Beneath her bonnet, central cover removed as well, Kalliope shows off dual mono even to the uninitiated who'd clearly appreciate that for most of it, there's two of everything; and mostly mirror-imaged at that. With clearly high parts density, much is allocated to the power supply. There's no substitute for cubic inches. Or so they say on the drag strip.

Here is one channel's 32bit/384kHz DAC module centred on the 8-channel ESS ES9018S.

Gryphon's 32-bit sample-rate converter lives on its own board.


Here we see five top-quality digital isolation transformers in the TR1 through 5 positions; and two AKM AK4115VQ digital transceivers supporting up to 216kHz sample rates.

Between the two power toroids sit AC/DC converters and sundry power regulation bits.

Closing the lids back up (yes, plural, this is dual mono all the way) begged an important question. Which speakers to set up for the occasion?


Given that we had our own mini Gryphonians—concave baffle, time aligned SB Acoustics Satori drivers, impedance/phase-compensated 1st-order network—the choice of Sounddeco Sigma 2 from Poland was predestined. The amp would be our customary pure class A Pass Labs XA30.8.


Whilst less purist competitors driving ESS silicon think nothing of activating on-chip volume, Gryphon wouldn't dream of it. To complete an all-XLR signal path with analog volume control, I could pick between COS Engineering D1 for solid state, Nagra Audio Jazz for valves. I set up both to decide by ear.


My iMac instantly recognized the Gryphon as a 2ch-32bit integer 384'000Hz source. Where many such handshakes elicit an Amanero Combo384, XMOS USB 2.0, USB Audio or some such generic identifier anonymous like chicken forum posters, the Kalliope signed in with her own name. Experts sweat these little things.


The Kalliope's front panel didn't verify signal lock until I hit 'play' but sound was instantaneous. The auditions were afoot, our reference Fore Audio DAISy 1 DAC sitting idly by on the sidelines. Using dual-mono ES9018 as well, it'd be the obvious in-house comparator.