1/31/2024 0 Comments Ps audio sprout![]() I connected it to my Harbeth M30.2 speakers with Triode Wire Labs American cables, to the Mac mini with an AudioQuest Cinnamon USB link, and to my Linn LP12 turntable with SME M2-9 tonearm. The tiny PS Audio looked disarmingly unserious sitting atop the heavy, monolithic blackness of the Stereo 100. It replaced a HoloAudio Spring "Kitsuné Tuned Edition" Level 3 DAC, and Rogue Audio's RH-5 preamp and Stereo 100 power amp. I wondered how the Sprout100 would sound in my reference system. With or without bass boost, it liked radio and streaming, and was totally comfortable driving the Dynaudio Excites. While listening to New York's WFMU, I realized that the Sprout100 is basically a damn good desktop amplifier. The Sprout100 loved my Kenwood KT-990D AM/FM tuner. Finally, I began to really dig this thing. Whose idea was that? If the user ever discovers this (who reads product manuals?) and wants to make it go away, said user must push in the Volume/On/Off knob and hold it there a few seconds, until the teeny-tiny indicator light turns from white to blue.īass boost gone, my Amazon and YouTube videos were less enjoyablebut music streamed from Tidal sounded more balanced, more properly detailed. I listened a lot using Sony's MDR-Z1R and Focal's Clear headphones plugged into the Sprout100's phone-plug headphone jack: the sound wasn't as crisp, detailed, or transparent as the Mytek≫el Canto combo, but was smooth and laid-back, never sharp or annoying.Ī few days of happy listening later, I began reading the Sprout100's owner's manual and discovered that, like the original Sprout, the Sprout100's bass boost is automatically engaged at turn-onit's the default setting. I noticed also how the Sprout100 seemed quieter than the Sprout. The Excite 14s were happy with the Sprout100's greater power, and showed it when I watched director Sion Sono's Tokyo Vampire Hotel (Amazon Video). I was immediately impressed by the smooth and surprisingly full quality of the sound. (Vexingly, the Sprout had no power-indicator light.) The Sprout100 comes with a small but handsome brushed-aluminum remote-control handset with controls for On/Off, Volume, and Mute.Īfter a few days of warmup, the Sprout replaced my superfine daily driver desktop system: a Mytek Brooklyn DACheadphone amplifier fed by my Mac mini computer running Audirvana Plus 3.5, plugged into (don't laugh) a pair of Bel Canto Design e.One REF600M monoblocks driving a pair of Dynaudio Excite X14 loudspeakers. New on the right side of the front panel are two little dots: the bottom one is an IR sensor for the remote the tinier one, at top, lights up when the Sprout100 is powered on. Good-quality banana-to-spade/bare-wire adapters are included. Happily, the Sprout100 features banana-plugonly speaker terminals. I fondly remember trying, unsuccessfully, to connect audiophile spade lugs to the Sprout's "five-way" binding posts. The Input knob's selectionsVinyl, Analog, Digital, Bluetoothare unchanged, but the line-level Analog input used to be fed by a 3.5mm jack in the back now it's fed by a pair of conventional RCA jacks. And now the right-hand knob, for Volume, does double duty as an on/off pushbutton (the original Sprout's power switch was a tiny rocker on its rear panel). But the two front-panel knobs are now shiny and round, instead of brushed and rectangular. The Sprout100 is housed in the same case as the Sprout, and retains that motel-paneling flourish on its top. The Sprout had USB and coaxial digital inputs the Sprout100 has USB but trades coax for optical (TosLink). The new chip handles DSD128 data and 24-bit/384kHz PCM (the Wolfson stopped at 24/192). The main sonic improvement is a newer DAC chip: An ESS Sabre 9016 replaces the Sprout's Wolfson 8524. It also doubles the Sprout's class-D power output into 4 ohms, from 50 to 100Wpc (or 50Wpc into 8 ohms), and adds a few sonic and mechanical enhancements. It fixes a few of the old Sprout's weirdnesses: no power-on indicator light, no remote control, five-way binding posts that weren't really five-way. The original PS Audio Sprout, which I reviewed in the May 2015 issue, showed newcomers an easier, smaller way to amplify music recordings in the home.
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