Listened to the Gryphon today. Compared it to a Luxman L-509X, Krell K-300i, and Esoteric F-03.
I used Magico A5 Speakers to test everything today and an Aurender A30 as the source.
The Diablo 300 really sounded great! Full, deep powerful bass, velvety vocals, excellent soundstage but the highs were just a bit too warm for me.
Luxman L-509X had the same everything the Diablo did but maybe a touch more bass and better highs. Beautiful craftsmanship and yes meters. I love meters on my equipment by the way. Don’t let the 120 watts X 2 fool you on this amp. It will 100% hang with the Diablo!
Krell K-300i- Very similar to the Luxman but I don’t feel had quite the bottom end of the Luxman and the Diablo. Excellent soundstage as well. A really great sounding integrated but just boring to look at.
The Esoteric had an insanely wide soundstage, there were times I swore there were speakers playing behind me. Overall the soundstage was horrible. You could hear the vocals coming out of the speakers. Not for me at all!
Last I listened to the Bel canto REF 600M. Yes they are class D, yes they are nothing to look at, but man do they sound good. It may have acutally sounded a touch better than the Luxman, maybe. If nothing else it sounded as good. I was really impressed with these little amps. But for this purchase I wanted a statement piece. So I passed on theses.
In the end I bought the Luxman. It was the lowest price of everything I’ve looked at. The McIntosh MA12000 was the sexiest amp, but it was to dull on the top. Accuphase is just to expensive for what it is, and was running out of power even though it was running smaller Dynaudio speakers yet the same watts as the Luxman.
The Luxman was lacking a DAC to play my Roon to so I bought the matching Luxman DO3X. Seeing that I didn’t need a streamer the shop I bought everything from (Chicago Precision Audio & Video Chicago) said this was the best bang for my buck and that it has a killer DAC! I have to agree. Everything is only at best a few hours old now, and it sounds great. It will only sound better and open up more as I get closer to that 200 hour mark.
I want to also thank Jay from Jays Audio Lab. I had a consultation with him earlier this week and he also really suggested I try the Luxman. The nice thing with living in Chicago is I can listen to just about anything. Either way, if you are in question about which way to go and want an unbiased opinion, Jay is worth every penny.
