The land of clickbait. "Best headamp for under €1K." In just a few minutes we could come up with all manner of doozies to trick bored web surfers into sitting through 40min. vlogs. Like everyone's favourite 'f' word, 'best' is a dirty 4-letter word. The reasons are too obvious to explain. But if we're in a mood to populate a blank sheet with potential candidates for such a thumbnail claim even as a question, Evo unquestionably belongs. Best headamp for under €1K? If personal tastes didn't matter, quite possibly. If we narrow our net to accept only class A headamps for under €1K, our list shortens automatically. Neither my radically costlier class AB Cen.Grand Silver Fox nor Enleum AMP-23R would make it. Evo's tuning has more in common with the Cen.Grand than Enleum. On subjective resolution expressed in degrees of separation, the Enleum in particular lives in a higher league. But if we reshuffle our hierarchy of performance values, the aune could well come out on top. Even looking well beyond its sticker is no guarantee to outfox it. That's particularly true if we start with hi-def loads like Susvara where more body can be so desirable; and apply piggish loads in the first place. Just because an amp can play those loud enough doesn't equate to driving them as well as Evo. What happens if we do a 180° and reach for a rather efficient can like Meze's 109Pro? Will Susvara power mean noise, brutish coarseness, little useful range on the attenuator or some other snag? None of it. In low gain I again rode ±35. aune's volume taper proved nicely gradual to not come on too fast. I had zero noise, no grotesque muscle-bound sightings. Just so, applying this muscle amp to a wallflower load easily bench-pressed by a budget DAP worked like inflating a balloon to full girth. Everything gets bigger, more pressurized and robust. With an amp of Evo's calibre in fact, one needn't overspend on headphones to make very materialized advanced sound. In that sense this aune acts like a headphone maximizer.

COS D1 DAC at right direct-drives a Gradient Box II active crossover on the top right front shelf which then drives the Kinki Studio EX-M7 stereo amp on the bottom left shelf whilst the low pass drives the 2×9½" force-cancelling Dynaudio sub in the left foreground.

How about the other half of its equation, preamplitude? To preface it, all my systems are deliberately curated to be amp-direct. Be it the true flexi gain of variable reference voltage on its R2R ladders having a Sonnet Pasithea DAC direct-drive an active crossover; be it the analog volume control of a COS D1 DAC doing the same upstairs; be it Enleum's true variable gain set by resistor ladder embedded in the output of its discrete current-mode gain stage – none of my systems need or want an active preamp. Enroute to this conclusion I had dalliances with E.J. Sarmento's Wyred4Sound actively-buffered passive; Bent Audio's autoformer Tap-X; and various AVC from Lifesaver Audio's icOn range. This preference goes back to prioritizing denuded immediacy. It also reflects my love of widebanders, be it Lindemann's Move Mini, MonAcoustics' SuperMon Mini, Zu's Soul VI, Cube's Nenuphar v2, sound|kaos' Vox 3a or Qualio's IQ in the main system. Neither on functionality nor sonic injections do I have any need of a preamp, anywhere. Having reviewed them, I certainly know what they can bring to the table if one hasn't handled those aspects elsewhere. Given that, Evo the active pre certainly had its work cut out. But at €799 and acing HeadFi to such a high level already, just how much did it have to do as a preamp to impress? To find out, it hopped atop the above COS D1 to drive a 6m XLR whilst the DAC's own attenuator bypassed. Easy cable swaps covered the comparisons.

Laying it on thick? If Evo now did anything but nada, that indeed would be my reaction. After all, I'm autoformer passive preamp man. What's more, I chucked even that when I don't need to switch sources. Most punters of course get terribly upset if their newest toy does no more than turn on and pass signal. That majority will be pleased that Evo as pre—call me Prevo—did more. Tone got thicker, the overall vibe more laid back and rich. Prevo also upped my relative bass balance. If that stayed on, I'd readjust my sub's volume, possibly even the hi/lo-pass filter hinge. All in, Prevo made planet Srajan's gravitational pull stronger. With compliments to the Barsoom novellas of Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars was back on Earth. That I prefer otherwise was entirely moot. The right shoppers will want that exact "balloon-expanding" action and heavier gravity and unlike me happily pay for it with some caffeine and living-edge currency. Though it's nearly gauche to say so, quintessential squeaky-clean but stark class D sound would be a very happy marriage like an industrious punctual German dating a la-dolce-vita Italian. Even my ears didn't think that Prevo overdid its thing aside from necessitating a bass adjustment. I simply assign a different value to even small doses of its effect than the target punter will. Once price reappears to suggest matching amps and small speakers that err on the side of crispy leanness, Prevo really makes its point. Tube-reminiscent sound just as aune promised? Kinda but my pure transistor Pass Labs XA-30.8 class A amp does this as well without adding any tubular power, bandwidth, noise or maintenance concerns. The more correct enabler is probably class A bias. When prospective buyers may have no actual reference for that to be useful, substituting 'tube reminiscent' might just be correct expectation management? Given the very generalized tenor and intent, I would actually sign on that dotted line. And variable bias? Did it matter more now? Not really though observing the subtly keener depth layering in high bias was easier over speakers because they stage so much grander to begin with. Hi/lo gain also translates to preamp mode by the way. That could be the far more useful adjustment.

Bait 'n' switch? From Wikipedia: "It's a form of retail fraud where a merchant advertises a product at a low price to bait customers who then discover that this product isn't available. Now they're pressured to purchase a similar more expensive product for a bigger profit to the merchant." By this definition, Evo is a double switch. We expect less but get more; or get more but are charged less. Either way it's the beautiful benign boffo version of a retail tactic which often explains why an awesome deal is suddenly gone with "sold out" or "back-ordered". Once word spreads on today's curvy box, dealers could indeed be out of stock, the factory back-ordered. What could they now switch us to at a still reasonable distance? After all, doubling or tripling cost wouldn't work. One doesn't walk into a Fiat dealership to drive off in a new Lexus. That I can't name a reasonable switch underscores what I think of Evo. Go ahead, suggest more clickbait. Before we wrap, let's shine up this discovery with more HeadFi notes for which I'm decidedly the right guy. For in-depth active preamplitude, my headspace and setups are just a big bit off. And since today's review is aune's, let's leash up their open-backed over-ear €329 AR5000 next, then report on what a €6'250 Enleum AMP-23R gets us extra; or not.