The Audiophilleo is staying

The Audiophilleo is staying, and here’s my thought process

I’ve been busy so I’ve not been able to set up an in-depth listening session to try and empirically assess what I think the Audiophilleo is doing, if it has improved significantly and in what areas, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, the improvements it has wrought have not been as immediately obvious and satisfying as those wrought by the simple inclusion of the DacMagic power supply supplied by custom audio cables.

As a side note, I’ve no doubt this is a fundamental part of the success of a number of DACs produced by independent, and usually quite small, companies, who may be skilled in analogue electronics but not digital, or vice versa. If they have a lot of experience in designing analogue equipment and can get a great sound by simply designing a great power supply and output stage around a digital board brought in from someone else, it’s a much easier endeavour than trying to achieve excellence in both digital and analogue parts of their DAC. Or, they’re great digital designers and get someone else to surround their tech with a power supply and analogue output stage and cabling. So, perhaps 60-70% of the sound of a DAC is in the implementation of the surrounding elements, 25-30% in the digital section (the DAC itself and the input receiver and clock) and 5-10% is ‘polish’ like cabling and casework and component positioning and circuit board material and so on.

The DacMagic is built to a price and comes with a wall-wart, that price gives you a lot of digital technology, so if the external power supply makes (say) a 20% improvement to its performance, primarily impacting the analogue elements of the design, you’ll see a 60%-70% * 20% or 12-14% improvement in the sound from the custom hifi cables power supply, which is entirely noticeable and correlates with what I’m hearing.

Whereas the Audiophilleo makes its’ 20% improvement to a 25% part of the system, the digital section, and now you’re talking about a 25-30% * 20% = 4-6% improvement to the sound, much harder to hear.

This is all conjecture of course. But it seems to make sense!

In any case, I continue to listen to music in the background whilst reading or writing or working, and taking the time to pay attention to what’s going on without being able to more the sofa into its’ prime position and take notes. I don’t feel it’s necessary; a Gentleman Audiophile doesn’t always need to so analytical if he is in tune with his system, and I’ve been listening daily whilst letting it run in.

So I am now sure that the Audiophilleo does no harm compared to the optical cable I had before. It is at least as musical, if not more exciting in a less brash way. The positive aspects include more detail, richness of tone and realism to stringed instruments and piano, and more height and width and depth to the soundstage (not that this is terribly important to me). With performers now spaced slightly further apart and/or further back, and more space and relaxation to how they are performing, it might be possible that they lose their coherence and drive, but that seems not to be happening; I am hearing more of the recording and losing none of the timing.

Importantly, it is smoother and more liquid and real sounding than the optical cable, which sounds brash and hard and ‘glassy’ in comparison. As the Audiophilleo has run in, these traits have become more and more obvious such that it is now clearly a backwards step to switch back to optical.

Is it worth the money? Well, in the context of the Linn Philosophy of ‘garbage in, garbage out’, having a clear improvement in transport quality and thus DAC performance must be a factor in future upgrades. Some history – due to a recent house move, the PHY speaker cable I used to use is no longer long enough to reach the Duos in their current position, which is dictated by their sympathetic integration into the room and the need to see the garden and not have them dominate the available space; in the corners they must go.

The PHY cable is fairly unique and I regret the recent death of Bernard Salibert and how he might have improved his design. They are solid-core OFC copper, silver plated and then wrapped in cotton. They are stiff and unwieldy and, despite this, very transparent, detailed and capable of transmitting a lot of emotion. But, not long enough.

When I moved, I realised I now needed double the length I had available, in order to be able to tuck the cable around the sides of the room and, ultimately, conceal them behind the skirting boards. We were moving house and busy after the move so, to get some sounds without speculatively spending hundreds on an unknown cable I would be unable to home dem (few dealers have a spare 11m stereo pair for demo, and I had no real time to expend trialling) nor willing nor able to splurge the stratospheric sums PHY cable now commands, I just plumped for some ‘722 strand’ no name OFC copper cable at £40 for 30 metres from eBay.

It sounds fine. Not brilliant, fairly musical, but clearly incapable of the delicacy, detail and natural tonality of the PHY. But, at some point, I will need to replace the speaker cable and get some home demos in, somehow, to enable me to replace the eBay stuff and further improve projection, clarity and so on.

Not only that, but Tron also produce speaker cable, made of pure silver in a cotton sheath, and sounding fantastic in GTs demo room; this and their interconnects is the same cable used in the silver wiring of the internals of my Discovery power amp. One must have something to aspire to!

Hence, if cabling will change in future, and transparency leap forwards as a result, I can confidently state the Audiophilleo is the best device to set the computer audio part of my system up to suit, being able to extract the smoothest and most natural sound (by a few degrees, at least) from my current DAC.

Next question – does it sound as good as a dedicated CD transport? I can’t yet answer that – I am arranging a comparison between the Audiophilleo into my Macbook Pro, and the Audio Note transport my pal owns which, despite dubious build and susceptibility to electrical interference, has been best so far. With an ‘average’ transport like the Oppo I would say the Audiophilleo was musically on par, and technically slightly superior, so we will see!