Because the COS H1 does dual XLR3 for balanced, my custom Forza AudioLabs Hybrid Noir leashes all terminate accordingly. For XLR4 scenarios, Matt built me a short cable adaptor with matching Furutech plugs. It's what you see next. In high gain—Elite had sat at medium though could have switched to low—the volume control now sat virtually the same. Exploring ferrum's sweet-spot tuning, I heard what I'd already observed in my standalone Hypsos review. Higher voltage adds gravity, roundness and darkness. Since my tastes prioritize subjective speed and overall lucidity, I favored the slightly higher current with lower voltage. Naturally my tastes are of no concern. In very fine increments, you can set this balance to your tastes and music. That's the point. With a 6V envelope Hypsos adds above and beyond the stock brick, there's lots of room for exploration. Have at it!

Relative to my Taiwanese DAC/amp, at 24V the Pole walked the terrain with a very similar silvery tuning. Think Magico not Harbeth, Soulution not Jeff Rowland. That meant open skylights for full treble elucidation. Where encoded, we hear subtle reverb trails, performer halos and 'fizzy airs' giving us cues on recording venues. Without fat or bloat at the opposite end, there was no injection of faux body at the expense of midrange clarity. As suspected from Max's explanations, Oor is a modern high-resolution affair. It wasn't tuned for certain effects or pleasing colorations. What it did add over the COS was even stronger contrast. That enhanced the edge differential of sonic substance against silent space. It deepened bas-relief sculpting. Images detached a bit more from their shared backdrop. This wasn't about the pixilated outlines aka dreaded edginess audiophiles love to hate. I wouldn't even call it superior focus. On that score the H1 was no softer In the end, the relevant difference was higher contrast ratio. It goes to show that even where two components rate similar on our subjective assessment meter, one 'neutral' can still sound different from another. Perhaps if we could count the number of color hues or microdynamic gradations, we'd find quantitative cause for that difference? Without such a count, I'm left to speculate. What creates certain observations? I suspect that behind my higher contrast ratio probably was extra dynamic differentiation at work.

For Oor/Hypsos, that'd point at an even lower noise floor. I don't think we need to get any more specific/speculative. It's the effect that counts, not any attempt at calling out cause. It's that very aspect in fact which stepped back without Hypsos. Now Oor became virtually interchangeable with the H1. To secure its advantage necessitated the upgraded power supply. To care and want to pay for it relies on the above album title. Otherwise just turn up the volume on Oor solo and call it a draw. It won't be. At matched levels, Hypsos will push its advantage again. But you get the drift. Playing louder always fakes up more even if it's the oldest cheap trick in the book. The real trick heads the other way. It investigates how much longer music remains persuasive and involving before too many things fall away. In those terms, add-on Hypsos delays this inevitable entropy. We can listen at lower SPL and still get satisfaction. That means longer listening sessions without fatigue. No more premature ear-offulations. Very simple and basic. Terrifically useful. As to the other way, in high gain my Susvara with a standard 2V signal sat between 10:30 and 12:00 depending on recording. That left plenty of untapped banger room. Given Susvara's known inefficiency, Oor would seem powerful enough to drive all loads presently to market. Even on Susvara, doing the Zimmer created big dynamic swings without seam frazzle. That made for a nicely freaky show of control. Anyone believing that Susvara's sub bass isn't fully developed hasn't heard them with an amp like Oor.

The real show of course happens whenever a superior recording has it all. The closer from Swiss harpist Asita Hamidi's Blue Ark album does. The unholy trinity of Oor, Hypsos and Susvara showed proper worship at the altar of intense presence, crisp separation and keen percussive transients. These are the kind of moments audiophiles live for; particularly since Asita died 9 years ago to make this necromancy of sorts. At this point Max wrote in to say that they had their measurements "but now have an opportunity to measure Oor with far better equipment. We want to verify our measurement rig because it has some flaws. The new measurements will be conducted by an independent lab. I expect their results in 2 weeks. As soon as I have them, you'll get them." These figures would likely include S/NR, dynamic range and similar to perhaps shed more light on my suspicion that Oor's primary advantage over our COS was its even lower self noise. Time to head upstairs to play against Bakoon's AMP-13R.

At €6'000, the Bakoon is my fave speaker amp where 25/50wpc into 8/4Ω suffice. That's twice the coin for more functionality. Down to just headfi however, #13 went just a few percentage points deeper into what we might call tonal suavity. Oor/Hypsos played it a bit drier. The AMP-13R did more of that film-noir thing where a director hoses down a road for a night shoot to give it that particular sheen and heightened reflectivity of store and street lights. On tone textures then the Bakoon was more glossy or moist. While downshifting Oor from 30V to 24V slightly changed that balance, it didn't close the gap. But it wasn't a big gap just crack. It certainly was nowhere near what price discrepancy should demand if diminishing returns didn't grind down hard. Again, one must pay attention then care about this Bladerunner effect to talk gap in the first place. To others, gap becomes mere difference. The takeaway is that into our most demanding loads, Oor nearly equaled our very best headfi machine and certainly didn't trail it on what most would call raw resolution. How about heading deep into emo country? I had Final's Sonorous X. At 16Ω and 105dB/1mW, it eclipses hard-of-hearing Susvara by a whopping 22dB of voltage sensitivity. It comes on song while the other still snores. Would noise be a factor or absentee volume gradation because things got too loud too sudden? Our bath tub faucet only knows scalding and cold so zero mixed values. Hitting the desired temp adds just enough cold water to really hot. It's jiggly but perfectly doable. Where highly efficient headphones or speakers narrow down our usable choices to mute⇒loud⇒too loud, they simply don't work right because there's no jiggle room. It's gain poisoning and a real concern.