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In use: Both Firestones had their volume controls do nothing noticeable from 7:00 to about 9:00 o'clock. Then things accelerated from background to full-blast levels within the next 90 minutes on the dial. That made anything above 10:30 mostly useless. Even deaf bangers with Hifi Man HE-5LE or equivalently inefficient earspeakers would capitulate long before Libby runs dry. Ditto for Rubby and the type speakers she'll be used with on the desk top. Per se this type of no-noise high gain isn't bad. To bring most of it on over such a narrow window is simply impractical for everyone who expects finer gradations (and I don't see who wouldn't). This is close to an actual design flaw like the original thermal runaway that I think should still be addressed.

On sonics: Libby and Rubby were cut from the same cloth. What I'll say about one applies to the other. Bass power was potent and extended, bass damping high for excellent articulation and control. Versus the iDecco, the little Dayens Tizo's small mid/woofers for example seemed to grow another diameter inch on my desktop. So did bass-happy headphones like Hifi Man's planar-magnetics and Grado's PS-1000s which grew nearly a bit heavy. Of all the earspeakers in my arsenal, the HE-5LE actually cottoned most to Firestone's forward somewhat edgy and attack-centric formula. I predict that it would strike analogue listeners as typically digital in a bad way.

As on-ear Magneplanars, the HE-5LE with original cable from Fang Bian's Head Direct is a darker chewier design. It digs into the fleshiness of timbres with a very good bass foundation but is less finessed on top than beyer-dynamic's or Sennheiser's best. It is spatially denser and more compacted and overall less transparent, less filigreed and subjectively less detailed. Even so, it seems to have steep rise times to not soften transient speed inside an overall slightly recessive thicker aural milieu that's not as specific on soundstage cues as the best.

This particular suite of attributes best compensated for Firestone's lean percussive voicing with its strong injection of white into the overall color palette. This white effect diluted tonal contrasts and lightened the perceived general substance. It also added a dose of upfront sharpness and harmonically as well as dimensionally flattened out depth. Aside from the planar cans which got on truly well with the Libby, I couldn't befriend such a presentation. This was highlighted when I referenced Burson Audio's HA160D (admittedly priced nearly double) also fed from the ND-S1's coaxial output. To keep it real, I next moved in Burson's $699 HA160 which lacks the DAC of the new model. This was consequently fed from a Sieben Technology dock with the iPod's analog outputs. Despite Apple's puny IC output stage that's so often the butt of audiophile jokes, the cheaper Burson combo killed the Onkyo/Firestone duo when the latter should have benefited from more advanced digital signal processing. Instead it really was game over at least in my book. Digital tricks are tertiary at best. They amount to nothing without a proper analog foundation.


Virtuoso violins like Oleg Ponomarev's for example are saucy. That's a specific mix of the sweet and the fiery that gets slightly lascivious. The Burson nailed the sweetness as it was overlaid by fiery sheen and stoked by the fluid bow work of this Russian Gypsy Paganini. The Libby meanwhile turned it all into nails - comparatively metallic, thin and sharp. As a result I soon found my listening selections drift to ambient, techno, Pop and other more electronic fare. That type of music is inherently compressed if you will so it didn't telegraph the difference from the expected with nearly as much objection.

When my attention kept drifting to develop clicker finger—the iPod equivalent of flipping through TV stations when nothing worthwhile plays on any channel—I naturally applied the same finger also to the upsampling and word-length buttons on which Firestone's engineers had lavished so much of their attention. The only setting I found personally useful—better than 44.1K—was 88.2K. But the degree of minor shifts didn't remotely address my overall misgivings. This was super modern sound all about superficial detail but lacking real body and space if one has an appropriate reference or the right comparators. To me all the buttons and lights were nothing but gimmicks. They seemed for a less-informed audience that's dazzled by flash features.


Conclusion: As is sadly apparent, these Taiwanese cheerleaders and I passed each other by. Never mind initial and subsequent product issues. Out of four pieces, I did end up with two perfectly functioning units. I simply wasn't the right type of rez-über-alles listener who'd appreciate this early NuForce sound. While I have—mostly—outgrown glowing valves to nowadays be perfectly content with certain all-transistor systems, I cannot rewrite how many years with tubes have imprinted what I still look for. It's definitely available from transistors. You just have to know where to look. The Firestone sound was pretty much the antithesis though. Burson and Peachtree Audio had the right stuff. The Dayens Ampino does. There are many more well below $1.000.


That said, I'm certain that particularly newer listeners coming off relatively murky older midfi gear would light up in amazement. They'd feel thrilled and tickled to now have the brave new world of razzle-dazzle BluRay entertainment also for their ears. To not dilute their excited discovery with what would only seem further negativity on my part, I'll simply bow out now with the obvious proviso that as always, all of the above was merely one man's opinion.
Quality of packing: Very good.
Reusability of packing: Plenty of times.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: Easy.
Condition of component received: Externally flawless. First Rubby overheated. Second Libby kept blowing fuses.
Completeness of delivery: Includes digital and analog cables to get started out of the box.
Website comments: Many different sites to pick from.
Human interactions: International sales manager Kerry responsive and helpful.
Pricing: Right in line with competing product from KingRex.
Final comments & suggestions: The new internal heat sink and chassis ventilation have solved Rubby's initial thermal runaway issue. I ran the revised version non-stop to be sure. Both Libby and Rubby convert their analog inputs to digital for internal processing. Best performance is obtained with digital sources. On the desktop and considering size and pricing, an iPod seems most likely. This requires an Onkyo, Wadia or similar digital-direct dock. For headphones, the Libby's high gain seems ideally matched to inefficient planar-magnetic designs like Hifi Man's HE-5LE, HE-6 and Audez'e LCD-2. The volume pots on both components produce all useful loudness over a very narrow window. This makes it quite frustrating to go from pianissimo to forte to fortissimo over a few millimeters and renders 75% of range below and above useless.
Firestone Audio website