Country of Origin
This review published in October 2025 on HifiKnights.com. By request of the manufacturer and permission of the author, it is hereby syndicated to reach a broader audience. – Ed.
Reviewer: Marek Dyba
Digital transport: custom passive Win10 server with Roon, Fidelizer Pro 7.10, JCAT NET XE and USB XE cards, ferrum Hypsos Signature PSU, Keces 8 mono supply for server, JCAT USB Isolator, Innuos Statement, fidata HFAS1-S10U
DAC: LampizatOr Poseidon with Ideon Audio 3R Master Time USB regenerator
Network: Silent Angel Bonn N8 + Silent Angel Forester F1 + optical LAN isolator
Vinyl: J.Sikora Standard Max turntable, J.Sikora KV12 & KV12 Max tonearms; AirTight PC-3, Audio Technica PTG33 Prestige & Le Son LS10 MKII cartridges; Grandinote Celio MkIV & ESE Lab Nibiru V 5 phono stages
Preamplifier: Circle Labs P300
Amplifier: GrandiNote Shinai, Circle Labs M200, Art Audio Symphony II (modified)
Speakers: GrandiNote Mach4, Ubiq Audio Model ONE Duelund Edition
Interconnects:Bastanis Imperial x2, Soyaton Benchmark, Hijiri Million Kiwami, Hijiri HCI-20, TelluriumQ Ultra Black, KBL Sound Himalaya 2 XLR, David Laboga Expression Emerald USB, David Laboga Digital Sound Wave Sapphire Ethernet
Speaker cables: Soyaton Benchmark Mk2, WK Audio The RAY Exclusive
Power cords: L Custom Audio 3D-S-AC Connect, LessLoss DFPC Signature, Gigawatt LC-3
Speaker signal conditioning: LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers, Boenicke ComDev
Anti-vibration conditioning: 12x Carbide Audio Carbide Base under DAC, preamp and speakers
Power delivery: Gigawatt PF-2 Mk2 and PC-3 SE Evo+; custom power line with Gigawatt LC-Y in-wall cable; Gigawatt G-044 Schuko and Furutech FT-SWS-D (R)
Equipment rack: Base VI, Rogoz Audio 3RP3/BBS
Resonance control: Rogoz MO40 and CPPB16 platforms with BW40MkII feet, OMEX Symphony 3S, Franc Accessories Ceramic Disc Slim Feet and Wood Block Platform, Graphite Audio CIS-35 and IC-35 Premium
Review component retail: €60'000
When you celebrate your 30th business anniversary, do it with a bang. That's the thought which drove Mr. Jaromir Waszczyszyn to launch a few special products. One of them is a new version of his legendary 300B monos. To begin with, I am no expert on the Ancient Audio portfolio. I've known Mr. Waszczyszyn for many years and listened to his amplifiers, speakers, CD players and digital speaker processors numerous times at the Warsaw Audio Video Show. Never before though have I had a chance to assess his components in my own room. Why? His is a micro boutique which manufactures everything to order, by the designer's very own hands. There's no stock so review samples require unique opportunities. Lucky for me, one such recently manifested. Having ordered a pair of new Silver Grand Mono II, when ready to dispatch the customer postponed delivery which created a small time window in which Mr. Waszczyszyn contacted me with a proposal. After hastily freeing up my schedule, I happily jumped at opportunity. Here is what Jarek in his famous hat had to say about this model.
“Every self-respecting audiophile has heard of Hiroyasu Kondo, the legendary designer who elevated tube amps to the pinnacle of perfection. His credo were silver transformers, silver wiring, direct-heated triodes and tube rectifiers. That was his indisputable recipe for sonic beauty like Beethoven's Fifth. No wonder that my first serious tube amplifier, the Silver 300, was designed according to his principles. And it did sound very good – especially the pair for a US customer which, unlike all the pairs I'd built before, used 115V power transformers. At that time I assembled two more pairs from the exact same batch of materials but for European 230V voltage. When comparing them directly, there was no way to achieve with the latter two the space, dynamics and amazingly natural performance which the 'American' pair offered. I analyzed everything including the time of the day when I soldered individual components, the colour of my socks and my solid and liquid diet at the time. Still, I couldn't isolate the cause of difference. Obviously there was a difference in terms of power transformer but both versions featured identical secondaries. That's where first doubts in Kondo's credo crept in. From an engineering point of view, everything made sense except for his tube rectifier.
“Each amplifier, especially a tubed one, should be powered by a constant voltage source of minimal impedance. Meanwhile the tube rectifier was an anachronism from the 1920s with terrible parameters. On the one hand I am an artist who creates sound and forms sensitive to the emotions of music. On the other hand I am an engineer who needs solid explanations for everything. I love Jimi Hendrix's guitar voodoo but the captivating descriptions of certain solutions based on black magic irritate me. I can't use them or design that way. The worst thing is, at times they actually do work. For me the obvious solution was to use a power supply built with modern semiconductors, stable voltage, low ripple and high current. I developed and built such power supplies and everything worked; except for the sound quality. Now it was worse than what I'd achieved with a classic tube rectifier. After two years of experiments, the sound still lacked energy and power. Desperate, I ran 260V instead of 220V to the power supplies. I and Janusz, an invaluable golden ear during R&D, put on protective glasses and expecting the worst just as every bomb disposal expert getting to work, cued up the first disc in the CD player. That was it! As blissful as Winnie the Pooh with honey, we savoured all the flavours familiar albums revealed.
“The energy and power of the new power supply were not easy to control. It took quite some time before the semiconductor-based PSU was ready for production. However, I finally got there and the sonic results surpassed the Japanese legend which we had opportunity to hear for ourselves. Needless to say, the atmosphere during these auditions was as tense as a Politburo meeting at Stalin's time. To cut a long story short, it didn't come to a fist fight but harsh words exchanged as if I had spat phlegm in church. It was then that I understood how emotional high-end audio is, how thin the line between experience and religion. In many aspects such as attack, directness and instrumental tangibility, my amplifier bettered the illusion of a live performance over Kondo's design. This is how the Silver Grand Mono, a revolutionary tube amplifier, came to be. Many audiophiles and journalists called it the best-sounding such design ever created.
"But time did not stand still and with a thorough understanding of the impact of the power supply on SETs, I evaluated new parts in small fine-tuning steps. The sum of these resulted in further significant progress. When after 20 years my signature granite housings finally gave way to aluminium, it was time to sum up all the improvements in a second edition of the amplifier. I have talked a lot about power supplies but must also mention my output transformers. This is the second key element of my design and very expensive. I no longer question why the price of one Ongaku transformer was, if I remember correctly, £20'000 30 years ago and then considered a bargain.
"For my output transformers I use silver wire custom-made by a friendly lab. They made beautiful silver wire but it still had to be insulated by hand then wound. It took me two years of messing around with wire, varnish, 'squirrel tail' brushes etc. to gain the necessary experience to do it properly. Currently it takes me two months to make one set of transformers. That is half the time it takes to produce an amplifier. Of course this also required the right cores. They are made by a company with 50 years of experience; another one-off very critical manual job. What's more, each amplifier requires about one kilogram of purest silver and the amount of accurate work at each stage is enormous. All these elements are a significant part of the cost of manufacturing and reflect in the final price."
