Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
Financial interests: click here
Sources: Retina 5K 27" iMac (4GHz quad-core with Turbo boost, 32GB RAM, 3TB FusionDrive, OSX Yosemite. iTunes 12.2), PureMusic 3.02, Qobuz Hifi, Tidal Hifi, Fore Audio DAISy1, COS Engineering D1, Aqua Hifi La Scala MkII, Metrum Hex, AURALiC Vega,
Preamplifier: Nagra Jazz, Esoteric C-03, Vinnie Rossi LIO (AVC module)
Power & integrated amplifiers: Pass Labs XA30.8; FirstWatt SIT1, F5, F6, F7; S.A.Lab Blackbird SE; Crayon Audio CFA-1.2; Goldmund Job 225; Gato Audio DIA-250; Aura Note Premier; Wyred4Sound mINT; AURALiC Merak [on loan]
Loudspeakers: Albedo Audio Aptica; EnigmAcoustics Mythology 1; soundkaos Wave 40; Boenicke Audio W5se; Zu Audio Submission; German Physiks HRS-120; Eversound Essence
Cables: Complete loom of Zu Event; KingRex uArt, Zu and LightHarmonic LightSpeed double-header USB cables; Tombo Trøn S/PDIF; van den Hul AES/EBU; AudioQuest Diamond glass-fibre Toslink; Arkana Research XLR/RCA and speaker cables [on loan]; Sablon Audio Petit Corona power cords [on loan], Black Cat Cable Lupo
Power delivery: Vibex Granada/Alhambra on all components, 5m cords to amp/s + sub
Equipment rack: Artesania Audio Exoteryc double-wide 3-tier with optional glass shelves, Exoteryc Krion and glass amp stands [on loan]
Sundry accessories: Acoustic System resonators
Room: Irregularly shaped 9.5 x 10m open floor plan with additional 2nd-floor loft; wood-paneled sloping ceiling; parquet flooring; lots of non-parallel surfaces (pictorial tour here)
Review component retail in Europe: €299 for Clavis Room/Speaker, €849 for Crystal Clear Filter/Cable, €70 for upgrade card

Spatium violin tuner fixed to the shoulder rest.

Knock, knock. Anybody out there? "Dear Mr. Ebaen, as DHTRob mentioned last week, I'm interested in a review of our products. My business over the last four years has been as sound improver for violins, celli, pianos and vocals. I have customers with Guarneris and Stradivaris; plus top singers in the opera business. Now I transferred my technology based on customized chips to our Crystal Clear Filter, Clavis Speaker and Clavis Room. Each makes a huge improvement in sound quality but the combination of all three creates a leap never heard before. My hope is to have these three products tested together as a system where each part benefits the other." - Anton Mehl, Spatiumaudio, Darmstädter Straße, 90427 Nürnberg, Germany.


Musicians use their instruments just like recording engineers use their hardware tools: with clear intent and purpose, for a living and keenly attuned to the slightest variance in performance. Musicians labour hard to develop their own unique timbre and style. Tone begins with play-testing endless instruments, to pick 'the one'. It continues with customizations like specific strings, tunings, dampers, reeds, mouthpieces made of kautschuk, blackwood or crystal, special lacquers on brass etc. Finally one gets down to player techniques. If Anton Mehl counted professional musicians amongst his clients, I thought he had to have something real and efficacious. How would it translate to hifi? Before we go there, we must make a brief if bullish detour into holy relics, amulets and charms. Glue down your wigs. It will get gutsy... well, gusty!


Since the dawn of mankind, we've seen a pervasive belief. Objects can hold, even amplify memories. In modern lingo, we'd say programming. Coding. The simplest example are love letters. People treasure them for their potency. Decades and many loves later, they still hold a magnetic charge that touches us. Another example are places of worship and prayer like cathedrals, mosques and temples. Having been used for the same purpose over the centuries, those sensitive to their energy fields tune in and have their own prayers or worship amplified. To believers, burial places of saints exert a similar attraction. Physical remnants like bones, hairs or nail clippings are venerated as holy relics, believed to enable an uplink to the saint's presence to invoke his or her blessing power. Places like Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje are famous for their own healing fields. Quasi relics may include objects which saints or holy people owned or wore. Many psychics ask for a wearable like a ring, necklace or watch to tune into a person. So objects can hold memories, power or intent. Amulets and charms are more examples. Through rituals of focus, concentration and will, they are programmed with certain beneficial energies which they may hold indefinitely. Black magic exploits the same principle but programs objects with negativity to harm, hinder and make sick.

Our bodily cells hold memories and traumas to inflict psycho-physical programming, habits and addictions. Scientific studies show how water holds memories. And what are our bodies if not mostly water? Advanced research into semiconductors shows how transistors hold memories aka echo traces of prior voltages. Shamans throughout the ages have encoded and programmed crystals. New age practitioners still do. So-called tachyonic products—a friend of ours designs some which are then made in Germany—are irradiated with cosmic rays at very specific days and times whilst being placed in special ovens that function as lenses. After being 'cooked', the information encoded in those frequencies is permanently stored in the tachyonized products. Certain materials have been found to hold such programming better than others. Specific geometries or symbols seem to amplify them further. This opens up the entire realm of sacred geometry and its relationship to mathematics.


The spiritual practice of mantras—related perhaps to what modern man calls positive thinking—is likely an attempt to re-program the practitioner's body-mind. One hopes to delete old negative programming and/or overwrite it with new positive programming on the cellular and karmic level. All of it is based on the same core notion. Physical matter can be imprinted with different information. The Schumann resonator repurposed from medicine for hifi is but a transmitter of what is believed to be our planet's self resonance or core frequency. Programmed objects—be they stamped by scientific process, a wearer's presence or an emotional/mental discipline of prayer, meditation, intent or magic—set up an energy field or influence. This holds/transmits a certain frequency or message as our tachyonic friend Marco calls it. The sector of alternative healing is filled with teachings on colours and smells which correlate with specific vibratory messages of clear influence. Administered correctly, those hues and scents help amplify what the user needs. It's a form of positive feedback loop just like the one exploited by Nelson Pass in the FirstWatt F7 amplifier. Or perhaps it's closer to sympathetic resonance? Either way, now we're conceptually ready to make Anton's hifi connection.