Development. A few days after I wrote the previous page, my FedEx tracker dropped. Captain Marvelous, inbound? Just then too a Palma Audio press release hit for the world's first high-end convertible dynamic headphone called DHS-1. With a simple twist of its Sapele cups' black cover plates, dispersion can turn from open to hermetically sealed and back. With 107/109dB/1mW sensitivity respectively—sealed loading obviously adds cavity gain—this headphone has Velo written all over it. It even mirrors Velo's functional dualism of pre/headamp by accommodating listening in total privacy where noise leakage is no issue; then avoiding it in more public spaces with one and the same device.

Whilst on gratuitous promos, let me recommend a Deutsche Grammophon set that dropped just two days prior: The four Brahms Symphonies with The Chamber Orchestra of Europe under the inspired baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin recorded in highly dynamic 24/192. Gorgeous stuff spanning the gamut from rustic to pastoral, from lushly romantic to intimate tone-poem like. Think richly saturated autumnal tone colours, folksy dance motifs and atmospheric quasi soundtrack imagery.

Bring on the velour? It's a knitted not woven so stretchy fabric whose pile is shorter than velvet but longer than velveteen. Despite being obviously cute, it's a useful pointer for what we generally expect of tubes. Theirs often is a textural quality of elongated decays which creates elasticity and a certain plushness; just like running a hand over velvet fabric or draping ourselves in a terry bathrobe. Transistors meanwhile tend to emphasize steeper transients which, as tonal beginnings, more adroitly mark timing so rhythmic and percussive qualities. Those are pricklier and more charged. Adding themselves to tubular textural generosity particularly in no-feedback SET circuits are octave-doubling enhancements of 2nd-harmonic distortion. Be it a pinch or a double dash, the amount of such even low-order THD determines the effect's density. I think of it like an infusion whereby pure water is enhanced. The longer we leave the infusion substance in, the more our water changes in taste and consistency. This domain is generally considered to be tonal because it's about harmonic weighting. Meanwhile the transient/decay balance maps our perception of music's gait through time. Is it fluid, elegiac, locomotive, snappy?

Pull from your vocabulary other suitable words then sequence them to describe a gradual shift from one polarity to the other. This exercise in subtlety helps us appreciate the many small degrees of tuning we can set by how we select our hifi components' interaction. Gifted designers can bend tubes or transistors in either direction but it's still true that where each starts out when not deliberately manipulated follows our generalized map.

That's back at leading vs falling edges, which ones are emphasized and what happens in-between them. It's about speed x languour, tension x relaxation, drive x flow, staccato x legato, rigor x rubato. This is the descriptive language today's review will tap into. It's also what different passages or movements of our four Brahms symphonies point at. Some are more archetypal tube, others more transistor. Since we won't swap output devices in midstream, it's instructive to think how sticking to one sort will play to music's mirror portions; and how it could play slightly against the contrarious ones.

That's before we change genres for hard-edged electronica. It's all about sensitizing ourselves to nuances and their numerous expressions and what best suits our musical temperament and library all livelong day.

At left we see the underside of Velo's motherboard. There's still a smaller board with the attenuator and R2R ladder. But now I'm flat out of velo words to mark the end of my introductions. Onto listening impressions starting in headfi mode. Here Velo was preceded by iFi's Pro iDSD Signature DAC getting its signal off my 4TB SSD library or Qobuz Sublime subscription through Audirvana Studio then a Singxer SU-6 USB bridge. The below THR-1 was my comparator amp, headphones were the FiiO and Meze, then the Final and Audeze and finally, just to tick a box for yeah, nay or maybe, Susvara and Immanis.

Showing the $1'298 Kinki serves a few quick final competitive marks. Whilst it has balanced outputs for headfi and preamplitude, the latter lacks RCA outputs. Neither is there remote control. That makes it a head-first proposition which in a nearfield context within physical reach of its chunky volume knob can double as a 2-input preamp into a balanced amp. If we just do cans, we might call these two six of one, half a dozen of the other? If we double dip or solo into speakers, Velo takes the clear lead. Though the price discrepancy looks significant, Kinki manufacture in China and sell Singapore direct; LTA manufacture in the US. Doing realistic math, these are direct competitors. So it made good sense for the THR-1 to be my anchor man whilst I ran through my circumaural harem for these tube vs transistor swaps.

Ever wondered what matched pairs mean for working glass? For the gain of each half of the JJ ECC81, LTA had matched theirs to 41.8/39.2 and 39.1/40.5mu; to 20.0/20.1 and 19.9/20.2mu for the NOS 6SN7 marked 6N8S on their cartons, 6H8C/8506 on their bottles to denote Russian origins. As to the 'class' in working class, LTA had thoughtfully connected our Irish residence to UK-terminated power cords. That's far rarer than you'd think. Routinely I get useless Schuko or US plugs. It showed me that these folks really sweat the small details. That's back to the hidden 'class' in working class.

For the linear power supply it means one toroidal power transformer, three small signal transformers, nine capacitors, one big four-legged transitor on a small heatsink, one smaller voltage regulator on an oversized heatsink, a few smaller parts on the AC input and one 115/230V voltage selector all behind thick bent steel under a thin perforated cover. The silver decal on the back panel had a hand-written 'Velo Demo' and '12V' mark to confirm preconfigured voltage for the headphone amp. Everything spoke to more solid workmanship promising untold hours of trouble-free use.