Delivery was in a slick Clip-Lok crate locked to a micro pallet with reusable straps for first-class engineered packaging. Included accessories were a chromed bubble level, a branded leather protector for the gold-plated disc puck, three spike protectors, a hex key to lock the adjustable footers, a fancy FMJ remote and a bound owner's manual with white gloves.
The power mains rocker lives on the belly behind the floating display. It's easily reached without marring the sleek industrial design. In the acrylic/metallic flesh, that looked even posher than in photos. On that note, I'd not expected that the triangular body too would be high-gloss black acrylic and only the undercarriage metal. So keep a chamois handy for that and the touch display or finger prints, skin oils and dust will collect.
The StreanUnlimited transport is soft suspended, hence locked with a rubber insert during transit.
YBA's tweaky Yves-Bernard André may have been first to bathe CD in blue light. CD lasers operate at 780nm to be invisible infrared. DVD lasers reduced their wavelength to 650nm for red, Blue-ray to 405nm for violet to progressively increase data storage so vital for video. From this 2013 Jonathan Scull review on Stereophile, "according to Yves-Bernard, it's been observed that the phenomenon of stochastic resonance allows random noise to amplify signals of small amplitude. This paradox used in biology, astronomy and physic can also be applied to opto electronics. It provides a quality of sound similar to analog and produces a level of information never achieved before. The blue laser diode actually permits better extraction of information from the digital medium with less reliance on the error-correction algorithms."
Abbingdon Music Research still do the blue lights today. So does Gryphon's Ethos.
To familiarize ourselves with Gryphon's Nordic location, I consulted Google maps for the city of Ry, then marked it for your convenience. The small country of Denmark has an unusually dense presence of high-end audio manufacturers. Here Gryphon are one of their most illustrious and globally famous luxury brands.
With many reviews for these Danes under my belt to know their house sound, I recognized that my loaner was brand new. It needed to first mature. Any model I'd thus far heard from this catalogue had been fiercely dynamic, with superior bass and snap in bold vivid fashion. Out of the box, Ethos registered as far more demure and contained. So a 79'45" compilation disc spun endlessly whilst I penned my review on the iFi Audio Aurora. Once that wrapped, I returned to Ethos.