a few more inches with each new iteration).

The Bakoon is very lit up. That's prone to misinterpretation. Reading that most people's minds reach for the treble control and turn it all the way up. Not! This kind is lit up all over. Valve fans have their own word. Illumination. Having owned many valve amps, I relate completely. Yet this quite extensive experience also has me see a certain area of inside-out radiation which itself is surrounded by darkness. With the 11R there is no darkness. As such there's no radiation. Light shines from the outside in and leaves out nothing. That's not bright. It's simply fully unconcealed and exactly why it requires minimum SPL to hear everything.

The Bakoon AMP-11R is very advanced. If you're into Jonathan Ive, the Korean packaging looks like a million bucks. With lavish functionality for an amp—discrete voltage and current inputs, headphone output, outboard power supply, volume control, mini rack—it's starkly minimalist for an integrated (just one input, no remote control). Power is low but due to high circuit gain farther stretching than you'd think. Headphone drive in high-gain mode embraces all current designs including HifiMan's HE-6. Here it delivers the same superlative performance it brings to speakers. That makes it an ultimate and on expense an ulti(check)mate headfi amp. Of course driving speakers means this ultimate headfi amp comes completely free. Hey, time perhaps to strap on a pair?
with HifiMan HE-6, Entreq Konstantin 2012 cable and Klutz Design CanCan headphone stand
The amp is preternaturally quiet for extreme resolution. Colossal bandwidth translates into utter absence of subliminal fuzziness because phase shift in the higher frequencies where all the harmonics occur is absent too (obviously that subject gets diluted by higher-order crossovers). That means very realistic convincing tone without artificial colorations. I can't comment on bass performance in the context of cruel speakers and high SPL. Common sense predicts obvious limits for any puny 15-watter. On my speakers bass was just right but didn't stand out as any particular specialty. That's because the performance impressed so strongly on a whole. If you've had good results with the kind of suchness a superior transformer attenuator can bring to the right party, migrate that quality wholesale on the Bakoon. If you've heard a top-class SET on perfectly matched speakers, ditto for the same communicative directness. Differences with valve amps remain but like FirstWatt's SIT1, the Bakoon comes as close as transistors can (and as would seem desirable to avoid their weaknesses of noise, current and bandwidth). Those with visions of Mosfet mist will need to clean their glasses. No such mist here.

The only remaining question—to me—is how successfully the company will scale up their baby Bakoon's tremendous performance to the kind of watts the populace with inefficient low-impedance multiway speakers and a lust for high SPL needs. 100 of exactly these watts into 4 ohms would really throw a big rock into audiophilia's small pond. As is, the AMP-11R's diminutive dimensions and what in that context seems like a stiff tariff won't cause too many ripples. Never mind that present global distribution seems asleep behind the wheel. Which is very strange given Bakoon's 20 years in business - unless their stuff got this brilliant only recently. Either way it's here now and available for what on performance is a perfectly fair price. Had I not just acquired my silver pair of SIT1s; and had I not a perfectly presentable headfi system to can that justification too (damn!) - I'd be very sorely tempted to contact Korea for a silver unit. After 10 years on the job, recognizing true greatness isn't brain surgery. Even so it's still quite the wakeup call. Consider yourself called then. But are you awake? Over and out to sneak in a few more hours of listening before this 'as compact as possible, as high-end as possible' amp is due back...
Bakoon Products Int'l website
Klutz Design EU sales website