Here is Oor in the buff: discrete, surface mounted, parts intensive, Bipolar Promenade plainly visible at the lower right as the wider front-to-back strip of eight transistors. Just as plain is the quad blue Alps pot for a true balanced volume control.
Tiny SMD parts require robotic assembly to populate such boards in a timely manner. Human skills re-enter with larger parts and QC. By keeping the power supply separate, Oor plays clean box to the external box's dirty power.
For listening stations, I had three: desktop, main and bedside systems. On my work desk, a COS Engineering H1 handles fully balanced headfi and preceding D/A conversion with analog volume. An Audiobyte Hydra X+ serves as USB bridge/reclocker to a Win 10/64 workstation with J.River Media Center. In the main system, a Kinki Studio gets signal from a Terminator Plus DAC preceded by a Soundaware D300Ref reclocker and iMac with Audirvana. Upstairs, a basic Soundaware A280 SD card transport feeds a legacy Auralic Vega DAC which then supplies a Bakoon AMP-13R for 6.3mm headfi and a Schiit Jotunheim R for Raal SR1a ribbon earspeakers. Headphones would be HifiMan Susvara, Final D8000 and Sonorous X, Audeze LCD-2 and LCD-XC plus a Meze Elite still in from its own review. Particularly the Bakoon then COS I thought of as prime comparators. They fall into the maximally lucid ultra-resolved camp which I expected Oor would belong to as well. To my ears, the AMP-13R is the best such head amp I've come across. Relaunched as Enleum, their new AMP-23R could soon become a potential ursurper of course. But the Bakoon would set a suitably high standard for Hypsos-powered Oor. Again just to my ears, Susvara and its virtual stand-in of Kennerton Wodan are the Bakoon's top planarmagnetic equivalents. So the HifiMan would be my primary inspector on Oor's chops. I rate the Raal ribbons even higher but their ultra-low Ω requires a rare custom amp like the Schiit or the original impedance converter box plus a big speaker amp. That eliminates them from today's proceedings. I mentioned them only so you have a clearer reference for my headfi tastes and expectations. Those who order from Ferrum's web shop will want to know that from their creation of a shipping label in Poland to delivery of the 7kg package for the twosome took UPS exactly seven days to rural Ireland.
With logo brightness at 20%.
Beneath my screen against dark-brown leather protecting tempered glass from fingerprints—I'm lazy— the Polish Corten teamsters really looked like they belonged. Empyrean's Elite were still on hand. To my ears, they remain of lower resolution/speed than HifiMan's Susvara, Kennerton's Wodan or the Raal as apex predator of these disciplines. That's true even though they are already goosed over the virtually lookalike Empyrean stablemates. On balance however, they still prioritize extreme smoothness over sportiness and raw immediacy.
Just so, Oor with Hypsos moved these super-comfy Gucci planars farther into the remote lands of resolution, air and transient vigor. The latter was especially keen on harder-hitting Sultan Orhan ambient. Percussionist Burhan Öçal clatters around before layering up darbukas and other drums to intensify rhythmic hail on a proverbial tin roof. That assaultiveness just hinted at by YouTube's compression further heightened when those primitive oboes kick in like shrill hyenas. First impressions with the optional power supply were of steep timing so high beat fidelity against stiff damping. Hello driver control.
Do wear those blue-filtering glasses when you work on a computer. It's much easier on your eyes!
Spinning up Hans Zimmer's epic The Dune Sketchbook showed the same control when these long tracks scale then apply high choral voices like bloodthirsty swords in the dark. Big stuff like it always declares headfi as fit for shrink heads only when one comes off a big speaker rig. Nonetheless, admirable stability under duress and capture of low-level 'extraterrestrial' atmospherics showed off what first-rate headfi can do with soundtracks written for multi-channel systems. Though Cinerama scale collapses to the confines of our brain's bony abode, penetrating down into the music's inner fabric can easily exceed speakers whose cheap counter trick is staging far outside the head. On the penetration score, Oor+Hypsos were clearly hi-rez capable using bog-standard 16/44.1 material. That spoke to truth in low-noise advertising. What's the max voltage Hypsos can drive Oor beyond the standard brick's 24V? Off went an email to my contact Wojtek Glowienka for the safe word. Nothing is more awful than toasting a review loaner by sheer negligence. "You can max out safely at 30V." Full blast ahead. Higher voltage with marginally lower current or vice versa?
