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Polarities. To describe the Sheva requires a brief snap of the general lay of soundlandia as I see it. If we reference live sound—we need some reference to talk intelligently—we distinguish between amplified and acoustic. Ibrahim Maalouf's closing 8-player concert at this year's Cully Jazz Fest was an example of the former. It was very loud, very bassy and absolutely massive in scale and weight. Sizing was well in excess of the man's trumpet or his guitar player's instrumental dimensions. The top three descriptors were loud, dark and big. A bansuri flute concert with Rakesh Chaurasia and four Indian percussionists for the Diwali festival at Pully's temple was an example of the latter. It had more spiderwebby top-end energy and lingering upper harmonics than the amplified gig. Transients were quicker, imaging was more precise and to scale, overall weight and venue fill was less and volume levels were far lower. The top three descriptors were finesse, articulation and color.

Compared to these examples, most active exhibits I heard at the recent Munich HighEnd 2014 focused on sound that still exceeded the Chaurasia concert on treble energy, transient sharpness, focus and layering by various degrees from modest to extreme. Soundstaging as we pursue it in hifi doesn't occur with live sound; and the treble balance that's become so common for modern hifi sound disperses in a performance venue which will nearly always be far bigger than our own living rooms. Hence such a venue's ambient field overlays the direct sound and sports longer decay times. Only front-row seats will come closer to a home situation of sitting within 3 meters from the speakers. Only a few Munich rooms even attempted—forget matched—the darker, heavier, richer more redolent sound one actually hears in an acoustic concert. Even the very best £1'000'000 system was leaner. Only one room I heard went after actual amplified live sound. This meant loud, very bassy and cracking brutally hard on percussion to approach the gun-shot speed one hears in close proximity to a trashing drum set. (Of course why you'd ever want to stand so close to something so bloody loud and violently incivise is a really good question. That's for dumb youngsters whose hearing is still immortal and who don't notice the ear plugs the drummer himself is wearing.)

Assembling and thereby voicing a hifi system must decide on which sonic flavour (acoustic, amplified) to pursue. That's obviously a function of your primary musical diet. Punk, death metal and stadium rock educated by live exposure require a very different tonal balance, power and weight than small-scale purely unplugged stuff. If one hopes to go beyond raw sound which is all that's captured on our music tracks or files unless we dealt in concert videos, one might pursue certain quasi-visual effects like heightened imaging, staging, focus, layering and separation which as such well exceed a live performance. Now our inner eye fills in some of the gaps our actual eyes suffer because they've been eliminated from the equation.


To keep it basic, a system's handling of the presence region and treble determines how extra-visual it gets. The upper bass and below influence how close one might come to live sound's physicality and sheer scale. (Pursuing real bass always conflicts with room protests and there's little in hifi as annoying as lumpy boomy bass.) A very popular trend for contemporary speakers and digital sources is maximal pixel-count detail for so-called high resolution.


This trend appeals first and foremost to our hearing's 'visual' aspects. It gets more and more mental and abstract. It's the observer's position. The participatory position would seem triggered first by tone mass and dynamics. Vintage paper-driver speakers, legacy valve gear, various horn and omni speakers often in combination make those qualities a priority. By implication this withdraws them from pixilated 'high-def' modern sound to varying degrees. It can even make a resolute about-turn altogether.


At least to me, a musical aka participatory sound must start with the meat and potatoes of tone and dynamics. Building upon that foundation to add the sparkle and bubbliness of champagne—what I think of as qualities peculiar to hifi rather than live sound—then becomes a balancing act. The path gets narrower and narrower the higher one walks. Adding more pseudo-visual hifi qualities tends to steal from tonal fullness and black levels. This gets leaner and whiter as the very aspects one tried to get away from all along. Where exactly on that axis one wants to sit is entirely personal. It's also influenced by average listening levels and musical tastes. Against this generalized landscape we can now consider the Sheva DAC. Though it runs on Sabre power which is widely considered the 'most resolved' or 'advanced' silicon to market, Funjoe does not exploit it that way.


Compared to my €3'000 reference Metrum Hex—where 'reference' only means that which I'm used to and love, not anything ultimate you ought to agree with—the Sheva behaved noticeably thicker. Related to the Maalouf concert's realism, sounds were closer to intermingling clouds than shadow-play cutouts. Think somewhat diffusive, with water-colour bleeds around the edges and less precise focus. Because I ran with EnigmAcoustics' Mythology M1 super monitor whose overall demeanour pushes hifi visualization to an unusual extent particularly when driven by the ultra wide-bandwidth Austrian Crayon Audio CFA-1.2 amp, this Sheva effect was ultra obvious. In this finely tweaked costly system, Zu's Submission sub set to a 20Hz low-pass (which audibly bleeds through to above 40Hz for the desired bandwidth) adds black to the colour palette and LF mass for physicality and scale. Here Funjoe's voicing had nothing meaninful or desirable to contribute. In fact his Sheva was out of its league. This also held vis-à-vis my AURALiC Vega. The Sheva's 'musical' contributions undermined the system's fine-tuned behaviour by congealing and obscuring fine detail like minor gelatin.

Where the Sheva comes into its own is with systems short on weightiness and relaxation. It's a body builder, not an accellerator, separator, dynamicator or high-definitator. That's of course in keeping with Funjoe's prior kit. It pursues the same sonic aesthetic. As such it belongs with it. That's despite its twice-priced positioning as based on actual parts cost and OEM motherboard which could suggest a higher performance tier. It's not. To get to the next tier wants a Hex, Vega or equivalent. Given their pricing that's no grand revelation. It's how it ought to be if price had any relation to performance. But let's return to basics. If you view modern hifi as shy on musical calories and all about the sizzle of Coca Cola (carbonated flavored sugar water for fizz and momentary faux energy without substance), Sheva has been voiced as an effective antidote. To benefit from it as intended without throwing a small wrench into the machine simply wants a system which is too lean, ungrounded, nervous or edgy and not reliant at the same time on a level of raw resolution which the Sheva won't deliver.

Basics. If you agree on these hifi basics (fundamental requirements beyond which come possible extras as unessential luxuries), the Sheva marks the spot. Think Zu speakers which pursue the same fundamentals to be ultimately limited by what their 10.3" widebander platform is capable of on finesse in the upper midrange and beyond. Once you spent beyond €5'000 Zu coin to face the very same driver tech, some might expect a concomitantly higher level of sophistication. Ditto the Sheva. If it cost €3'000, it'd be outclassed by the AURALiC which builds upon its fundamentals with more finesse. But at €1'799 it's the kind of success a Zu Union is with which it'd make for a very consistent match big on sauce and meat whilst leaving the frilly arugala salad and white-wine spritzer for the bistro crowd. The Sheva remembers what's important in hifi versus what's unessential if perhaps nice to have if the right tax refund or Christmas bonus materialized. That's not the stuff of unqualified raves. But it's the stuff of a qualified reco for the right listener and system status. Needless to say, it's also perfectly matched to Funjoe's AP1/55pm separates where it plays to the home-crowd advantage.


As takeaway, think AURALiC Vega-style color richness and juiciness if to a slightly lesser extent, with separation and micro detail recovery stepped down further to move into the background. Don't think Metrum Hex whose definition of fundamentals puts timing and rhythmic fidelity first. But do add PCM384/DSD128 which the Hex lacks; digital volume without remote which in a mid-level starter system is a perfectly viable option; and bomb-proof build which bodes well for long-term happiness. This first Sheva from Hong Kong designer Funjoe thus is another meaningful real-world relevant model short on bling and typical hifi disease and big on value and crossing off the essentials.
 
PS: The question of whether to use XLR or RCA is non-essential. It depends. A better balanced than single-ended cable—I had Arkana Research's best for the former, Zu Event for the latter—can give XLR the edge. A summing op-amp on your preamp's pseudo-balanced inputs could tip the balance the other way. Transformer-based XLR-to-RCA conversion can introduce bandwidth limitations which could be beneficial or not depending on your system's HF noise behaviour. And so forth. Don't sweat it if you're locked in either way. Experiment and trust your ears if you can try both. In my system I preferred balanced and using the superior cable.

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