I actually enjoy Srajan's writing but I also find myself reading more closely to make sure I understand the context. I find him to be a thoughtful reviewer and I appreciate how he usually tries the reviewed component with a variety of gear, and usually compares to other similar gear he either owns or has reviewed.
In the case of this Pasithea review, I did not find it to be a clear slam dunk. On one hand he said,
I too reviewed the Morpheus, reviewed/owned the Terminator, now own the Terminator+ and rate all three as highly as my colleagues do. You already know my sentiments on Pasithea eclipsing the Denefrips flagship…Nothing more definitive can be said when I’ve not reviewed John’s and Michael’s top decks. I’d simply suggest that this latest Cees box probably belongs side by side with them or at least gets close…Either way would mark nice savings for going Dutch and throw in remote-controlled lossless volume control.
So, he is saying "better than Terminator+," "in the same ballpark with Mola Mola Tambaqui and dCS Bartok," and "a great value" but the confusing part for me becomes the absence of a Blue Moon Award, and what that means relative to his overall impression of the DAC, especially after awarding the Morpheus a Blue Moon. He could have awarded it on the basis of "punches above its weight" or "tone with resolution at lower power" or something else.
I would like to hear the Pasithea since I owned both the Metrum Pavane and Adagio - and Srajan said, "In my little black book, Cees Ruijtenberg has now wholly eclipsed his best-ever work at Metrum." I thought the Pavane sounded best of the Metrum DACs in my system. Although the volume control on the Adagio was "lossless," it was implemented at a higher output voltage 4V than the Pavane 2V and IMO whatever they did to the Adagio sounded slightly different than what I heard from the Pavane. In addition, for the Adagio to sound its best, I still used a buffer between that DAC and my amps. I like how Cees has offered a -10dB switch for folks using a preamp and I wish he had provided a method of totally bypassing the volume control. I also wish the display were bigger and easier to read.
