Dan S.

Dan has 30+ years under his audiophile black belt. I  first met him in Cyprus to experience his custom 5-way ALE horn system with dual 15m-long straight bass horns and bespoke valve gear, then again in Switzerland. Over the course of his long very active audiophile 'career', Dan has amassed an enviable treasure trove of exotic equipment, particularly valve-based electronics. Because of his curiosity, he has routinely commissioned one-up projects from the likes of David Berning, Josh Stippitch, Sasa Cokic and Thomas Mayer to explore specific rare vacuum tubes. Today his system revolves around widebanders from Cube Audio and Voxativ, 20'000+ vinyl records, 9'000+ CD, streaming and curated SD-card play lists which are played back in a dedicated listening room with solar power and acoustic treatments. For some background on Dan's favorite hardware, refer to his first article on the Vinnie Rossi L2.

As a chemist by training who spent many long years in the solitary confinement of pharmaceutical laboratories pursuing cancer cures, Dan's approach to hifi explorations is well aware of how subjectivity  and expectation bias can influence outcome. Meanwhile his massive audio expenditures over the years—he once assessed those casually as a few million—have rendered him immune to believe that extreme expense automatically equals extreme performance. "It's more fun and meaningful to discover something that gets to within 95% of the possible at just 10% the cost." Of course to know that doesn't need cynicism. It needs deep familiarity with what is possible when cost isn't an issue. Here Dan's experience is unusually broad. I've benefited from it many times already and it is hoped that his future contributions will do the same for others.