Odyssey Audio Kismet Monos

A portion of Odyssey Audio Kismet Monos review by Nicholas Bedworth of 6moons

For full the full review and more photos, please click on this link:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/odyssey2/1.html 

Introduction: 
At its core, music is a form of human behavior that reaches deep into our hearts and minds and transports us beyond the hum-drum of daily existence to a space where we are somehow much more alive, aware and sentient. Whether it’s the focus, intensity and dynamics of a jazz club, the secular apotheosis of a major orchestra in full roar or the swirl and haze of a raunchy honkytonk, music gives us a range of inner experiences that although somewhat difficult to describe are very real indeed.

Klaus Bunge, prime mover behind Odyssey Audio, wants to bring all the emotion and engagement of real music into your home and is a person on a musical mission. Located in the peaceful American Midwestern burg of Indianapolis, the company revolves around products that can make high-end sound eminently affordable. Hailing from the ancient city-state of Hanover, Klaus is a repurposed historian and political scientist from the University of Wisconsin who leveraged his relationships in Germany to become, in 1988, the United States importer for Rolf Gemein’s highly-regarded Symphonic Line. This initial venture German Acoustics gradually evolved into Odyssey which now manufactures under license modified and enhanced versions of Symphonic Line amplifiers and preamps.

Odyssey Audio is essentially a mom'n'pop family business with Klaus and his wife Irina (from Minsk in the Belarus) managing operations and assembling amplifiers. A couple of close friends handle the preamps and service. Klaus is known for working the afternoon, evening and graveyard shifts, putting in 16-18 hour days and often responds to e-mails and phone calls in the wee hours. True to form he went over the technical specifications for this review at 2:00am while driving across the seemingly endless hinterlands of Kansas with Irina, a trailer full of gear and various pets on the way back from RMAF 2010. It is also probably one of the few high-end companies one can call at say 11:30 pm on a Sunday night and expect a helpful person to answer. The Kismet resulted from four years of listening, tweaking and listening again. Its final form represents a considerable evolution of the basic circuit. Every amplifier is hand-assembled and the overall build quality is exemplary as a cursory inspection under the hood quickly reveals. The first thing one notices is that in contrast with the layout and cabling of today’s digital devices, power amplifiers appear to be relatively simple affairs. The parts remind me of a high-school electronics lab—discrete resistors, inductors, voltage regulators, capacitors, and large power transistors—without a single programmable gate array or very-large-scale integrated circuit in sight.

The number of options combined with Klaus’ personal involvement in the sales process means that he’s essentially running a bespoke operation including biasing the output stages to match a customer’s speakers and listening preferences. One consequence of these methods compared to the never-ending stream of boxes coming out of Shenzen is that delivery of your new Odyssey amp might take a while.

Conclusion: At the not inexpensive $5,000 price level, several fine amplifiers are available, mostly stereo, which precludes the considerable advantages of monoblock architecture. And they usually don’t have the Kismet’s low-impedance power output or current, which are so beneficial for both the Ushers and the Sashas. From the relatively limited selection of similarly priced monoblock products, one might audition the Krell S-150m, the Rogue Audio M-Series or the PrimaLuna DiaLogue 7 to get a feel for how they all compare. Up at the very high end, the current international crop of truly marvelous reference-grade solid-state amplifiers—for example the Swiss Soulution, the Japanese Balabo, the American Mark Levinson—is staking out new territory with respect to realism and accuracy but keep in mind that the sales tax on any of these gems is more in many jurisdictions than a bespoke pair of Kismets delivered.

What do this new breed of fabulous amps do that the Kismets don’t? All these products extend and refine those basics of musicality the Kismets so admirably establish. And they combine the sonic virtues of solid state and tubes in a harmonious manner: They also offer holographic 3-D imaging, effortless orchestral peaks, that last measure of neutrality and more expansive soundstaging. Given their spectacular build quality and price, they should. Prices range from $40,000 to $75,000 and some weigh in at close to 200 pounds a side. For those wanting an initial tempting taste, the Kismets are a much more affordable way to cross that unmarked boundary in audio, the other side of which is realism. They will transport you to those lands where suspension of disbelief is the norm, where one can sit back and listen for hours to music rather than an audio system. And they do it without conspicuous shortcomings. With respect to the fundamentals of dynamics, tonal balance, transparency, soundstage and timbre, you’ll be over that invisible line by a considerable distance and may well not want to return. So why did Klaus chose the name Kismet which variously means destiny, fate, karma or luck and of course was also the title of long-running Broadway and West End musicals? Well, these were all part of it but rather characteristically Klaus says he just likes the way the word sounds...

Price: RM22,500 per pair