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Recordings with female voices were beautiful particularly when accompanied by electronica. The latter were very good solo too. It appeared as though the Fonel tamed lesser recordings by a different handling of the compression introduced during the recording, mastering and pressing processes. When I realized just how well and moving Homeland by Laurie Anderson worked, I listened to the reissue of her Big Science and Stina’s Memories of a Color and Madita’s Too in one go. This was a real blaze of soft sounds, strong timbral contrasts and well-captured vocals. The sibilants especially on Stina and Madita are often a bit annoying but now were in ideal proportion especially compared to the midrange. It seemed as if the player put recorded distortion in order which my own machine reproduces a bit more mechanical (and that is technically more accurate as I learnt from many other expensive digital sources).

The Fonel impacted everything this way. The basis for that of course was the midrange with support from strong full bass. The lower bass wasn’t as tight and dynamic as its upper register but very well stitched together with the rest to not be disturbing. How the midrange is presented will, I believe, quickly determine how we respond to the Simplicité. This is a particular modification of the sound to require a personal response. When used with a preamp, the Fonel develops its sound from the midrange outward. Eliminating a preamp changes that equation. More on that anon.

With a preamp the outer quadrants of the soundstage are softer and rendered with far softer attacks than what’s center stage. This is especially obvious with recordings which were deliberately arrayed like this, say Carol Sloan’s Hush-A-Bye. The guitar and other instruments playing on the stage edges of the stage were far quieter than over my Ancient Audio Air which showed them in an incomparably more palpable way. Everything in fact seemed quieter with the Fonel - until the vocals entered. Then everything jumped into place like meshing gears. And no, I did not get carried away. The difference really was that big. The voice itself was full and large, not as three-dimensional as from vinyl or the Air but with appropriate weight and saturation.

Things changed to some extent when I removed the preamplifier. In my experience most CD players with variable outputs actually sound better with a preamp. There are exceptions but they aren’t numerous and usually occur in systems which were deliberately put together to eliminate the preamp.

The Fonel was an interesting example of such an exception. In my system it sounded much better without a preamp. The effect was a removal of an opaque barrier or filter. The stage edges were better saturated, everything became bigger and rather more differentiated. The overall sound was still a bit wet in the sense that attacks were softened and decays less precise but the timbre, dynamics and impression of connecting with the music were far superior then when the preamplifier was in the signal path.

The soundstage itself wasn’t particularly deep. The virtual shapes themselves had three-dimensional substance but the rear-of-stage acoustics were foreshortened. The listener was concentrated on the main action rather than what surrounded it. Surprising was how the player handled bass. It was potent, full and dynamic, not perfect–I already mentioned how– but the overall sound of the player is so coherent that even knowing superior examples one doesn’t complain. The Fonel just does the job.


That job is about a large-scale pleasing sound presented in a relaxed slightly meditative way. This worked unexpectedly well with electronica. Grabek’s 8 was spectacular, ditto the Tron: Legacy soundtrack. I’d noticed this first with Laurie Anderson but only now did it hit me how everything was bound together, how coherent it was. We can of course switch brain halves and point at weaker aspects as I did earlier. But when the player connects amp-direct via XLR cables, the results are tremendous.