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Packed amateurishly but overkill safe—double boxes, reams of bubble wrap—the khozmic arrival immediately plugged its wart into the wall to check for how Arek had dealt with motorizing a multi-step switcher. The nicely hefty wand with twin IR emitters and coin-type battery cell inside advanced the dot display by one digit with a single press or kept going very quickly as long as the button was depressed. The sweep elicited a very noticeable mechanical whirring quite similar to an industrial sewing machine.
With the display set to max 47, output voltage equals unity gain/source output minus the constant resistor.
Once I inserted the passive into my system at first on the long cables, there was no electrical noise through the speakers to accompany the mechanical action however. None. No clicks, pops or cracks. Electrically the device was dead quiet. Respect. Arek's color scheme of blue and brown for his unmarked sockets diverges from the global red/white to leave one at a loss about channel designation. As it turns out, blue=white. All your left-channel connections go on top. "I've ordered a big box of CMC 816-UG RCA sockets in red and white already. They also are better quality." The lack of markings on the input connectors as well as associated selector is perfectly minimalist. It's related to multi-choice modularity which makes it easier on the maker's inventory to leave everything blank. Ultimately it's perhaps just a tad less than practical but it's hard to be too critical given the value pricing.


The remote uses its four belly hex screws as hard footers. The preamp gets tallish translucent stick-on rubber bumpers. The IR receiver on the box has unusually limited lateral read. It didn't work 60° off-axis which my usual sidewall placement creates from the listening chair. Nagra's Jazz is the poster child for infrared responsiveness with a receiver window easily quadruple Khozmo's size. That likely explains it.

Once I'd relocated the Khozmo between the speakers where it really belonged, head-on responses were peachy. Doing a quickie 6-meter cable comparison between €10K+ valve preamp and €600 passive just because, the Khozmo was drier, less specifically layered, microdynamically less expressive and also less controlled or looser in the bass. The Nagra active was more elegant and sophisticated, the Khozmo strictly matter of fact and slightly stripped back or starker by contrast.

With FirstWatt SIT1 and Aries Cerat Gladius, Khozmo on side wall still.
With amps of FirstWatt SIT-1 pedigree—purist no NFB single-ended with bona fide triode curves—this budgetary cutback had sonic side effects on these speakers which I thought were perfectly in line with reason and of a similar flavor to what happens when I swap in the high-power high-damping Job 225. This sentiment was most keen at low playback levels. Turning up the wick made the mild losses less obvious. To fully accommodate the passive's distillation action required another system. I moved in my far warmer bassier AudioSolutions Rhapsody 200. I also swapped amps to properly control the Lithuanians' challenging twin-ported underdamped alignment which is well beyond the SIT monos.

Relative to the Jazz/SIT1/Gladius chain I now had surprisingly similar sonics. The small direct-coupled wide bandwidth 'Goldmund clone' amp—Job actually licenses their circuit to the Swiss—gripped the twin 10-inch woofers for more extension and power than the Gladius' single sealed 12er is good for. It also toned down what in the white towers I call a vintage Sonus faber-style voicing with US-style bass balance. Think opulence over accuracy. The Khozmo then finished off the quickening/tightening process to step the system out of a romantic half-shadow mood and into brighter more constant light. The only aspect of the presentation not completely up to par was a slight bass looseness I don't get with the Swiss valver even when set to 0dB gain. Active buffering for a constant 50Ω output impedance might be the reason. Plugging one port per side took care of this though.
With JOB 225 and AudioSolutions Rhapsody 200.
The SB Acoustics paper drivers with their Scanspeak genetics have what one might call innate tone when compared to harder metal transducers. Thus my strategic clarifying action—think how Indian-style ghee is butter minus the cloudy milk solids—didn't go retrograde. It didn't default into lean and bleached. What it felt like was just right. In a roundabout way this also suggested how particularly single-ended valve amps with generous 2nd-order THD could be ideally complemented by this passive.
Khozmo atop Job 225 for a ~€2.000 hifi heap of decidely anti he-man proportions.

A reduction of 2nd-order distortion which is a subtle form of octave doubling tends to benefit fine soundstage markers related to layering and separation. Without altering overall venue dimensions, the front-to-back progression is more finely gradated. Nearly subliminal hall sounds become more obvious. If you enjoy a lit-up soundstage for the ability to freely walk it with your mind, such cobweb cleaning can lead to it. The flipside is a subjective dilution of image density or mass. Exactly where within this mix one wants to be is personal. If one didn't have any tubes but lusted after them, a passive likely wouldn't suit. If one owned dynamic speakers but dreamed of stats, a passive could move in the desired direction. None of this is news or different from prior explorations of quality passives. The Khozmo difference is its price-to-build-to-features ratio. That last element is an attractive well-implemented remote wand which so many passives force us to abandon in their less-is-more game. Those like my Bent Audio Tap-X which don't cost more than triple. And yes, at very low volumes I thought the X had a small advantage of conviction and in general a subtle seal-skin silkiness the drier Khozmo lacked. But that's getting fussy.

In the proper context—short interconnects, a source with proper gumption and sufficient gain to drive your amp to full output and an amp/speaker match not shy on tone and mass—the Khozmo passive will act as a degelatinizing agent whose lack of self noise and gain can lower your system's noise floor and increase subjective resolution. Its freedom from colorants meanwhile can hone a refreshing sense of directness and a crystallization of clarity.

It's an ideal solution also for DAC-direct scenarios when a converter lacks variable outputs or is limited to on-chip digital attenuation. With two pairs of ~90dB speakers mated to 4V DACs and a 35dB gain amp, I could listen as low as '4' on the dial. Remember that 47 = slightly less than unity gain. Attempting such deep attenuation in the digital domain tosses resolution regardless of claims to the contrary. It progressively diminishes mass and color to wilt, get thin, whitish and pale. Suffocated. No such pain with the Khozmo. It's also built like a brick. Whilst its untreated aluminium is very prone to skin-oil marks unlike truly fancy equivalents, that's a very small price not to pay when all of it amounts to $637 fully loaded.

For an active preamp to demonstrably eclipse the Khozmo—to be as quick, transparent, silent and uncolored and add something for nothing (dynamics, bass weight, ambient recovery, other)—costs dearly. Something for something is easy. That's the roulette of give 'n' take. Win some, lose some. It's when one demands improvements without any losses vis-à-vis a proper passive that the going gets tough and the tough drop out. To my ears Nagra's Jazz pretty much fulfills that criterion. As does its €11.000 sticker. Steve McCormack's VRE should too on both counts. There are others. What's it mean in the end? At the very least the Khozmo keeps expensive linestages honest. At its best it's a perfect fit with your needs where the contributions of lesser active circuits would go negatory. Then it lets you off the hook for what in today's hifi currency are really peanuts. If the new mechanics of Arek Kallas remain as electrically noiseless as my loaner began with; and if he improves his communication skills to not let 60 days lapse without any shipping updates... then this trick little box really is very good news all around!

Khozmo Acoustic website