Topping the desk. Here the Burson saw an HP Win10/64 workstation with Audirvana Origin, iFi Mercury USB 3.0 cable, iPurifier, Singxer SU-2 USB bridge and iFi iDSD Pro Signature DAC. Set to fixed, the latter's XLR dispatch such high voltage that the Soloist's medium gain gave my Final D8000 all the SPL I wanted at 1! Switching to low gain had me reach 25 for normal control. We live radically rural so ambient noise is very low. I could readily hear the fancy fan from my seat. Once I wore aural ear muffs, they blocked it. Playing music obviously obliterated it. Just so, my idea of whisper levels diverges from Burson's. If your environment is silent, their fan is readily audible. I wish I could say otherwise. But on the desktop, sheer proximity killed it for me. If I want a fan, I turn on a proper one like my Acoolir Dyson clone. It makes real wind yet only charges a fraction. I thus had to relocate the otherwise very sleek/slick visitor to my main rig. There a 3m headphone leash would hopefully put me out of its noise range, reset grump to grin and all gain to zero pain?

Use mouse-over to engage loupe function.

Not quite. Recognizing its whirring pitch, I still made out the fan from my rocker at the end of that 3m leash. But it certainly wasn't as loud as Perreaux's buzzing transformer had been on their 350wpc integrated just weeks earlier. Allowing myself a final beauty-over-brains gripe—just make this chassis full size and lose the bloody fan—I'd write it off as devotees of zero-feedback SET do for power-supply surf through speaker cones. They call it part of the charm. Oh-kay. Become a fan of the fan. So there; my peace with this piece. Treaty. Signed. Time for actual music signal.

In the menu, I used the perfectly intuitive big rotate/push controller to explore lo/med/hi crossfeed. As tends to be the case, whilst I noted its effect, I much preferred bypass. I heard the xFed payment as a blur of phase in the stage's outer quadrants. Granted, I've got zero issue with headfi's imaging. I don't want it to be more similar to speakers. Hence electronic trickery isn't for me. But it's there should your perception disagree. We're all different. Thoughtful design accounts for it. That's key so the Soloist has it in three doses. On sheer hi-gain grunt, my HifiMan Susvara sat at 35-50 of 99 max. On 4Vrms DAC outputs, I had go juice to burn. No banger should run out of gas and eject prematurely. With that settled beyond doubt, I was in the A/B biz against Cen.Grand's 9i-906. With Enleum's AMP-23R in Seoul for an upgrade, the big Chinese with the Silver Fox nick was my fiercest competitor. As the photo shows, its designer opted for a full-size case to can a fan and run proper quiet whilst staying cooler than the hand-warm Aussie. But he did elect against remote control where team Burson retaliate. Likewise for line-level outputs and preamplitude where the Soloist does more. With its display brightness maxed, I easily saw its numerical volume readout from the seat during a bright day. Functionally its preamp ambition was sound. Once angled appropriately, so was infrared responsiveness.

In high gain with Singxer SU-6, Sonnet Pasithea & HifiMan Susvara, then Cen.Grand Silver Fox for comparison.

As noted already on my desktop then versus the iFi iDSD Pro Signature, Silver Fox bass again slammed more massively. Splitting a clue from Harry the potter and the whomping willow of Hogwarts, the Soloist's controlled elasticity was more willowy, the Cen.Grand whompier. The latter conformed to what I expect from an overkill linear power supply and class A bias. The Burson fell more in line with prior AGD visitors—Alberto Guerra Designs not Audio Group Denmark so GaNFet class D with switch-mode power—which had been tuned for maximal quickness and damping. I obviously knew how the Soloist runs off switching power. Cue self-fulfilling prophecy. Still, it behaved accordingly. Relying on questionable long-term memory, Burson's house sound of yore had been warmer and bloomier if less precise and resolute. In the present juxtaposition, the extra weight/impact of the Silver Fox with its warmer associations also distributed more laterally. This felt wider hence bigger. The Soloist's density focused more central. Whilst nowhere near as deep into AGD or Bakoon/Enleum territory with its top-down illumination, speed and teased-out detailing, the Soloist roughly split their distance to the Silver Fox. Against that it was cooler and lighter. Ambient, electronica, drum 'n' bass & Co favored the Cen.Grand's sheer grunt in the bassment. That was despite headroom as indicated by the amps' respective volume settings vs max. Though the Cen.Grand sounded more powerful, the Burson held more untapped reserves. Once playback shifted to classical like Sharon Kan's read of Karol Kurpinski's 'forgotten' Clarinet Concerto in B-flat, Burson's more middle-of-the-road tuning felt even truer so less enhanced or bottom(s) up.

Since I referenced AGD's sound, it's important to stress that the Soloist's extra speed over the Silver Fox stopped well short of the 800kHz GaNFets' brilliant treble energy. Their sound I call lit up all over. It's meant to stress a not tipped-up tuning that goes treble first but a tuning which distributes that quality of a ribbon or AMT tweeter equally across the bandwidth. Now it's evenly balanced so uniformly quick. In terms of direct/reflected sound it's extremely direct. That means heavy on unbridled attacks and dynamics. As seating positions move us more into the mid then far field, reflections quickly begin to dominate. They lengthen the overlap zone of decays intermingling with thus softening transients. That creates tonal enrichment from acoustic reverb. It simply comes at the expense of separation and crispness. On this energetic score separate from nearer/farther soundstage placement, the Soloist, relatively speaking, was more direct, dry and damped, the Silver Fox more bloomy, billowy and wet. There's simply room left to press still deeper into intense directness. It's why in terms of body posture, it's AGD which would lean most attentively forward, Cen.Grand relax back whilst Burson sat upright. Because that's between the others, I called it middle of the road. For more I now moved the show upstairs to play against a COS Engineering H1. That deck from Taiwan prices like the Soloist then swaps preamp for DAC functions.