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I kicked off in headfi mode fed balanced from the Metrum Hex preceded by my usual quad-core iMac and SOtM's very best battery-powered super-clock'd USB bridge. In that setup Sennheiser's HD-800 betrayed unacceptably high steady-state hum over the Greek. This went to zero at mute, demonstrating a shorting relay in action. AKG's K-702 lowered the same hum to levels below what would be considered normal with speakers and zero NFB direct-heated SETs. Floating grounds on Birth or Hex in any possible configuration had no effect on the hum's amplitude. Wondering about a rare ground-loop or RF power line issue from my iMac—with galvanically isolated battery-powered USB this didn't sound feasible but hifi routinely gets weird—I used an iPod Classic loaded with AIFF files from the iMac. This ran into a Cambridge Audio iD100 digital-direct dock feeding the Hex via AES/EBU. The computer itself wasn't on. Hola humbuster. Tunes against dead-quiet background perfection though none of this confirmed what the noise issue had been exactly.

As headphone amp the Birth does what Simon's Lee April Music Aura Vita integrated and Soo In Chae's Bakoon AMP-11R do - redirect speaker-level output through a voltage divider. As confirmed here, the sound really did track what I heard over speakers. For expediency's sake that's where we'll move. To satisfy curiosity I leashed up the Birth 100 to Martin Gateley's soundkaos Wave 40. Their review had just concluded to still be on hand. Those are 8Ω widebanders with Raal ribbon housed in an instrument-style tonewood enclosure. At 93dB their sensitivity is lower than 100dB Lowther, Voxativ or Rethm types but higher than the vast majority of 88dB boxes. A 70wpc transistor amp is not exactly what you'd typically mate to these but aside from some steady-state background hum* equivalent to a better 300B SET, here there was no overt suggestion why you wouldn't. Admittedly our Greek wasn't as lithe, illuminated and quick as the 15wpc Bakoon which had driven the Waves for their own assignment [above]. The Birth's warmer less energetic character thus downplayed some of the speaker's signature gush factor to make it sound a bit more ordinary.
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* Without floating its ground, this hum got louder with now quite annoying higher harmonics to be proper buzz. As already noted in headfi use, the Birth seemed more susceptible to ground loops (or power supply hum) than other gear I've had through or own.


On the Wave bass response is naturally limited by cabinet and driver size. Here the Greek amp acted additive for some minor enhancements. Most importantly listening at less than one watt didn't handicap it by sounding 'un-arrived', sleepy or stuck in first gear. That can be a byproduct of more complex cascaded circuits. If it factored here—I couldn't possibly crank the volume on the Waves to get anywhere near double-digit power consumption—it wasn't obvious. Those keen on tube amps + widebanders could have preferred this reading for its greater relaxedness, softness and warmth. I preferred the quicker more immediate Bakoon but didn't spend much time on the pairing as too unlikely. I was simply impressed by how well the Black Pearls machine acquitted itself in first-watt mode. Presumably this was at least partially due also to its higher output impedance which avoided overdamping these lightweight cones on their powerful Alnico motors.
AudioSolutions Rhapsody 200 with Birth 100 and Blondie the cat showing off
Getting real. For the vast majority of my audition I used my 90.5dB 5-driver 3-way AudioSolutions Rhapsody 200. Their impedance swings from 2.8Ω at 9kHz to 20Ω at 17Hz. Such wide fluctuations are quite typical for ported alignments. Here the driver complement is a 2.5cm silk-dome tweeter bracketed by 15cm paper-cone midranges above paralleled 23cm paper-cone woofers. The designer deliberately underdamps the latter's twin-port loading a bit. The best all'round performance I've yet enjoyed from these was with the stock Ncore-1200 Acoustic Imagery Atsah monos. Whilst I usually don't play the silly numbers of sampling rates or damping factors, I happily acknowledge that what these class D monos with their top-to-bottom ultra-low output impedance did for this particular speaker was... well, illegally addictive. Until I add my own pair of Bruno Putzeys' Mola-Mola Ncores, I've stuffed ports. This works swell with my muscle ModWright KWA-100SE. Despite plugs—they're obviously somewhat lossy and not perfect seals—the Birth 100 evinced somewhat lower bass damping and as such a somewhat more boisterous response. Here my sealed Aries Cerat Gladius would have been even more perfect were it not for their €20.000/pr sticker. At €7.660/pr the Lithuanians fell right into the twice-the-amp math. That was more realistic.


Coming off the Bakoon/Wave 40 pairing with a ModWright 6SN7 tube pre and Zu Submission subwoofer in the loop, the overriding sonic impression now changed significantly. These clearly were two rather different aural aesthetics. The former majored on energy transmission, speed, articulation and light in a very big way. The presentation was more fulsome, dense, heavy and fleshy. It was less separated and incisive on transients. Particularly the upper-mid-and-beyond registers had been noticeably more illuminated, effervescent and communicative before. Comparing the Bakoon/Black Pearls amps on the Wave 40 vs. how the two systems fared now, I'd split the difference between the speakers—the resonant tonewood sounds fundamentally different from an inert box—and amps. I'd also point at the full-range nature of the Lithuanian speakers and how their short-wall placement generates more LF corner loading. Even when high-pressure turbulence in the corners isn't audible as boom in the central seat, it does damp the unhindered propagation of HF. Shifting low-bass emissions to one centrally placed subwoofer instead energizes the room differently. In my setup this clearly minimizes corner loading to free up more gossamer top-end distribution.

Whilst the Birth 100 shares its specific Exicon Mosfets and non-paralleled push/pull topology with the Bakoon, its sound reminded me directly of my ModWright KWA-100SE. Except for LF control where the KWA on this load overshadowed the Birth just a bit—that small advantage crumbles to dust versus the Ncores when the port plugs come out—Dan's and Konstantinos' sounds were fairly close stand-ins. Given that the ModWright is my high-power class AB transistor amp of choice, that was high praise for the newcomer. If you think of the big white boxes as legacy Sonus fabers with US-style bass and greater dynamics, you'll appreciate that someone attracted to this sound would want to maximize it with the right electronics. Here the Birth 100 proved formidably matched.
It emphasized wall-of-sound mass, cast a very broad unbroken lateral spread with a bit less depth though still in the classic behind-the-speakers perspective and majored on physicality, punch and extension in both extremes. Nothing cut or sliced to feel calm and composed at rest but scaled with proper violence when material crested and peaked. This ability to track voltage swings and parlay them as big waves without cropping their tops was thrilling but also involved levels which mandated strategic timing to insure neighbors were out. Anyone familiar with how even a single woodwind or brass instrument will load up a typically sized living room must admit that live sound in general is bigger, louder, more intense and carrying than our feeble playback attempts. Here the Greek amp's 'quad-mono' layout and its designer's ongoing exposure to live sound felt groomed for mo real. For at least all my practical intents and purposes, the Birth 100 acted like a beefy muscle amp and rocker.


The fundamental difference to the other (previous) sound was how the Birth/Rhapsody pairing approached the task from the outside in. It was about scale, bold broad strokes, weight, dynamic pressurization, the big picture. The Bakoon/Wave pairing illuminated things from the inside out. That was about finesse, speed, maximal visibility, great separation and micro resolution - the small stuff within the big picture. Forest and leaves. If we talked widebanders as something I just spent quality time with, the Birth would be a Zu, the Bakoon a Rethm or soundkaos. If from that you concluded that Birth + Druid V would make a fine pair, yes. Acting as an about 30wpc amp into the Druid's 16Ω load, I thought the combo very successful. The included credit remote works fine but unlike others of the kind which feature clearly raised cells beneath their membrane cover is flat. It lacks squishy bumps and their tactile feedback. Particularly on volume up/down I found this disconcerting. More bumps please.

I only had one functional Murphy moment when a desired input refused to switch by hand and remote. Trying next to adjust volume by wand caused runaway. The pot kept turning without stopping. I had to do a hard power down to reset things. I couldn't replicate the errant behavior and wrote it off to one lone synaptic misfire in the control logic. My only real concern remained the apparent sensitivity to ground loops and/or noise pickup. I'm lucky not to encounter such noise a lot. When I do and in multiple contexts with the same machine, I thus take note.

Polish contributor Wojciech Pacula recently opened a review with "five years in a company's existence aren't much. High-end hifi companies often introduce new products in more or less such intervals. If a company is only five years old, that's a truly short span and likely still Gen I product from which one shouldn't expect too much." By that logic the Birth 100 shouldn't factor one iota but the truth is quite different. Though new without a track record, this first creation from Greece's Black Pearls Audio struck me as surprisingly mature and dialed. Whilst I would still like to see a pre-out for a subwoofer, Mr. Papachristou explained how the circuit's layout opposed it. Given current realities, Greece is an unlikely place from which to expect not exotically overpriced boutique esoterica—those can come from anywhere—but a robust mainstream machine that's fairly priced, well appointed and perfectly competitive on performance. That it would lack the glossy slick factor of an Italian Norma equivalent comes with the product's specific focus and its back story. A lovely debut!


Final telegram. Five inputs. One paralleled on convenience XLR (pin 3 shorted). Remote. Headphone out. Enough power with robust drive to cover 90% of normal domestic needs. Mosfet-typical warmth. Push/pull typical stage width, frequency extension and meatiness. Focus on weight and bloom, not attack sharpness. Calm of temperament. Macrodynamically potent when called for. High tone density. Lower separation and airiness. More bronze than Platinum on high. Great shove and pressurization down low. Meat 'n' potatoes comfort sound. Plenty of gravy, no dryness in sight. Big and bold. Primary oil colors, no pastels or water-color washes. Loves to rock. Muscle amp in a small package. Over and out.


Konstaninos Papachristou replies: I was very happy to meet you in person at the Munich High-End Show, thank you very much for stopping by for a quick chat! Regarding the hum issue you experienced during the review, this has now been fixed. I carried out extensive testing which revealed a problematic grounding scheme that explains the hum and also pops when a laptop with switching power supply is used to stream music. The grounding scheme has now been revised and all related issues have been solved.
 

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