Take 5. Being in a mood for another chestnut, I played Mozart's Piano Concerto N°23 in A major as jazzed up by the Jacques Loussier Trio. De nada. Dave Brubeck's title held. The 5 took it. "Take four" is for the new austerity measures at Elon Musk's Twitter. I'd actually wondered whether my hearing had gone soft. Age makes many things possible. Remember how the Vinnie Rossi L2 DHT preamp had replaced my icOn 4Pro on the baby Mon speakers? It's because it had tamed a bit of their presence-region friskiness and injected denser textures. I'd thus secretly questioned why first icOn 5 romps with them hadn't revived my earlier DHT Jones.

Now threading the 4 back into the signal path did. On strings plus piano which on this score are most challenging, the earlier icOn autoformers came across as just a bit glassy. It's when a piano's hammered right hand veers into the 'tinkly'. That vanished with the 5. True to Pál's prime directive of wanting more than just extra attenuation range, the new low-inductance magnetics were even smoother without giving up any immediacy. They injected what I soon thought of as a bit of atomized oil into the 4's cold spring water. Atomized means that the oil doesn't separate into a floating top layer. It submerges like elderberry syrup does in a cordial to create a particular viscosity. That's back at my earlier notes about self-authenticating posh; a telltale textural suavity or elegance.

When I compared DAC-direct for analog volume with a Muses chip-based resistor ladder against fixed DAC plus autoformer volume, the latter was clearly more resolved. It opened up more stage depth and focussed each image against it with heightened alacrity or suchness. Yet these gains in lucidity and transparency didn't come at a cost in inherent tonal warmth where a piano or violin mixes both metallic and wooden aspects yet neither should dominate. If in your mind DAC⇒amp direct with analog volume negates any passive preamp appeal, you're overlooking an admittedly counter-intuitive fact. Resistive volume control burns up unwanted voltage as throwaway heat. Magnetic volume control transforms it into extra current. Unlike with resistive volumes, higher attenuation entails a certain advantage. As with tube output iron, the quality of multi-tapped autoformers varies. We can't categorically claim that any TVC/AVC would come out victorious. Having reviewed and/or owned passive magnetics from AM Audio, Bent Audio, Bespoke Audio, icOn and Townshend, there are differences beyond price, looks, features. Pál's latest isn't just a plus-1 Four with extra socketry, a bigger case and more attenuation range. It still makes sonic advances particularly when we switch in the input buffer. Having done the upstairs dance, it was time to take the show into the big system. Before we do, one parting comment. Were I to permanently replace my 4Pro with the 5 in this system, my far costlier direct-heated triode preamp would remain benched in the utility closet. The 5 would give me more finger-in-socket electrical charge without paying in stripped tone. That's because its new Slagleformers infuse the sound with a particular grace that's not even slightly thick like even-order harmonic distortion. As such it doesn't obscure insight. Yet compared to the icOn 4Pro's alpine spring water, it is a certain extra emulsion. That's truly fascinating: a textural enhancement which doesn't congeal a thing. Deep-triode hounds will find it far too elusive. Transistor fiends shall call it irresistible for exactly the same reason.

After the above published, Pál emailed. "I’m happy to read that you prefer the new 5’s sound to the 4Pro. The 5 represents the essence of my personal journey into the 'science' of audio signal attenuation. Perhaps it could be useful if I summarized it. My engineering heart bleeds when I see and hear the consequences of gain poisoning where source components run gain often in excess of x 10-100 of what's required just to claim superior S/NR (typical for DACs) without concern for any negative impact on the total chain. The best attenuator is none at all. This would need true variable gain in all source components or power amps. [Enter my Sonnet Audio Pasithea DAC; and my Enleum AMP-23R. Both only generate the voltage gain we set – Ed.] That's different from attenuation, be it digital or analog, stepped resistors or chips. This would naturally prevent redundant high gain which demonstrably degrades overall sound quality. The gain/cut roller coaster of a hifi's signal path is one of the worst most incomprehensible but least understood secrets of consumer hifi. Without this imbalance my autoformers wouldn't need more than 30dB cut, overall system distortion would be lower and resolution and transparency far better. Where attenuation is required, especially high amounts, the least harmful most transparent solution is an AVC due to its energy conversion rather than energy dumping. But, we must specify the operating parameters of our magnetic converters most carefully. These are far more complex parts than typical resistor networks. The question isn't whether an AVC is purely passive or hybrid. Key is it being the best possible match with its environment i.e. the full system. Wherever a system suffers a gross gain mismatch to require high attenuation, applying highest possible magnetic conversion prior to trimming less than 10% resistively or even in the digital domain will greatly improve the result to avoid the boring sound of dynamic compression and overall color fading. That's where the MatchMaker can offer an incomparably greater improvement in the roller-coaster gain chain than yet one more fancy cable or tweak."

To test this, Ferrum's Wandla DAC presented a golden op. Its circuit is groomed for 'pro' specs of 9.5/4.75Vrms on XLR/RCA. With options for digital or analog attenuation—the former stock ESS code, the latter a Muses ladder on a chip followed by extra opamp buffer—Wandla offers up to -12dB of trim for its digital inputs; and ±12dB for its analog input. Applying pre trim recalibrates the volume scale to lower the voltage which now represents 100. In my main system, already standard 2V outputs require ~30dB attenuation. Wandla could invoke ~50dB. Hello MatchMaker on its -24dB tab. Pál's hi-cut version could have done up to 40dB. My 250-watt Kinki Studio monos sport 1.45Vrms input sensitivity. It had Wandla's balanced gain 6½ x higher than necessary to drive them to full output. With my MatchMaker sample RCA only, I still had an excess x 3¼ ratio. That was an ideal gain-poisoning context for MatchMaker to take its vows and hope for happy ever after. Eliminating 24dB of voltage gain—nearly what a Pass amp packs—without turning it to heat did impact resolution. Swaps between DAC direct and MatchMaker took less than a minute to accomplish. Whilst Wandla still couldn't match the widebander-type immediacy and zoom of my Sonnet Pasithea DAC with variable reference voltage for true flexi gain involving zero attenuation, inserting MatchMaker narrowed the gap. Within the context of extreme speaker efficiencies like horns, I'd expect the difference in gain-based noise and undue thickness plus the ground interruptor function of autoformers to be more pronounced still. For them Pál's 'gizmo' could be a real lifesaver. As to piggybacking magnetic attenuation to Pasithea's variable gain and low 16Ω output impedance, I heard no resolution/immediacy benefits. What I did hear was a certain textural viscosity. I took that to be a remnant or distillate of why ironmen aka valve hounds insist on input transformers, interstage transformers, output transformers; the more iron the better. If that certain wetness is a flavor which transformers impart aside from assorted demerits, perhaps what the icOn 5 behind Pasithea did was a related echo without the shadows?