From frust to lust. Starting with said amp—Rezonator on/off etc.—I couldn't tell niente. I soldiered on through sundry tracks. Still nada. Of course the Bakoon was a most compact unusually rigid affair excavated from solid stock. Two heat-exchange columns hang off its belly like ripe fruit to double as resonance attenuators. The li'l thing proved impervious. Before frust reached terminal limbo central for the wrong kind of TLC, I made the SD card transport beneath it my new object of affection. Nada grew to double nada. Our hearing is naturally keen with voices since we hear the spoken kind already in the womb. Below is the track I used for male vocals. It's uncomplicated and well recorded. It let's me hone in on the voice like a pinned butterfly. I can inspect it from all angles to see whether even a tiny aspect changed. If nothing did, any track will wear out its welcome, eventually. Before this one did, I switched to equivalent female vocals compliments of Eda Karaytug. Still nothing.
I had two more component chassis to go. As it turned out, three strikes and I was 'in'. Hello Denafrips Terminator. Unexpectedly, here the swapperoo was rather easy to hear. The chassis is bigger so the lid covers a greater expanse. No matter the rezon, what I heard was an immediate decongestion of the soundstage around/behind the voice. If before the instruments and vocals stuck together a bit as though by very long velcro tendrils, with the T2 Rezonator atop the DAC there was more air and space between them. There was absolutely nothing congested about any of it before. The titanium rod simply made it even less so. This was so demonstrable that I could cut a melodic line in half with the 'pause' command, put the Rezonator on, hit 'play' again and hear that effect immediately in the second half of the melody. I had finally hit pay dirt even if only on the small patch of one of three components. I proceeded to the "acoustically optimized coating of zirconium, tungsten and aluminum-titanium nitride" which hardens the raw titanium's surface. That too proved readily demonstrable as a clear increase of upper harmonics atop the standard Rezonator. It gave the sound more freshness and brilliance.
Now that I knew what to listen for, I returned to the prior components. Again no dice. Once more I was deaf. My kit was selective about being ridden by Vikings. Only the DAC responded nicely. To reiterate, the floating Ansuz rod affected the subjective density of the soundstage. T2 injected extra separation which declumped things enough to notice. T2s then added more brilliance and sparkle quite like switching on an extra light. I had one more component to go. Could my 1-in-3 rate improve to 50:50? Or would it worsen to 1:4? The latter. Even though the autoformer preamp's chassis is a lighter build than the Denafrips, I couldn't hear the Rezonator addition. This circuit didn't react to the extra mass or resonance drain on its enclosure. The only component which reacted in ways I could hear was the DAC. And for a change, that was perfectly obvious. Unlike Morten's Ansuz power box which has sufficient deck space to park a Rezonator, our Furutech GTO 2D NCF does not. So I couldn't try the component type which in his system was the most responsive. Time to move the show downstairs.
Starting with a Denafrips Terminator Plus, I heard the same improvements just to a lesser degree. This bigger room/system has more scale but less intimacy. Moving to the preceding Gaia—a DDC reclocker-isolator for the iMac additionally clock-slaved to the DAC's master clocks—netted even less of the same but still enough to hear. The Vinnie Rossi preamp with it big top-cover cutout for ventilation meanwhile stayed mum¹ and the Vibex DC/AC filter in its black Krion enclosure of synthetic stone again had insufficient parking space. With my hardware on hand, the Ansuz Rezonator thus honed in on kit which contained either pure digital or mixed circuitry.
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¹ Two days after this published, reader Paul Wozniak asked a keen question. "You wrote that your tube preamp didn't respond at all. Given that this device did something you could hear on your three converters, that surprised me. I would have expected microphonic tubes in such a circuit to really enlarge any attempts at reducing physical resonances. Didn't it seem odd to you that solid-state digital would respond but, of all things, not direct-heated triodes? I would appreciate your thoughts on this." I wrote back "ah, a thinking reader. Keen observation indeed. My dirty little secret here is… bypassed tubes. Into these particular 2.5MHz direct-coupled amps, I have some tube-related 'intermodulation' noise that sits inside the sound so doesn't register as any ordinary hum or hiss at the speakers. That disappears the moment I bypass the tubes. Now the Vinnie Rossie works as a solid-state actively buffered circuit with zero voltage gain so like a passive, not a noise-critical direct-coupled DHT circuit."
To wrap up whilst touching upon dicey dineros, this Ansuz accessory strikes me as being for the affluent hifi wo/man who already has everything (else). Except for the affluent bit, coming last is true for all accessories. They enter as optional fun once all primary stuff is sorted. Whilst the Ansuz Rezonator's sonic efficacy was for me a thing of hit or miss, when it hit my ears liked it. Particularly in our upstairs system which is a bit warmer/earthier than downstairs, the extra energy and illumination of the T2s will be missed especially. At €4'600, I'd certainly first look at there still adding a second €1'390 Dynaudio S18 subwoofer. After that I'd think our smaller system perfected given our ambitions and budget. That's when I'd view a Rezonator as an 'easy' add-on to shave off an extra percentage point or two in this endless climb up Mount No Compromise. It's a scenario of let them have cake. Once we have cake, the whipped cream and cherry become the end game. Until then it's bread, butter and, if we can afford it, cheese. Eliminating any cost consideration, I'll add personal surprise that this device worked as it did because I don't quite comprehend how. It's fitting then that it falls into the firm's Darkz category. If you're curious about the sonic action, borrow one or two from a dealer. Should your experience mirror mine, some of your components will react more than others; and some may not at all. Best to be sure before one commits. But being small, it's something that will painlessly ship back and forth should you work with a dealership too far to visit.
If you're prepared to have your mind twisted a bit, book a date. It might just rezonate enough to stick. Or not. As always, nothing ventured, nothing gained!
