The Gryphon Commander Preamplifier receives its first-ever review by Michael Fremer of the Stereophile Magazine.
How Gryphon Built the Perfect Preamplifier
Since Gryphon Audio Designs was founded nearly 40 years ago, their philosophy has remained constant: the relentless pursuit of sonic perfection without commercial compromises in design, construction, or cost. All Gryphon products have been conceived in this same perfectionist spirit: uncompromising engineering in the service of music. Impeccable build quality complemented by our original, highly refined “Nordic Noir” aesthetic sensibility and absolute simplicity of use.
Product Description
Gryphon Audio Designs' starting point for the Commander was their extraordinary Pandora, widely regarded as one of the world’s finest preamplifiers. The Gryphon Commander preamplifier shares Pandora’s Dual-Mono layout with separate chassis for signal and power supply circuitry. Pandora’s single-ended Class A input buffer is retained, as it offers the compelling advantage of passing the signal through the smallest possible number of electrical components–two transistors and a single resistor–yielding a sound that is exceptionally transparent, fast, natural, and open. Neither preamplifier employs any global negative feedback.
Naturally, Commander embodies major advances in many sonically-critical areas, including a high-precision, extremely low noise voltage reference in connection with the analog series regulators which supply the amplifier stages. The Commander’s voltage reference has approximately 50 times lower noise than the already-excellent reference used in Pandora! A pair of fully discrete, linear power supplies feed each channel’s analog circuit while a third is dedicated to the digital control circuitry, thus maintaining absolute mechanical separation and electrical isolation between digital and analog sections.
With the Gryphon Commander preamplifier, you’re in control! The culmination of four decades of philosophies, design goals, and engineering expertise are fully realized in Commander: the most advanced preamplifier ever made.
Without further ado, the glowing review by Stereophile Magazine:
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