Hyped through the nose? – You decide. It's SAEQ's new flagship headfi/speaker amp called Hypnos [€13K ex VAT]. It can direct-drive ribbon headphones without intermediary transformer adapter; features a baffle-step compensation toggle for Raal's original open-baffle SR-1a/b plus their upcoming open models; and a 99-step attenuator which can remember values for two different headphone outputs to rapidly switch between them at identical volumes. The circuitry is hybrid by using an input 6N1P twin triode following a permalloy custom transformer. Headphone power is 4wpc/32Ω, speaker power 15/25wpc into 8/4Ω.
