January
2022

Command the apex

Gryphon Audio Designs create ultra-luxe high-fidelity systems. Their Commander and Apex pre and stereo or mono amplifiers are their most advanced yet. As is tradition, they're styled in the company's signature 'Nordic Noir' aesthetic. Gryphon's design ethos of balanced circuit paths, dual mono, zero global feedback and class A meant that Commander's power supply went external to segregate its four low-noise 36VA power transformers and associated circuitry from the signal path via three umbilicals to separate dual analog and digital display lines. A constrained-layer bottom plate of Kerrock®, bitumen and stainless steel minimizes physical resonances. Extra-thick 4mm glass protects a 4.3" capacitive TFT display with full menu control over start-up level, left/right channel balance, maximum level, source level matching, input naming, display brightness, dedicated AV-throughput, output level and Green Bias adjustments for use with Gryphon power amps. Commander’s display even changes with listener distance to insure that volume and other settings remain uniformly legible.

Volume attenuates via microprocessor-controlled 85-step relay control over Charcroft Z-Foil resistors. Input signal sees a discrete Class A single-ended input buffer followed by a fully discrete balanced dual-differential class A line stage followed by a very fast symmetrical class A current buffer with DC servo coupling. Premium Mundorf MCap® ZN capacitors for local power supply decoupling claim ten times lower loss factor than metallized polypropylene film capacitors. The blue PCB use four layers with pure copper traces up to 70nm thick. Standby consumption is 0.5 watts (90W idle), input impedance is 12/18KΩ RCA/XLR, output impedance 7Ω, voltage gain 18dB, bandwidth 0.1Hz to 1.5MHz -3dB. The control unit weighs 30.5kg, its power supply 38.2kg.

Each Apex Mono features 64 very high-current bipolar output transistors, more than one Farad of capacitance and twin 2'000VA toroidal transformers to tip the scales at nearly 450 pounds while delivering close to 1'700Wrms/1Ω of pure class A power. Green bias allows the user to let their Gryphon preamp set the amount of Class A power in their amplifier to correspond to a given speaker sensitivity, room size, musical dynamics and overall volume level. Each mono delivers 225 watts into 8Ω, 450W into 4, 880W into 2 and 1'690 into 1Ω. Output impedance is 0.01Ω, voltage gain 31dB, input impedance 10kΩ and bandwidth 0.3Hz to 330kHz -3dB.

Pricing is €52'500 for Commander, €82'600 for Apex Stereo, €165'000/pr for Apex mono. The StandArt amp stand demands €6'500.