Subtle. I got footsies wet with the Vol.3 opener of Zuhal Olcay's Basucu Sarkilari. I picked it for its tendril'd interplay between vocals and quicksilver clarinet. I soon noticed the FFT's flavor but wasn't sure I preferred it. Doing the swaps un/reseated the FFT power supply until I had it. So why my preference? That went straight for the jugular of a popular disagreement. Some side with ultimate smoothness. Others propose that it robs music of its innate edginess. That's different from any etch which our electronics inject after the fact. It's academic to ask how we'd know the difference in the first place. Let's stick to whatever degree we observe it in our playback; and how we respond when it shrinks. If we have little edge to begin with, wet-sanding the margins to a silky-smooth finish could go too far.

How so? Milquetoast. An androgynous angel's absentee sexual tension. There's a certain kind of musical edge that facilitates projection power. It juts out and cuts through then across space to reach the listener's seat. It's vitality. The smoothness I talk of damps it. That damper action is already evident in a sweet jubilant tune like Zuhal's which lacks all piss 'n' vinegar. Here it was a subtle shift to be sure. Given that I picked these elite monitors for their small AlNiCo widebander's attractive tonal intensity and projection plus ancillaries which serve it, I missed the small bits which FFT smoothed over to take away. At least upstairs, I could save €250 and one power port. How about latest-gen versus 1st-gen Eros? Again, this cord between wall and passive distributor fed transport, DAC and amplifier to triple its influence. Only the DC power adapter for the passive preamp's remote processor plugged into a different power spur.

For the lazy reviewer's shortcut, the newer mains cable sounded like… more copper. Hey, lazy. For Gonzalo Rubalcaba's elegant Latin piano, sonority increased. So did the upright's weight. That firmer foundation couldn't help but anchor the tonality of Anna Marie Jopek's vocals in slightly fleshier fashion. This didn't take complex music to sort out. That's my MO. Start with simpler tunes until your fix is firm on which qualities are affected. Once that's sorted, it can be tracked on fare which layers heavier. Starting with the latter can confuse the issue before one knows what to focus on. That's the disease of critical listening. Focus means a narrowing of perception. Narrowing implies exclusion. Ideally we take all of it in without any exclusionary prejudice. A/B comparisons simply demand prejudice. But it's not how one ought to listen for pleasure.

With that reminder in place, I'll call the new Eros Signature already without FFT an advance over the original in the areas of tone mass, bass power, dynamic range and concomitant influences on perceived warmth and fullness. Because it's a high-current power cord, using it ahead of a power distributor is ideal to benefit everything that subsequently plugs in. That's why I used it so. How about repeating the same exercise for the big system where an iMac, reclocker, DAC and DHT preamp all hang off the same power distributor? The usual cord to the wall socket here is a LessLoss C-MARC Entropic Process. Now the FFT power supply plugged into a switched wall socket so it was ultra-convenient to turn on and off.