2024 Golden Ear: Cabasse Abyss Integrated Streaming Amplifier

$1795

The Abyss from French speaker-maker Cabasse is a compact, easily used, and sonically satisfying streaming amplifier, which also allows analog input and non-streamed digital inputs. What makes it of truly exceptional interest is an abundance of user-adjustable DSP that deals effectively with fundamental audio issues often otherwise ignored. It has Fletcher-Munson compensation for level, tonal balance adjustment to fit room acoustics, including bass adjustment according to speaker positioning, and, for Cabasse speakers, amplitude smoothing and phase linearization. It has been almost three decades since Arion-Essex demonstrated the possibility of such speaker correction externally (REG, Issue 106). Here it is in a mainstream product and more power to Cabasse for creating a product that points the way to what ought to be the future. (346)