Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Some think this originated from the Bible's book of Proverbs 16:27. Yet it's probably a misreading driven by an application of Protestant theological assumptions. The King James version of the verse refers only to ungodliness: An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire. Only The Living Bible of 1971 injects the idea of idleness into its translation: Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, idle lips his mouthpiece. Or so the omniscient Wikipedia claims. The breadth of Hypsos adjustments could well have the devil idle as we sweat settings in our hifi worshop. With my long-in-the-tooth LCD-2, 22V/0.7A plus low gain traded more pounds for faster reflexes so indeed became my Audeze renaissance. Old cloven-hoof'd had to busy himself elsewhere. You can fault my detours but not how ferrum functionalized Oor whilst keeping its facade this simple. Placing their off switch between RCA/XLR inputs is a genial stroke of reductionism. Blacking out the Hypsos display follows suit. The broadly stepped gain tiers, exceptionally low self noise and unexpectedly wide voltage window are like fly paper. Sooner or later they'll catch all. No headphone or listener should feel left out. With performance commensurate with if distinctive from my personal best then coming in at half fully loaded and just 1/3rd without Hypsos… an award was unavoidable even before logging any preamp duties. Covering all angles is simply mandatory to do right by any component. How did preamping come off? Given how Oor is true differential throughout, I felt that matching amps were ideal. I had available a pair of 50-watt LinnenberG class A monos with switching power. They omit RCA altogether since they too are true balanced. Unsure whether Oor's three-stage gain selector would translate to its line-outs, I started in low gain with very mellow volume. Then I turned the gain switch clockwise two times to see what would happen.
Different loudness. The same headfi functionality migrated to speakers. Running fully balanced had me transfer twice the source voltage to high-gain amplifiers into 95dB loudspeakers. Oor's low gain was a life saver for useful volume range. Then there were the Hypsos adjustments to exploit. The question thus becomes, are limited i/o and no remote bigger demerits than unusual tuneability is a win? If your thumb goes up, there's nothing quite like this duo in preamp land that I can think of.
My usual preamp here is Pál Nagy's icOn 4Pro S. It's a very cleverly executed autoformer passive with 100% noise-less remote control . It replaced my Vinnie Rossi L2 Signature with elite Elrog ER50 DHT. In this hardware context, I listen at ~30dB below unity gain. So a preamp really needn't add gain just to decapitate it right after and sacrifice S/NR. In any event, the sonic differences to the ferrum weren't mild.
Fundamentally, the passive had far more air. It's what these bipole front/back solid aluminum horn tweeters of ultra low mass tracked hard. This top-down opening created extra stage depth and a different white balance for the color palette. The sound became noticeably more expansive, light-filled and texturally elastic. Billowy. Oor played it more compact, dark and muscular regardless of voltage or gain. Tautness, control and grip came to the fore. That did very well by the next track.
It gave the Wurlitzer clarinet of Sabine Meyer's less famous brother more of its trademark kernig tone. Literally translated from the German, that means full of pips. Actually, robust, earthy and pithy are the right words pointing at the intended effect. For cause, the best image simply remains of tones like ripe apricots. Are they full or de-pitted? Retaining the kernel is the opposite of hollow. Whilst the passive magnetic was far from hollow, it was fluffier. That gave the active its extra pithiness. This was quite the yin/yang proposition. How to choose will depend on the partnering hardware. Our discrete R2R DAC, these class A monos and the big dipole paper-cone widebander assisted by 4th-order band-pass woofers inside the box already live in Oorlandia relative to the passive. But change up the front end to a Chord DAC and the tail end to Magico speakers. Now the Oor may feel like an actual necessity not option.
Time to cork it. At €2'995 and in a possible two-step approach—Oor now, Hypsos later—I find it impossible to rein in personal enthusiasm. This is a real accomplishment. The compact form factor and tasteful Corten detail don't hurt either. Really, very good things can happen when an imaginative boss instructs his young charges to get creative, caution be damned. Why hire real talent only to muzzle it? Let it run.
Everything I wrote about the sound dilutes just a bit with the stock switching 'laptop' brick. The sound doesn't change colors, just becomes a bit less of everything. It's thus appropriate to view this as a final twin-chassis solution. For the full hit, add the hybrid power supply. That'll really have your ear – well, Oor's. Let's give the final words to project leader Max:
Final specs to be added when he has them. The Hypsos White Paper is here.
