When confirming shipping for the first-arriving Pure, Pál's email included the following photos and this: "It was a lot of work to make those purist audiophiles happy who have much better ears than I. Besides a new Slageformer version, the signal path now is down to just three reed relays and the wire within the autoformers. No more semiconductors at all. The XLR sockets are convenience items so wired unbalanced. The client can choose between Furutech or WBT. There's no hard limit on signal voltages so this can work with insanely high-voltage sources, of course then with significantly higher LF distortion. The Van Damme mini coaxial hookup wiring between i/o and autoformers has bandwidth to 6GHz. There are anti-resonance feet; and that premium hybrid ultra-cap PSU. I'll send that with the icOn 5 because its enclosure parts from Germany haven't arrived yet. The front and rear plates for the Pure are still awaiting their model engraving too but are otherwise identical. I just didn't want to wait any longer."

Parts worshippers could get impure thoughts gawking at these top Furutech connectors or the two-part isolation footers with intermediary ball decouplers. To extend education on sonic matters, Pál had included a big 6V Varta 430|4R25X zinc block battery. Its terminals connected to the same pigtail of locking 2-pin connector as his stock wall wart of the impure icOn range. Until the ultra-cap supply arrived, I could run the Pure on battery or switching power. Would remaining off the grid have any audible benefits? Is the Dalai Lama celibate?

As the Pure boots up its microprocessor, the orange-on-black window runs a ticker tape to say 'icOn Pure' before the chosen input shows which then turns over to the current volume setting as the default display. So even if you don't feel pure, this deck lets you know in no uncertain terms that it does.

For a test bed of high resolution, my upstairs had suitably saucy conditions. Jun Seo's MonAcoustic PlatiMon speakers held down the fort fronted by a Crayon Audio CFA-1.2 and Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe in DSD 1'024 resampling mode. Not requiring subwoofer help, the usual Dynaudio S18 and Pál's custom 80Hz/4th-order analog filter box were benched. To get started, I'd compare my icOn Pro4 against the Pure running both off their wall warts.

This next photo shows the icOn 4Pro's display set to dim, the Pure's to bright. Each Apple wand was paired to its own device to avoid misfires. You also see the 6V block battery.