With clear protective tube chimneys around its Russian glass, top-mounted 'bunched pencils' heatsinks and a super-useful volume zoom, the Venetian cut quite the figure on the top shelf of our Hifistay rack. "Of the two heatsinks, one is hot, one cold. That's normal. The cold one only becomes hot if the preamp goes into protection. The middle tube is a 6H30Pi known also as 6Π30Π where Π is the Greek pi from the Cyrillic alphabet. Its small brother the 6H6P/6N6Π can also be used. With it the sound usually becomes a bit sweeter. This shunt regulator for the anode voltage is one of my design's fixed bricks which forces the anode power supply to its maximum in a well-defined quiescent current.

"Moreover this isn't in series with the signal which is always beneficial since anything in series leaves a finger print. Because the power supply works at a fixed quiescent point, I can optimize all values for the best sonic compromise since 'best' doesn't exist but is always a function of budget. With a bit of poetic license, we might say that this is the same philosophy as a class A amp which at any time works at a fixed bias. Engineers must forgive this connection which is close to blasphemy but from a philosophical perspective it's the same concept. The two voltage-gain triodes are OTK 6N23P-EB mil-spec NOS so ECC88 equivalents working in parallel with a Jfet from Linear Technology's LSK170 family."

With a classy Pass Labs XP-22 two-box preamp on parallel assignment, I also had the right stuff to judge the stature of the Ultra Plus' preamplitude. Would it still benefit from an external admittedly very ambitious preamp or prefer amp direct? Having sworn off tubes on speakers years ago due to curtailed bandwidth, higher noise and THD plus insufficient woofer control, I'd now only accept tubes in line-level circuits. Here an extra appeal of the Plus Ultra is not flaunting costly direct-heated power triodes which can go for €1'500/pr or more. Its three small bottles smoke rather less cashish. Not being tasked with driving reactive loads of low and constantly varying impedance further means that line-level tubes work smarter not harder. All in that strikes me as an ideal place to harness the vaunted linearity of glowing glass.

In a recent review on a €3K costlier DAC, I wrote that if allowed just six words starting with my initial 's' to paraphrase its sound, I'd use serene, settled, smooth, soft, stately and substantial. I could have added sedate. For the CanEver I'd rewind from 's' to 'p' for peppery, popping, powerful, present, propulsive, projectile and punchy. Very different. All this was true for the amp-direct connection. Any ministrations of the XP-22 were categorically unnecessary and flatly counterproductive. The Ultra Plus is a preamp, period. You should not—even want to—put two preamps in series. End of. Now we can start at the beginning. My usual DAC here is an R2R Sonnet Pasithea. Its extreme measurements visualize a stunningly low noise floor. Its split processing of the least significant bits creates amazingly linear resolution. It's also a lightweight half-size affair whose FPGA-controlled resistor ladders draw deliberately low power to make an ultra-compact power supply sufficient. It's far easier to make a small PSU quiet than a big one. Despite its seriously bigger—and far heavier!—power supply, the CanEver was every bit as resolved and lucid. Then it bolted on what in the evolving XP-22 review I call a signal-conditioning intensifier action. I hear it as a combination of greater dynamic swing and more deeply saturated tone. In the below system, the Ultra Plus felt like an Olympian fencer halfway through a training session, all reflexes keen, movements blinding, respiration up, skin color ruddy, veins enlarged, attack mode primed. This virtual Pasithea / XP-22 hybrid made music listening extremely active. Rather than sit composed and docile at a distance, the tunes burst with energy, momentum and come-hither vitality. They were off the leash, revved up, excited to roam.

Perhaps in CH Precision land all that's expected and, yawn, normal. Lucky 1-percenters. Where I play representing less aspirated wallets, this was a next-level revelation. It was impossible to tell which device, tube or transistor, contributed what. My tunes simply felt incredibly charged up like a trashing electric eel. Rhythmic tension was youthfully vigorous not sedate, transients blitzed and peppered yet for all that obvious speed and explosiveness, there was full colour intensity and amazing follow-thru physicality. So out came the Pass which just sat there taking up space to lend its intensifier action where really needed. A CanEver acolyte buys a premium DAC and €10K preamp rolled into one. Its DC-coupled concept really does manifest the desired 'no detours' directness to which the minimalist no-feedback signal path adds dynamic liveliness and saturated colourization from disparate unusually summed gain devices. And before that show goes on the road, there's a sophisticated self-diagnostic boot-up routine whereby the display shows what circuit segment is being checked before it goes live. This includes USB battery mode. Inside the setup menu I selected 'off' for the orange power LED and 'on' for display sleep mode. Whenever I trimmed volume or the sample rate changed from one track to the next, the display lit up with those numbers in big, then showed the usual 4 lines before gently dimming to off. All of it spoke to comprehensive engineering chops. I felt in very experienced safe hands. Unlike some I love the included small Apple remote and much prefer it to those lethal weapon bricks others call high end.