STEREO ORTHOPHONIC

I’m not exactly an audiophile: I don’t even own a stereo in the proper sense of the word. All I have is an iMac, an iPod, a modest array of headphones, and two entry-level components: The HeadRoom Total BitHead and the NuForce Icon uDac-2. Yet I’m spoiled in a sense I remember very clearly the listening session I once had in a hi-fi showroom, when I fell in love with the signature of handmade-in-Estonia speakers — Audes Excellence. Pleasingly retro and convincingly three-dimensional, they were miles ahead from the sonics of my regular audio setup. It was not until yesterday that I found a desktop solution on a par to the Audes experience:

AIFF audio file — stock USB cable — Icon uDac-2 — Chord iChord 3.5mm to RCA interconnect *) — Total BitHead — Sennheiser HD595.

*) From a purist’s viewpoint, using any interconnect the wrong way is anathema to high fidelity, yet it doesn’t offend my hearing in any way.