"Electrocompaniet will send you one unit. After all, it is designed to also be used in this fashion. No point annoying the neighbors or deafening our reviewing talent. But seriously, your point was well taken and appreciated." My lower back saluted this decision. When it turned out that forwarding the UK importer's demo pair from Norway via split shipment was a customs nightmare—one unit to Ireland in the EU, the other to the UK now Brexited—it was decided to ship both units to Elite Audio in Scotland. They'd then forward my loaner. With that came an offer to break it in on their end. I most gladly accepted. A month later, my loaner was on the Holyhead ferry to Dublin. By then I'd exchanged phone calls with Iain Borthwick, UK importer of, amongst others, AM Audio and Cen.Grand. He works under the Willowtree Audio banner and had one of his demo DSD converters with me for review. He knew of incoming Nemo to share how despite his own first-watt credo, he prefers his AM 500-watt transistor monos to even their best 833 130-watt valve monos with 30lbs of pure silver per channel. He cautiously cautioned me against hidden high-power bias. Whilst perhaps not as a general rule, he reminded me that there are designs whose power 'excess' nets equivalent advantages in sheer sonics to not be about power for just power's sake. At that point I had a DHL tracker for my mini pallet. Once kit gets as stout as Nemo, strapping box to pallet means safer handling. Shipping personnel can't throw it around the same. But when it's just one guy in a van without liftgate or pallet jack, it can't be delivered without the recipient's extra two hands. Ask me how I know.

On cheap thrills, Nemo had more. Elite's shipping department had used my old address which their online DHL interface hadn't purged. Thankfully we caught it early for a reroute. Then Dublin customs did a physical inspection to issue a proof of purchase request to validate declared value. Even though Elite had shipped prior loaners to Eire using the same protocol, this time customs challenged their freight being a commercial review sample on short-term temporary import. We had to submit copies of emails detailing our loan agreement. Being a whale had Nemo make quite a splash at Dublin customs. Apparently you're supposed to work a bit when you reel one in of their kind. Thankfully Elite's shipping department worked out the kinks in the line and three days later had a customs freeze unthawed. Now status changed to 'on hold' because DHL had to hand over the palletized goods to a subcontractor. Then an 'out for delivery' notice changed back to 'at DHL facility'. My whale was off the leash again. Should I look out the window for a flipping tail in the Shannon river? We do get dolphins here. The next 'out for delivery' notice delivered the expected white van without liftgate or pallet jack. I helped the familiar driver walk the half pallet inside and alerted him that we'd do the same dance again a few weeks hence. His previous stop had been our local Moneypoint power station to pick up three pallets at 450kg combined. Needless to say, those remain uncollected. With DHL Shannon unwilling to provide their personnel proper trucks, certain loads remain beyond their ability. Thankfully once I'd unseated the big Norwegian box's clever clip handles, its walls fell outwards to access the amp shrouded in a satin bag. I just about managed to heave it off but that should really be a two-person job.

Whilst anything but demure on visual presence—its chassis would house roughly four of my Kinki monos if we chopped those into the necessary bits—Nemo proved electrically and mechanically perfectly stealthy from 1m away. Only an ear directly on its lid or the speaker sussed out very faint noise. That trumped the majority of valve amps at a fraction of its power. A 3wpc SET will very likely be noisier. Yet here I heard nothing in the seat. My proof-of-life sound check showed copious dynamics, jet-black bass, muscular tone textures and a real physical sense of sonic swagger and presence. I had my marching orders. With Raidho's X2t inbound, I'd even have fellow Nordic luxury speakers to leash up. A few moons were lining up.

Current currency. UK wall sockets can output either 32A when fed from a ring main or 20A from a radial circuit. Meanwhile UK plugs are fitted with a max 13A fuse to limit a power cord's fault current during a short circuit. A UK duplex can thus supply 26A total to two appliances fitted with 13A-fused cables drawing their max allowable 3'120 watts (13A x 240V). A standard IEC power inlet like Nemo uses is rated for 15A and not recommended beyond ~70% capacity. When we see amplifier ratings of 50A max thus well in excess of wall current, these are micro-duration peaks provided by capacitive banks acting as virtual batteries or energy storage devices. Nemo combines 0.2 farad capacitance with 32 bipolar output transistors to deliver high instantaneous peak currents. When we consider amplifiers whose wattage ratings seem excessive for our use, we should probably redirect our attention at short-term peak current delivery to restore relevance to what otherwise seems overkill. Musical peaks aren't that demanding in the higher frequencies but get gnarlier in the bass where larger reactive back-electromotive forces become another factor aside from power draw. From these basics we conclude that, 1/ the benefits of higher power capacitance and current-capable output devices should be most obvious in the bass; 2/ the same benefits should reset crest factor as the decibel difference between average and peak levels. The latter are easily spotted when at our normal SPL, familiar tracks crest higher to have us twitch for the remote. Our usual terrain across which amplitude flickers has widened. Armed with these basics, we should have very concrete expectations for what Nemo's insertion into the above system changed. Working against those expectations could be popular wisdom—a self-defeating term perhaps?—that smaller simpler amplifiers are more nimble and responsive than large complex ponderous specimens. Cheetah versus rhino to mix not metaphors but species?