Deceit receipts? In slang, keeping receipts means remembering who wronged us; and occasionally handing out retribution by collecting on receipts. Having seen his guts, Charlie looked half empty so more basic than PhD. Yet we read about two National Defence projects pooling into his circuit. Would Charlie keep receipts for being underestimated then retaliate by overperforming? Being compact, USB powered and not silly money could certainly cool down certain audiophile expectations which feast on overkill and complexity. Was a heavy helping of devious deception inbound to put simplicity-shaming audiophilia on notice? Carina Behrends in Dresden quickly turned over Børge's order for a sample unit. I'd know soon enough.

Clear going in was outgoing 2Vrms fixed RCA signal limited to 24/192 PCM no DSD and digital filtering being fixed by the designer for a no-fuss approach that'd focus on tunes not settings or adjustments. My alternate power supply would be iFi's which usually powers my iDSD Signature Pro. It's a 15V/3.5A ultra low-noise sub-1µV chap in their iPower Elite range. It packs active noise cancellation and at €299 prices realistically to become a hot-rod Charlie champ. Its 12V/4A version powers my upstairs FiiO R7 SD-card transport. I'm quite sold on this affordable but effective single-feed platform. It also packs the fringe benefit of looking far better than a generic black-box PSU in bent sheet metal. Like most of its kind, it lacks a mains switch. If we don't want to run it 24/365, it must plug into a switched outlet, switched distributor or get unplugged manually.

The last pre-listen item to cross off is that my hardware awaiting Charlie's arrival had no price-based equivalents. From iFi to Sonnet and Cen.Grand, my D/A converters cost from about twice to well more and none of them require downstream volume control. That's neither fair nor reasonable but the basic breaks of comparative reviewing. We can only reference what's on hand. If Charlie could actually hang with my gang, it wouldn't recalibrate my sonic world with a Damascus moment of something I'd never heard before. But it would arrive at the same destination in a far more easeful manner to drive home superior value. And that would certainly collect receipts. In the off-chance that it surpassed one or more of my residents, the joys of retribution without bodily or psychological harm would go wild. That said, I had no inkling what to expect. As mentioned, Glen Wagenknecht had done the earlier Henry honours. I was still unexposed to Børge's work. We might thus frame this encounter as what happened when ears used to listening to converters at €3'250 – €6'000 suddenly downsized to €1'450. It may not be your idea of the ideal frame but it does set this picture as it was. My 24/7 break-in station was the upstairs system's FiiO R7 SD-card transport outputting USB into a Soundaware D300Ref USB bridge whose coaxial output fed Charlie. Power came from this Apple 5V/2A USB wall charger.

Whilst electrons bumped in particle mode and rode swells in wave mode to warm up these games, on my desktop of half-width kit, Charlie was smallest yet incredibly solid. Think fossilized vintage paperback. For this photo I surrounded Charlie for size reference with an aging gentleman's accessories – a wristwatch and specs…

… then a twofer CD in a tall display fold. Combine bijou presentation with flawless finishing and understated Scandi style—no Nordic Noir here—and Charlie flashing its tiny LED on €20 USB power in the metallic flesh really surprised me despite all the earlier photos. In person Charlie was smaller, heavier and more handsome than anticipated. Was he already collecting receipts?

Time to give accelerated aging its due. To confirm signal flow, Charlie's RCA outs drove a Cen.Grand Silver Fox into Raal 1995 Magna headphones. Once the latter had proof of life, I set the album folder to endless repeat. Charlie's calisthenics were to Mercan Dede's Dünya Vol.1. My brain would fry after a solid week of anything on hourly loop but hopefully Charlie was made of sterner stuff and found it rejuvenating. Accelerated aging to get fitter. Too bad it doesn't work on humans.