Gutsy, not fat-cat girthy. Below we see what Simon's chosen transistors for his discrete class A/B power stage are: Japanese Toshiba Mosfets in complementary 2ASI943/LSC5200 pairs. The coupling caps are quality German Mundorf issue. At right we see the original Stello S100, the 'MkI' precursor which sold for €1'000 when new. This small price gap underlines just how close to the inflation rate the MkII cuts it today - which is to say, six years later.


This desktop shot is clearly from before the S100's arrival. Do you see why I needed the Stello sisters? That perfectly fabulous ALO-rewired Sennheiser HD800 hanging in ripe readiness off the Ikea lamp needed a proper ¼" hole. Gato Audio's DIA-250 has none. Yet I wasn't keen on adding a separate headfi amp. Space reasons. Stacked Stellos would be shallower and narrower and still fit well below the 30" monitor's edge. More space, more features, less money. My Korean jindo dog would be a good hunter. I already knew how the headfi path was mostly equivalent to my Eximus DP1. Its purely analog bass boost marked filter as though DSP works great on the Senns. It moves them closer into Audeze turf. On paper, the Danish cat had the fancier converter mated to its 250wpc modified Pascal power module than SImon had in his 24/96 USB-only HP100MkII. Why was plain with the new Stello DAC. Whilst the Gato pumps out 5 x the power, my Boenicke W5se never get to 30 on its dial. This is the civilized nearfield for music, not a master blaster gamer den. Plus, the solid Walnut boxes sit within arm's reach. They get loud quickly. For this app, even the S100's power was excessive. Which left the question. How did the $2'500 Asian stack joined via XLR do against the €3'250 Scandinavian uni-boxer streaming full-rez Qobuz or Tidal? That plus the occasional Spotify+ or YouTube are mainly what I do here. I might follow a rare CNN or BBC news report. That's it. Anything above 16-bit/44.1kHz would be wasted. DSD? Are you kidding? True, the younger Bülent Ersoy had a great voice. But like Yannis Parios, things degenerated badly later on. Keep it real. Call a spade a spade. Same for my usage here. DSD and DXD would be a complete no-show. Next.


Now we see the Stello'd-out desktop. USB into the HP100MkII, XLR out into the S100MkII, RCA out into the GalloTR-3D sub beneath the desk; or headfi out into whatever can from my collection I'd fancy. Power switches on the front meant no groping 'round back to power things down; and dimmable displays including off meant no retina burn after sundown.
The one and only Sœur Marie Keyrouz with her 'Psalms for the 3rd Millennium' which sees her accompanied by full symphony orchestra.
It took no time at all to know that the Stello separates outclassed my prior integrated on two distinct if interrelated counts: more transparency, more specifically layered soundstaging. Other elements in the same equation were a more informative yet simultaneously more sophisticated treble; and less compaction or cat-litter clumping from the Pascal D-class density which appears musically warm but obviously gives up resolution by direct contrast. That these advances hadn't been bought with a more forward tonality was obvious from the glowing orchestral colours of Psalms and the Byzantine soprano's luminous upper registers. My 'blind' faith in Simon's mastery had been well rewarded. Time to indulge whilst I'd go on radio silence before completing this assignment.