Digital Processor Reviews

That was through the super-transparent Voxativs. Now seemed like a good time to try the Fezz through my forever reference Falcon Gold Badges. Every time I go back to these speakers, it feels more like a marriage, with decades of memories to use as comparison fodder.

I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole
You can blame it on the sound quality of the Fezz Equinox or the persuasiveness of Alex Halberstadt—take your pick—but during this review period I climbed off my high horse and accepted Merle Haggard as my three-in-the-morning savior. Alex helped me recognize Merle as a singer-songwriter at the Hank Williams–Johnny Cash level of divinity.

When I decided to buy a Merle LP, I went on Qobuz to see which album I wanted to start with. Naturally, I chose the one with the most songs I already knew and liked, Mama Tried/Pride in What I Am (16/44.1 FLAC Capital Nashville/Qobuz). Via streaming, I expected that remastered Merle would not show all the biting, edgy darkness of the LP (Capital ST 2972), but the Merle sound I heard from Qobuz was smooth and deliciously balanced. Via the Fezz, "streamed from my computer" Merle Haggard was livelier, more engaging, and more transparent than I imagined it ever could be.

With the Fezz DAC, Merle's voice was smooth and clear and California suave. It was hard to stop listening without listening to all 29 tracks. As much as Alex Halberstadt encouraged me to listen deeper—past my biases—it was the Equinox's way with tone, texture, and tempo that convinced me to love Merle Haggard.

The first thing I noticed playing Merle through HoloAudio's Spring 3 LTE was how on every track it seemed like someone had moved the recording studio's reverb-sliders up three notches. The Spring 3's penchant for putting out 'verb made the Mama Tried recording sound thicker and darker and placed Haggard and his band against a pulsing wall of vintage studio reverb that I found quite appealing. Counterintuitively, the solid state Spring 3 played wetter and more tubelike than the crisper, cleaner-sounding, tubed Equinox.

Both DACs punched hard and moved the beat forward with élan. Neither DAC emphasized hi-fi sound over poetic content. Both made me love Merle. Both preserved the tender fragile parts of his voice. Both made me think George Jones was sometimes doubling Merle's voice on "Teach Me to Forget." The Equinox's greater resolution confirmed that hypothesis. Compared to the fit-sounding Fezz, the Spring 3 felt plump, with more flesh through the vocal range and rosier cheeks.

Through Elekit 300Bs
The more components I audition, the more I recognize how much system-based variables affect my perceptions. For example, when I switched from the First Watt SIT-4 to the Elekit TU-8900, that extra plumpness I observed with the Spring 3 went away. Now, the Equinox felt meatier and fuller-toned than the HoloAudio DAC. Go figure.

I'm switching things around so much because I'm trying to find those Fezz-DAC performance characteristics that might float above the variables and transfer to your system.

The Fezz trait that has stood out with every combination I tried was its fit, well-toned clarity, which hangs recorded sounds on a distinctly architectural matrix—a lot like the dCS Lina DAC. The chief difference was that the Fezz Equinox presented recorded data on a starker, simpler matrix than the dCS Ring DAC, which puts more vital microdetailed energy in the empty spaces.

To examine this energy-in-empty-spaces phenomenon more closely, I played one of Kavichandran Alexander's supreme accomplishments, from 1992: his recording Kalyani on his record label Water Lily Acoustics (WLA-ES-19-CD). Kalyani features two examples of Karnãtak music from South India. In the accompanying notes, Kavi describes these passionately executed compositions as "a micro-tonal, modal art form built upon a highly developed theoretical foundation, with melody and rhythm as its two vectors. Stemming primarily from a vocal tradition rooted in mystical poetry and consisting of a vast body of art songs of a religious nature known as krti, Kalyani embodies a purely South Indian ethos." Regular readers know how much I admire Kavi's ability to make analog recordings with pinnacle-level sound quality using custom-built microphones and electronics by the late Tim de Paravicini including a custom-built, 1", two-track recorder.

Spun on Teac's VRDS-701T CD transport and processed inside the Fezz Equinox, this was the sound and art moment that showed me what an extraordinary value this processor brings to home audio. It costs $2995, and it played people's music from India, California, and New York like a five-figure processor.

Playing Karnãtak music, the level and intensity of vital energy was completely as it should be: mesmeric. With electrifying, high-speed momentum that through the Equinox sounded as finely and expressively rendered as I've ever heard on a dynamic—not electrostatic—loudspeaker.

The first time I heard this recording was at Kavi Alexander's studio in Santa Barbara, California. He played it through an Accuphase CD player into a pair of Stax ELS F81 electrostatic speakers driven by an Electron Kinetics amplifier. When the disc finished, no one moved, spoke, or looked at each other for at least a full minute. With that system, Kalyani occupied the room like ball lightning, dancing between the speakers. That dazzling effect was still there with the Fezz and the Falcons, but it sounded a bit more quotidian. So I decided to lose the compressed Falcons and try some uncompressed electrostatic headphones to see how much ball lightning the Fezz could deliver.

I connected the Equinox to Linear Tube Audio's Z10e integrated headphone and loudspeaker amplifier using AudioQuest Black Beauty interconnects, which specialize in letting vital energy pass through. The Falcons love this amp. So do my top in-house reference for what's really on the recording, Audeze's CRBN electrostatic headphones.

Switching to headphones always reminds me that when the musical performers are "over there" between my speakers, they are never full-size people in a full-size space. With the Z10e amp and CRBN headphones, I see something resembling what Kavi's microphones saw in the recording space with the musicians.

Just as artificial reverb formed a cushion behind Merle Haggard's band, Viji Subramaniam's droning tambura establishes a harmonic tree trunk of tonal and textural support for the rhythms and branching melodies in "Krti by Saint Tyãgarãja." The touchable quality of that tambura drone sound and its ability to let me see into its dimensionality and feel its energy are among the chief reasons this Red Book recording should be considered a masterpiece.

Playing through Audeze's CRBN electrostatic headphones, the Fezz Equinox made this Water Lily Acoustics recording seem completely revealed and utterly beautiful. Its gripping instrumental performances came through raw and direct, exposing its profoundly analog source.

Things are changing
Fezz Audio's Equinox DAC, which was designed by Lampizator's Łukasz Fikus, is the kind of forward-thinking product I am beginning to see as digital audio's next wave. It's a price-conscious reimagining of what an audiophile D/A converter needs to be. It is built to last and hold its value. It is simple to use, fashionable looking, and it delivers 80% (or more) of the sound quality you'd get with a DAC with a five-figure price tag. That's not bad for an amplifier company's first DAC.