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On the front end. As anticipated or hoped, the 3-for-1 swap did indeed play up the discussed qualities. I got more of the same as though multiplied. My vocabulary reaction included bigger, weightier, richer. Yet when a virile string pluck on a snarling oud called for it, I was very pleased to hear that the wiry striated elements hadn't been eliminated. There was just one additional item. I now also flashed on more stately. Something had seemingly relaxed in the innate musical gestalt. Calling it slower would misdirect particularly if it somehow implied lesser persuasiveness. Not. Even so it seems fair to orient your expectation towards languid flow rather than pushy adrenaline à la Velocitor suggestions. Yet I never got any sense of energetic damping as I'd concluded for huge isolation transformers during earlier experiments.


For a final circling of the wagons, I'd focus attention again on richer more saturated colors for deeper texturization and greater material weightiness; and finer definition without any pixilation. Calling upon popular conceptions, one could also call this the sound of ultra-refined top-quality copper and feel quite certain that most people would make the intended associations.



Conclusion. Beautifully styled and immaculately crafted, the Telos Audio Design TD-04R costs an unapologetically substantial $800 per power socket. That brings it on par with the $750 Audience gets for their aR12 Teflon but exceeds the $625 Shunyata's Hydra Triton and Walker Audio's Velocitor SS command. Where Audience goes for costly capacitors and Shunyata pursues a ferroelectric compound to filter out noise, Telos is focused on resonance control. Here we see direct parallels with Furutech's PurePower 6 whose $1.060 per socket and 22lbs total weight make it the twice heavy of this group.


While Furutech adds a proprietary GC-303 granular noise-absorption compound perhaps related to Shunyata's, more to the point is how the Japanese seem equally maniacal about torque. Consider their 'axial lock' approach above. As an established serious player in this sector, one expects from Furutech considerable discrimination. Their championship of the high-mass ultra-rigid passive means it's not capricious. Never mind the guaranteed protests of overkill from us cynics.


From a marketing angle in fact it's a lot easier to promote hi-tech compounds and active filtering than passive 'nothing'. But this particular approach—just one of many as is so typical of high-end audio—has long since been legitimized though it clearly doesn't dominate the sector. Telos is simply the latest to adopt it. It's admittedly curious that the Pacific Rim seems such a hotbed for it. But that would be for a very different type of article to explore.


Particularly jumpy, airy, incisive or charged the TD-04R was not. Dense, robust, weighty, big, rich, finely articulated and relaxed it was very much. It also was a personal reexamination of assumptions. Some of those seem blue-collar type conditioning. It nearly on principle suspects all white-collar luxuries of hollowness. In short, diss what you can't afford. It's as though applied extremism has to equate redundancy by only serving profit margins and fashionably elevated price points. Copious material excess then acts as quasi justification. But the fact is, going all the way is mandatory to pursue any journey to its very end. Good enough isn't good enough. The Telos is one of those products. It goes all the way. As such it should represent a best-case scenario for its chosen approach.


Some applications may need active voltage stabilization or active noise filtering. For my 3-storey town house inside the historical district of a small French-style village embedded in lake-front suburbia—there are plenty of small shops, hair dressers and eateries on my street but no heavy industry—the Telos exceeded Furutech's RTP-6 by quite an obvious and thus demonstrable margin. More money clearly made better sound. My blue-collar cynic had to admit red-faced defeat. At least those colors were suitably French. This German finally fit right in...

Quality of packing: Very good.
Reusability of packing: Indefinitely for flight case, more than once for outer cardboard boxes.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: A cinch.
Condition of component received: Flawless.
Completeness of delivery: Arrived with excess Titanium spikes and disc protectors and company catalogue but no power cord. When I enquired about the latter based on a contradictory blog mention, I was informed that the shipping department had forgotten. There's indeed a promotional offer whereby a Telos power cord will be included free of charge with the next 50 power distributors sold. That's very attractive indeed.
Human interactions: The company's English-speaking PR man in Australia has a full-time day job. Add his location and promptness nearly implies a one-day delay at minimum if you're European or American (KC might have to check in with Taiwan, wait for their answer, translate it, then get back to you). But where many Chinese companies speak no English to set up real road blocks for Western buyers, Telos has properly organized for a formal translator. A bit of patience is a small price to pay. For Western enquiries, email KC here.
Pricing: Concomitant with luxury positioning and elevated performance but certain competitors still charge more.
Final comments & suggestions: Those Oyaide receptacles are spectacularly grippy. Add their recessed location and getting power cords seated and unseated requires a strong hand. That's as it should be. Mechanical contact integrity is a vital part of this product category. Wobblies are outlawed.
Limitations: No active filtering, no voltage stabilization, no surge/spike protection. Four outlets may not always be sufficient.

Telos Audio Design website
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