Ahimsa. It's Sanskrit for non-violence, a central concern of India's Jains. No gun then. Like any other job of repetition, reviewers enjoy breaks from sameness. This means trysts beyond price-point familiars. Whilst spending more doesn't guarantee more, piling on enough typically does. Should a subsequent return to less become too much sobriety, reviewers now inebriated by the finer things trend upward. Eventually it can lose perspective, even turn ivory-tower syndrome. If enough time passes and the ascent progresses, one loses complete touch with what small money presently buys. The last time our reviewer played there was 30 years ago. He's not checked on progress since. If suddenly he came down now from his posh penthouse's fabulous views to a ground-floor flat with none at all, he'd be too alienated. He'd only hear what the small money can't do. He won't appreciate what it can; or take time to reset expectations then optimize the new normal.

My attempt to combat the worst such alienation are smaller less loaded systems. It's still relative though so no more than an honest attempt. After all, I don't live in an 80m² inner-city flat with a family of five. I'm a widower still in a 200m² house. Here then is what goes for my bonsai rig. It's anchored by South Korea's SuperMon Mini isobaric 1.5-way monitors from MonAcoustic. Those actively cross over and out to a 2×9½" sealed force-cancelling Dynaudio sub. Heading this signal path is Shanling's EM5 fitted with 1TB microSD local library. It outputs via coax to a LAIV 1st-gen Harmony DAC. Alternate source is a small smsl CD transport via I²S into the same DAC. Now the action skips to the lower shelf and its #1 Audalytic DR70 with remote volume and #2 LHY Audio 15VDC supply. That is followed by a #3 Lifesaver Audio Gradient Box II analog active crossover set to 120Hz/4th-order hi/lo-pass frequency division. The high-passed signal then jumps back top deck to feed #4+5 LAiV Chorus monos, the low-pass signal the sub. This system would work fine without the external DAC. The Shanling contains its own. I simply needn't need the Harmony elsewhere to here gild the lily. The incoming Aiyima would be very cultured and cancel components #1-5. Showing it beats just telling it. That doubles down on my earlier point. This adaptive functionality for a 2.1 system is simply superb¹. It even includes that 3rd set of speaker terminals I'd use if my sub were passive. The B07 Pro only lacks remote volume. Given my proximity, that's no loss. Was my ivory tower about to crumble, requiring hasty rebuild while nobody watched?
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¹ Slicing this pie different are Aiyima's tiny $170/ea. A20 monos with one TPA3255 chip. They include a selectable 80Hz high pass. If our sub is active as most are, we'd set its plate-amp's low pass to 80Hz. Et voilà, another very easy way to generate clean 2.1 integration without external crossover. Whiny why can't 'high-end' components give us such useful functionality?

Because the EM5's touchscreen mounts flat to its top, I use an angled desktop speaker stand to tilt it a bit and easier see the display. Its XLR4 headfi port in turbo mode has plenty of gain and muscle to drive HifiMan's Susvara Unveiled.

Reality check. My nearfield setup shrinks SPL so power draw. Its high-passed speakers further unburden their amp/s. Then my active sub's own 500W amp would bypass the B07 Pro's third channel. These were ideal conditions for a micro amp whose rated top power hides 10% THD. At my short speaker distance, I'd consume low 2-figure watts, not triple digits—ideal for a power supply underrated² for when its three channels redline. That's key for anything to follow. It's strategic shrinkage of demands which quickly excludes the spare potential of pricier gear as overkill; something that sits there fully paid but never tapped. Escalate demands to greater distances, cubic volumes, SPL. Do standard stereo with big floorstanders, large passive woofers, complex networks. Et presto, the extra potential of Dan, Nelson & Co. amps with their load-invariant power supplies steps into the breach. Here I'd drive unfiltered spiderless 4" Alpair widebanders kneecapped at 120Hz. It's all about the right tool for the job. Bonsai amp, bijou job. Potential for excellent work. End of small print. Sign here. We're agreed now that if relative to status quo my Aiyima findings carried genuine enthusiasm over price/performance returns—I wrote this before the amp dropped—common sense must temper it in accordance with the actual application. I wasn't driving full-range passive 4-ways to high SPL in a large room. Common sense. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense. And, whilst this type of hi/lo-passed 2.1 system is far from common, it too makes a whole heap o' sense. It's why I'm doing it in three of my rooms. With my Aiyima order placed on a Sunday, I had a tracking # with Yun Express and last-mile dispatch with our Irish post by Monday. Better-than-German efficiency. No wonder Europe can't keep up with China!
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² For example, the pending GaNFet mono from Ixycore rates 200/400W into 8/4Ω on a 1'300W GaN power supply. Each LAiV 120W/4Ω mono runs off its own 160W supply. Aiyima's stock supply is 240W. Even at 90% efficiency it doesn't tally with their power figures. So they mildly condition them with "max 280Wx3 power is measured at 4Ω peak load. Actual output depends on power supply and speaker impedance." AI gets more specific. "Because peak power limits to the physical constraints of an amplifier's power supply rails and instantaneous thermal thresholds, it cannot sustain. Depending on how a spec was written and tested, the implied timeline generally falls into three classes. 1/ instantaneous peak over micro to milliseconds refers to the absolute peak of an audio waveform's voltage. It represents the maximum power delivered for a fraction of a millisecond before the signal clips. 2/ burst testing of dynamic headroom across 10-50 millisecondshits an amplifier with a transient burst like a 1kHz sinewave to mimic a sudden musical transient like a heavy snare or kick drum hit. The amplifier can only output this maximum rated wattage for a few milliseconds before it drops back down to protect itself. 3/ power supply limits over a few seconds might explicitly tie to a power supply's capacity to handle heavy-duty cycles in rare industrial or high-end PA equipment like a 5-second maximum pulse duration before dropping down to the continuous average power." In short, even mentioning 280Wx3 is equivalent to rating a car's top speed when the small print specifies an extreme downhill gradient of 15°.

… to be continued…