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Prearranged marriage. To liberals, the concept is archaic. To hifi finders not seekers, it can mean true bliss. It's about concrete results, not lofty notions. For a Diablo 120/Mojo S buyer, that goes well beyond proper power/gain matching, linear frequency response and taut timing. All of that really ought to recede from consideration. All of it must submit to the service of emotional persuasiveness. Otherwise our system would merely conform to technical ideals which can only mean happiness to laboratory test gear. What exactly renders a hifi emotionally persuasive? Good timing is certainly a prerequisite to draw believably steep transients which our nervous system reacts to as though real. But so is audible materialism. That must combat hifi's illusory weakness of convincing our ear/brain that musicians are in our living room when not just our eyes know they're not. It's really a conjuring trick out of thin air. Ideally then, the air should be so thick that we could almost cut it. And it's precisely this proverbial thickness of the air—tone density, aural substance—which the Danish combo has mastered. Reader Patrick had chased the warm and expressive. I'm convinced that those words of his aimed at the very same effect I've called thick air.


The result is a suspension of disbelief on the emotional level. Though each time our eyes open, there's still empty space between the speakers, there's no conflict. Our audible materialism has enough raw substance to bridge the gap. The black values of the colour palette are very inky. This enhances saturation. After their initial leading edge, sounds bloom properly. If our air were a canvas, it would actually be slightly wet to fully absorb the colours on the brush. And finally, rather than redline where everything is equally loud like swamped-out conditions, the Gryphon sound is dynamically expressive. It's transmissive to the small flickers of emphasis, be those caused by the variable air speed or pressure of a singer or the modulated lip, finger or bow pressure of a player. The image density creates the sonic substance, the high dynamic contrast imbues said substance with movement. Without that movement, density becomes static: robust but stony. Movement without substance gets nervy and jittery. But balance these two values as well as this system does and each informs the other.


Now the music becomes emotionally accessible and invested. The rest of it—the usual talk of frequency response, tonal balance, soundstaging etc—is just small print.


Auditioning the Diablo 120 also on the Audio Physic Codex and with different sources demonstrated even higher resolution in general and superior pitch definition in the bass in particular. By contrast, the Mojo S and 120 DAC played it slightly forgiving and holistic. But that's a natural side effect of highly materialized tone body. It always comes at the cost of ultimate separation which routinely lacks emotional conviction. Extreme separation becomes all about the leaves and their veins to miss the forest. And once the forest has vanished, it's very hard to get it back. Many audiophiles had it way back when their gear was basic. Once audiophilia set in, the hunt came on for ever greater detail resolution and transparency to hear everything. In trade, something simple but essential was lost. For many, music has never regained its true calorific nourishment.

That's where Gryphon's smallest system performs an expert course correction. Or call it an automatic reset of the factory defaults. And what are the defaults of good sound if not rich tone, easy timing and lively dynamics? It's the appeal and promise of built-in optimization from integration that gives a Gryphon shopper the confidence to pursue modern hifi with its sleek shiny looks and hi-tech parts without falling prey to modern sound's penchant for substance dilution. Okay, if you haven't outlived the allure of mix'n'match, you may not be ready to simplify accordingly. But if you've had enough short-lived hifi marriages, perhaps it's time to give a properly prearranged one a try. If the thought of a Devialet all-in-one with WiFi goes too far for you—it would for our Wifi-allergic household—Gryphon's Diablo 120 with DAC module (or phono) banishes the nasty microwaves.


Then it's about reconnecting with what's musically important whilst doing so with class and in style. We've heard it all before but it's good to be reminded that small—well, compact—really is beautiful. If you had overlooked the Gryphon brand assuming it was all about very big very heavy stuff (much of it is), you might want to look again at today's 3-piece system of super integrated and über monitors. It's Gryphon lite only visually. As our narrative made clear, sonically it's very much a heavy. And for hifi, that's a brilliant thing indeed...


* Gryphon's new €5'990 Sonett phono stage is of special interest to owners of a Diablo 300 or 120 when those have been optioned out with the DAC module. The Sonett moves the Diablo phono module offboard into its own enclosure with dedicated dual-mono power supplies. It's the perfect companion solution to accommodate digital and analogue within a Diablo context.

Gryphon website