Reviewer: Paul Candy
Digital Source: CEC TL51X transport, Audiomat Tempo 2.6 DAC, HP laptop, Win 7/8, J. River Media Center 17, JPlay, John Kenny JKSPDIF Mk3 USB-SPDIF interface
Analog Source: Well-Tempered Lab Amadeus with DPS power supply, Pro-Ject Tube Box SE phono stage, Ortofon Rondo Blue MC cartridge
Amps: Audiomat Opéra Référence integrated
Speakers: Green Mountain Audio Callisto on sand filled Skylan stands, Capriccio Continuo Admonitor 311 [in for review],2 x REL Q108 Mk II subwoofers
Cables: MIT Magnum M1.3 interconnects & speaker cables, MIT Magnum digital cable, Sablon Audio Panatela interconnects and speaker cables [in for review], Wireworld Equinox 6 interconnects & speaker cables,Transparent Audio Performance USB cable.
AC Cables: MIT Magnum AC1, Wireworld Aurora 5² & Silver Electra 5², Sablon Audio Robusto & Gran Corona
Stands: Grand Prix Audio Monaco four-tier rack on APEX footers with silicon nitride bearings
Powerline conditioning: BPT Pure Power Center with Wattgate, Bybee Quantum Purifier and ERS cloth options, Blue Circle BC86 MK5, Blue Circle 6X & 12X AC Filters [on loan]
Sundry accessories: Acoustic Revive RR-77, Auric Illuminator, Audio Magic/Quantum Physics Noise Disruptors, Caig Pro Gold, Echo Busters acoustic room treatments, Isoclean fuses, HiFi Tuning Disc Demagnetizer, Nitty Gritty record cleaning machine, Soundcare Superspikes (on speaker stands), dedicated AC line with CruzeFIRST Audio Maestro outlets
Room size: 11 x 18 x 8’, long-wall setup, suspended hardwood floors with large area sisal rug, walls are standard drywall over Fiberglas insulation
Review Component Retail: CDN$7.199
Several months ago I reviewed the 24/192 DAC from Calyx Audio, a division of Korean firm Digital & Analog. While I thought highly of this fine DAC, there was clearly more Calyx could offer not just in performance but also on features. Their new statement Femto aims to address that. The Femto is a full-sized component with all the bells and whistles you could wish for. It also retails for well over three times the price. Would it be worth the additional outlay? Let’s find out.
Unfortunately my pictures do not fully demonstrate the Femto’s gorgeous build quality or serious heft. It definitely has the look and feel of a luxury product. The Femto clocks in at a whopping 18.5kg, measures 430 W x 102 H x 403.8mm D and sports some seriously thick beautifully machined aluminum. Its cork-lined feet, not the usual generic rubber variety, along with the massive aluminum panels indicate a strong effort by Calyx’s design team to addressing resonances which can have considerable impact on a component’s performance. This is the level of attention to detail I want to see if I’m asked to spend over $7.000 for a component. I hadn’t even listened to it yet and already wanted to whip out my cheque book.
A considerable improvement over the 24/192 are the Femto’s input options: two optical, two coaxial, two AES/EBU, one BNC and one USB. Both single-ended and balanced outputs complete the connectivity options. All inputs support sampling rates from 44.1kHz to 192kHz. For the USB connection Mac users are good to go while Windows users will need to install the included Thesycon driver on their PCs first to allow 24-bit/176.4kHz and 24-bit/192 kHz playback. It took all of a couple of minutes to install it. Just remember to install the driver prior to hooking up the Femto.
While the 24/192 had a single small LED on the front panel to indicate signal lock, the upscale Femto offers a large beautiful display with nicely subdued orange alphanumerics which are clearly visible from across the room. I remain baffled at the number of DACs, servers and the like which have dinky little displays to require a set of binoculars to make them out. Who designs this stuff?
The Femto’s display indicates selected input, digital filter setting, incoming sampling rate, polarity and volume level and is controlled by the cluster of small buttons on the right side of the front panel and also by the beautifully finished aluminum remote. So often otherwise nicely appointed audio equipment is tainted by the inclusion of some cheap off-the-shelf plastic remote. I was pleased to see Calyx avoid this.
The Femto’s digital volume control attenuates in 0.5dB increments to drive a power amp directly. Since I didn’t have a power amp on hand—my main amp is an integrated—I did not test this feature. The selectable digital filter offers a choice of three different low pass settings - 50, 60 or 70kHz. I stuck with the default 50kHz setting as it sounded more balanced. The other two tilted up the top end too far for my liking. The power switch is placed discretely on the left cheek, suggesting that the Femto should remain powered up for optimum performance.
The DAC chip is ESS Technology’s ES9018 Sabre as used already in the 24/192 though the Femto uses two, one per channel which should offer greater channel separation and dynamic range. As with the 24/192, the USB input uses the now ubiquitous XMOS chip set, which operates asynchronously i.e. the DAC controls the data flow instead of the computer. This supposedly offers lower jitter levels than the computer-controlled synchronous mode.
In case you’re wondering what Femto means, it is a direct reference to the claimed miniscule jitter levels of this clocking circuit, i.e. 500 femto seconds. One femto second is one quadrillionth (.000 000 000 000 001) of a second. Digital gear of recent vintage generally possesses jitter levels in the higher picosecond range but some newer products such as the Femto are pushing it lower still. Jitter is generally described as minute timing errors that contribute to the less than pleasant aspects of digital playback. To my ears, music played back with excessive jitter comes across as grainy, two-dimensional and lacking focus while the harmonic envelope of instruments and voices is smeared or plain clipped off. More importantly, jitter seems to affect the timing and flow of music. I am finding as I am sure many others have, that digital has improved dramatically in the last couple of years. It is finally offering some of the ease, flow and naturalness usually associated with decent vinyl playback. It’s these traits that so impressed me with the 24/192 DAC and to an even greater degree with the Femto.
Peering under the hood, the substantial linear power supply with separate transformers for the digital and analog sections sits in its own shielded enclosure away from the main circuit board. The 24/192 I reviewed used either the 5V supply from my laptop’s USB bus or a switch-mode wall wart. However, the 24/192 is now available with a more robust outboard linear power supply (CLPS). I had the opportunity to try one with the 24/192 after my review and it certainly pushed that DAC’s performance upward.
Those expecting to see an interior stuffed with discrete components might be disappointed with the Femto’s smallish board and use of surface-mount devices (SMD) although once hearing the Femto, any apprehension will surely evaporate. Dominating the board are three large milled-aluminum enclosures which contain Calyx’s impressively spec’d clocking circuits.
My primary source was a HP laptop running either Windows 7 or Windows 8 beta with J. River Media Center 17 and JPlay. All my music files are stored as WAV on an external FireWire-connected 1TB hard drive. I keep FLAC backups on a pair of portable USB hard drives. For the odd silver disc yet to be ripped I use my CEC TL-51X transport. All file-based music was played back natively without upsampling. I played recordings from 16-bit/44.1 up to 24-bit/192kHz and my comments below are not specific to any one bit rate/sampling frequency although the well-recorded high resolution stuff sounded absolutely terrific.
I tried a number of power cables and as expected each had an effect on the overall sound. There wasn’t a huge difference no doubt a tribute to the robustness of the Femto’s power supply but my overall favorite was Sablon Audio’s Gran Corona. The same was true with the Femto’s input circuitry. I found little difference between Transparent Audio and Cardas USB cables or with RCA leads from DH Labs, MIT and Sablon Audio. The Femto needed a few days of continuous play to fully come on song but the lovely silky smoothness of this machine was evident from the start.
Some of the music listened to while evaluating the Femto included a pair of awesome deals (under €10 each!) which I downloaded from Qobuz; an underrated yet wonderful set of all nine Beethoven symphonies with Andre Cluytens conducting the Berlin Philharmonic recorded before Herbie the K turned it into his sleek polished smooth-riding machine [EMI 16-bit/44.1kHz]; Samson Francois’s idiosyncratic readings of Debussy’s piano works [EMI 16-bit/44.1kHz]; Per Norgard’s otherworldly 3rd & 7th Symphonies [Da Capo 24-bit 96kHz]...
...long-time audio review reference and just plain fun Live at Fip from The Hadouk Trio [Melodie 16/44]; the 1990’s Screamadelica classic from Primal Scream; John Corigliano’s The Red Violin concerto [Naxos 24/96 WAV] and Jason Moran’s Ten [16/44].
The Femto had a laidback not-on-my-lap presentation. It possessed an exceptionally clean clear neutral tonal balance and was wonderfully revealing of musical nuance and micro detail. There wasn’t even a hint of glare or the glassy hardness one usually associates with digital.
I could hear the overall musical line in those Beethoven symphonies mentioned above as well as the tension and release behind the notes. Regardless of genre or complexity of the music, the notes made sense and flowed naturally. Quite often digital missteps in this regard by chopping up the line or flow like a rapidly alternating stop/go effect. The top end was sweet, airy and downright silky minus all traces of etch or brittleness. Nor was it rolled off. Bass weight, impact and articulation were superb and quite possibly the best I have yet heard from a DAC. Vocal and instrumental timbres were spot on. Images were sharper, more defined and fleshed out and perfectly integrated in the recorded ambiance. Thus playback came across coherent and real and less as an electronic illusion.
While I no longer had Calyx’s 24/192 DAC on hand, it was evident that it and the Femto were cut from the same sonic cloth. The overall balance, tonal neutrality and freedom from digitalitis were identical but the more expensive piece went even further.
The Femto surged ahead with a far wider deeper and more layered soundstage. And I mean huge. Granted, soundstaging or dimensionality aren’t exactly at the top of my playback priority list but I was certainly impressed and it only heightened the easy natural vibe of this DAC.
Little things like leading edges of notes and their subsequent decays were more apparent as were the dynamic gradations from soft to loud. Venue information if present was amazingly real and present. Clearly the Femto was resolving far more information than the 24/192. In fact its low-level resolution and the manner in which information is presented has to be experienced to be appreciated. It isn’t something I think will be readily noticeable in quick A/B comparisons. Instead it stealthily infiltrates your psyche like some audiophile fifth column. Give it a day or two and you’ll be completely subverted. On top of that I was experiencing a new plateau of ease and propulsion - what some refer to as PraT or pace, rhythm and timing. The Femto simply flowed. And at the risk of drawing death threats from some quarters; the Femto displayed a good deal of the forward momentum and sense of musical purpose of analog.
All things considered, listening to music through the Femto was easy relaxing and natural yet also compelling and exciting. Fatigue was never an issue. The Femto’s exceptional prowess in mining the depths of my recordings also meant that the lousy ones had nowhere to hide. This is what one should expect from a high-resolution component. You want the truth? Not to get all Jack Nicholson on you but I hope you can handle the truth the Femto will most certainly give to you. There was no soft Hollywood camera focus to hide sonic blemishes or wrinkles. Really gawd-awful recordings (the Stones’ Some Girls hi-rez remaster will do) still sounded like hammered shit but at least the Femto could salvage something musically useful and interesting out of such sonic excrement. I’m sure this is testament to what is probably a remarkably low noise floor and miniscule distortion.
When I reviewed the 24/192 DAC, the USB input was clearly superior to the S/PDIF. In fact I would not recommend the 24/192 for those looking to upgrade a CD/DVD/Blu-ray player. With the Femto the difference between the two inputs was still there but not nearly as pronounced and probably more attributable to which cables I used or other variables. Interestingly when I inserted John Kenny’s USB-S/PDIF converter between laptop and DAC, the S/PDIF input squeezed out a bit more texture and body than direct USB. I cannot definitively say why but it frankly wasn’t enough of a difference where I’d eschew direct USB. Why add more boxes and cables when you don’t have to? Whatever your source or connection method, the Femto should serve you well.
Compared against my Audiomat Tempo 2.6 DAC, the Femto was more laid back and cooler but had greater focus and transparency to the back of the stage. The Tempo was bigger bolder more forward and immediate. That said the Femto took the gold on micro resolution of low-level detail and ambient retrieval. The Femto was definitely one of those products which take you back to the studio rather than bringing the performance into your room. Put differently, the Femto was more nuanced and sophisticated whereas the Tempo was meatier and more visceral.
While the Tempo goes the discrete component route along with copious use of capacitance in its power supply and analog filtering stage, my sense is that the Femto is the more advanced piece digitally. It extracted more from my recordings than the Tempo and did so without sounding sterile of analytical. However I’m convinced that the Tempo’s greater textural fidelity and richer sound is due to Audiomat’s dogged determination to keep things discrete from DAC chip to output jacks. It’s a similar aspect I have noticed in other DACs that go discrete. Then again I’ve spoken with a number of manufacturers over the years who maintain that a carefully laid-out board with SMDs is the way to go. It would seem the folks at Calyx agree. As with everything in audio, there are many roads to Rome. Take your pick.
In conclusion, the Femto is a wonderfully built full-featured DAC that came across clean clear and revealing but also with an unprecedented naturalness and convincing sense of flow. It gave me the detail and the luv. The Femto was superior to the $2.149 24/192 in every way: build quality, features, performance and pride of ownership. Did it sound three times better? I think it’s silly trying to put a numerical value on a product’s performance. Is Renoir three times better than Degas? Determining value is a personal issue. In my neck of the woods the Femto was deemed worthy the additional dosh and I suspect it might embarrass several of the more expensive DACs. Still, a buck shy of $7.200 is a considerable sum for any digital component be it DAC, server or streamer all of which are increasingly mirroring the state-of-the-art today/obsolete tomorrow world of computers and handheld devices. That said, in the here and now the Femto demands a spot on your audition list. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and very nearly pulled the trigger on purchasing one for myself. It’s a hottie.
Quality of packing: Excellent.
Reusability of packing: Seems reusable several times.
Quality of owner's manual: Everything you need but an explanation of the digital filter settings would be welcome.
Condition of component received: Outstanding.
Completeness of delivery: No issues.
Website comments: Okay but nothing special.
Human interactions: Professional, friendly and accommodating as always with this Canadian distributor.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor.
Pricing: Does not offer the same bang for your dollar as the 24/192 model but the really good things in high-end audio as in any other hobby rarely come cheap.
Final comments & suggestions: With the inclusion of the onboard volume control, why not gild the lily and include one or more analog line inputs?
Calyx responds.
“Thank you for your great review. I would like to add something to your final comments & suggestions. As you describe, including more line inputs on the Femto would be “gilding the lily”. Femto was designed to maximally exploit the space of its chassis and there is no more room on the PCB or back panel. For users who want line inputs as you suggested, we are preparing a matching preamplifier and you will see and listen to the Femto preamplifier next year.
Regards,
Seungmok Yi"
Reviewer: Paul Candy
Digital Source: CEC TL51X transport, Audiomat Tempo 2.6 DAC, HP laptop, Win 7/8, J. River Media Center 17, JPlay, John Kenny JKSPDIF Mk3 USB-SPDIF interface
Analog Source: Well-Tempered Lab Amadeus with DPS power supply, Pro-Ject Tube Box SE phono stage, Ortofon Rondo Blue MC cartridge
Amps: Audiomat Opéra Référence integrated
Speakers: Green Mountain Audio Callisto on sand filled Skylan stands, Capriccio Continuo Admonitor 311 [in for review],2 x REL Q108 Mk II subwoofers
Cables: MIT Magnum M1.3 interconnects & speaker cables, MIT Magnum digital cable, Sablon Audio Panatela interconnects and speaker cables [in for review], Wireworld Equinox 6 interconnects & speaker cables,Transparent Audio Performance USB cable.
AC Cables: MIT Magnum AC1, Wireworld Aurora 5² & Silver Electra 5², Sablon Audio Robusto & Gran Corona
Stands: Grand Prix Audio Monaco four-tier rack on APEX footers with silicon nitride bearings
Powerline conditioning: BPT Pure Power Center with Wattgate, Bybee Quantum Purifier and ERS cloth options, Blue Circle BC86 MK5, Blue Circle 6X & 12X AC Filters [on loan]
Sundry accessories: Acoustic Revive RR-77, Auric Illuminator, Audio Magic/Quantum Physics Noise Disruptors, Caig Pro Gold, Echo Busters acoustic room treatments, Isoclean fuses, HiFi Tuning Disc Demagnetizer, Nitty Gritty record cleaning machine, Soundcare Superspikes (on speaker stands), dedicated AC line with CruzeFIRST Audio Maestro outlets
Room size: 11 x 18 x 8’, long-wall setup, suspended hardwood floors with large area sisal rug, walls are standard drywall over Fiberglas insulation
Review Component Retail: CDN$7.199
Several months ago I reviewed the 24/192 DAC from Calyx Audio, a division of Korean firm Digital & Analog. While I thought highly of this fine DAC, there was clearly more Calyx could offer not just in performance but also on features. Their new statement Femto aims to address that. The Femto is a full-sized component with all the bells and whistles you could wish for. It also retails for well over three times the price. Would it be worth the additional outlay? Let’s find out.
Unfortunately my pictures do not fully demonstrate the Femto’s gorgeous build quality or serious heft. It definitely has the look and feel of a luxury product. The Femto clocks in at a whopping 18.5kg, measures 430 W x 102 H x 403.8mm D and sports some seriously thick beautifully machined aluminum. Its cork-lined feet, not the usual generic rubber variety, along with the massive aluminum panels indicate a strong effort by Calyx’s design team to addressing resonances which can have considerable impact on a component’s performance. This is the level of attention to detail I want to see if I’m asked to spend over $7.000 for a component. I hadn’t even listened to it yet and already wanted to whip out my cheque book.
A considerable improvement over the 24/192 are the Femto’s input options: two optical, two coaxial, two AES/EBU, one BNC and one USB. Both single-ended and balanced outputs complete the connectivity options. All inputs support sampling rates from 44.1kHz to 192kHz. For the USB connection Mac users are good to go while Windows users will need to install the included Thesycon driver on their PCs first to allow 24-bit/176.4kHz and 24-bit/192 kHz playback. It took all of a couple of minutes to install it. Just remember to install the driver prior to hooking up the Femto.
While the 24/192 had a single small LED on the front panel to indicate signal lock, the upscale Femto offers a large beautiful display with nicely subdued orange alphanumerics which are clearly visible from across the room. I remain baffled at the number of DACs, servers and the like which have dinky little displays to require a set of binoculars to make them out. Who designs this stuff?
The Femto’s display indicates selected input, digital filter setting, incoming sampling rate, polarity and volume level and is controlled by the cluster of small buttons on the right side of the front panel and also by the beautifully finished aluminum remote. So often otherwise nicely appointed audio equipment is tainted by the inclusion of some cheap off-the-shelf plastic remote. I was pleased to see Calyx avoid this.
The Femto’s digital volume control attenuates in 0.5dB increments to drive a power amp directly. Since I didn’t have a power amp on hand—my main amp is an integrated—I did not test this feature. The selectable digital filter offers a choice of three different low pass settings - 50, 60 or 70kHz. I stuck with the default 50kHz setting as it sounded more balanced. The other two tilted up the top end too far for my liking. The power switch is placed discretely on the left cheek, suggesting that the Femto should remain powered up for optimum performance.
The DAC chip is ESS Technology’s ES9018 Sabre as used already in the 24/192 though the Femto uses two, one per channel which should offer greater channel separation and dynamic range. As with the 24/192, the USB input uses the now ubiquitous XMOS chip set, which operates asynchronously i.e. the DAC controls the data flow instead of the computer. This supposedly offers lower jitter levels than the computer-controlled synchronous mode.
In case you’re wondering what Femto means, it is a direct reference to the claimed miniscule jitter levels of this clocking circuit, i.e. 500 femto seconds. One femto second is one quadrillionth (.000 000 000 000 001) of a second. Digital gear of recent vintage generally possesses jitter levels in the higher picosecond range but some newer products such as the Femto are pushing it lower still. Jitter is generally described as minute timing errors that contribute to the less than pleasant aspects of digital playback. To my ears, music played back with excessive jitter comes across as grainy, two-dimensional and lacking focus while the harmonic envelope of instruments and voices is smeared or plain clipped off. More importantly, jitter seems to affect the timing and flow of music. I am finding as I am sure many others have, that digital has improved dramatically in the last couple of years. It is finally offering some of the ease, flow and naturalness usually associated with decent vinyl playback. It’s these traits that so impressed me with the 24/192 DAC and to an even greater degree with the Femto.
Peering under the hood, the substantial linear power supply with separate transformers for the digital and analog sections sits in its own shielded enclosure away from the main circuit board. The 24/192 I reviewed used either the 5V supply from my laptop’s USB bus or a switch-mode wall wart. However, the 24/192 is now available with a more robust outboard linear power supply (CLPS). I had the opportunity to try one with the 24/192 after my review and it certainly pushed that DAC’s performance upward.
Those expecting to see an interior stuffed with discrete components might be disappointed with the Femto’s smallish board and use of surface-mount devices (SMD) although once hearing the Femto, any apprehension will surely evaporate. Dominating the board are three large milled-aluminum enclosures which contain Calyx’s impressively spec’d clocking circuits.
My primary source was a HP laptop running either Windows 7 or Windows 8 beta with J. River Media Center 17 and JPlay. All my music files are stored as WAV on an external FireWire-connected 1TB hard drive. I keep FLAC backups on a pair of portable USB hard drives. For the odd silver disc yet to be ripped I use my CEC TL-51X transport. All file-based music was played back natively without upsampling. I played recordings from 16-bit/44.1 up to 24-bit/192kHz and my comments below are not specific to any one bit rate/sampling frequency although the well-recorded high resolution stuff sounded absolutely terrific.
I tried a number of power cables and as expected each had an effect on the overall sound. There wasn’t a huge difference no doubt a tribute to the robustness of the Femto’s power supply but my overall favorite was Sablon Audio’s Gran Corona. The same was true with the Femto’s input circuitry. I found little difference between Transparent Audio and Cardas USB cables or with RCA leads from DH Labs, MIT and Sablon Audio. The Femto needed a few days of continuous play to fully come on song but the lovely silky smoothness of this machine was evident from the start.
Some of the music listened to while evaluating the Femto included a pair of awesome deals (under €10 each!) which I downloaded from Qobuz; an underrated yet wonderful set of all nine Beethoven symphonies with Andre Cluytens conducting the Berlin Philharmonic recorded before Herbie the K turned it into his sleek polished smooth-riding machine [EMI 16-bit/44.1kHz]; Samson Francois’s idiosyncratic readings of Debussy’s piano works [EMI 16-bit/44.1kHz]; Per Norgard’s otherworldly 3rd & 7th Symphonies [Da Capo 24-bit 96kHz]...
...long-time audio review reference and just plain fun Live at Fip from The Hadouk Trio [Melodie 16/44]; the 1990’s Screamadelica classic from Primal Scream; John Corigliano’s The Red Violin concerto [Naxos 24/96 WAV] and Jason Moran’s Ten [16/44].
The Femto had a laidback not-on-my-lap presentation. It possessed an exceptionally clean clear neutral tonal balance and was wonderfully revealing of musical nuance and micro detail. There wasn’t even a hint of glare or the glassy hardness one usually associates with digital.
I could hear the overall musical line in those Beethoven symphonies mentioned above as well as the tension and release behind the notes. Regardless of genre or complexity of the music, the notes made sense and flowed naturally. Quite often digital missteps in this regard by chopping up the line or flow like a rapidly alternating stop/go effect. The top end was sweet, airy and downright silky minus all traces of etch or brittleness. Nor was it rolled off. Bass weight, impact and articulation were superb and quite possibly the best I have yet heard from a DAC. Vocal and instrumental timbres were spot on. Images were sharper, more defined and fleshed out and perfectly integrated in the recorded ambiance. Thus playback came across coherent and real and less as an electronic illusion.
While I no longer had Calyx’s 24/192 DAC on hand, it was evident that it and the Femto were cut from the same sonic cloth. The overall balance, tonal neutrality and freedom from digitalitis were identical but the more expensive piece went even further.
The Femto surged ahead with a far wider deeper and more layered soundstage. And I mean huge. Granted, soundstaging or dimensionality aren’t exactly at the top of my playback priority list but I was certainly impressed and it only heightened the easy natural vibe of this DAC.
Little things like leading edges of notes and their subsequent decays were more apparent as were the dynamic gradations from soft to loud. Venue information if present was amazingly real and present. Clearly the Femto was resolving far more information than the 24/192. In fact its low-level resolution and the manner in which information is presented has to be experienced to be appreciated. It isn’t something I think will be readily noticeable in quick A/B comparisons. Instead it stealthily infiltrates your psyche like some audiophile fifth column. Give it a day or two and you’ll be completely subverted. On top of that I was experiencing a new plateau of ease and propulsion - what some refer to as PraT or pace, rhythm and timing. The Femto simply flowed. And at the risk of drawing death threats from some quarters; the Femto displayed a good deal of the forward momentum and sense of musical purpose of analog.
All things considered, listening to music through the Femto was easy relaxing and natural yet also compelling and exciting. Fatigue was never an issue. The Femto’s exceptional prowess in mining the depths of my recordings also meant that the lousy ones had nowhere to hide. This is what one should expect from a high-resolution component. You want the truth? Not to get all Jack Nicholson on you but I hope you can handle the truth the Femto will most certainly give to you. There was no soft Hollywood camera focus to hide sonic blemishes or wrinkles. Really gawd-awful recordings (the Stones’ Some Girls hi-rez remaster will do) still sounded like hammered shit but at least the Femto could salvage something musically useful and interesting out of such sonic excrement. I’m sure this is testament to what is probably a remarkably low noise floor and miniscule distortion.
When I reviewed the 24/192 DAC, the USB input was clearly superior to the S/PDIF. In fact I would not recommend the 24/192 for those looking to upgrade a CD/DVD/Blu-ray player. With the Femto the difference between the two inputs was still there but not nearly as pronounced and probably more attributable to which cables I used or other variables. Interestingly when I inserted John Kenny’s USB-S/PDIF converter between laptop and DAC, the S/PDIF input squeezed out a bit more texture and body than direct USB. I cannot definitively say why but it frankly wasn’t enough of a difference where I’d eschew direct USB. Why add more boxes and cables when you don’t have to? Whatever your source or connection method, the Femto should serve you well.
Compared against my Audiomat Tempo 2.6 DAC, the Femto was more laid back and cooler but had greater focus and transparency to the back of the stage. The Tempo was bigger bolder more forward and immediate. That said the Femto took the gold on micro resolution of low-level detail and ambient retrieval. The Femto was definitely one of those products which take you back to the studio rather than bringing the performance into your room. Put differently, the Femto was more nuanced and sophisticated whereas the Tempo was meatier and more visceral.
While the Tempo goes the discrete component route along with copious use of capacitance in its power supply and analog filtering stage, my sense is that the Femto is the more advanced piece digitally. It extracted more from my recordings than the Tempo and did so without sounding sterile of analytical. However I’m convinced that the Tempo’s greater textural fidelity and richer sound is due to Audiomat’s dogged determination to keep things discrete from DAC chip to output jacks. It’s a similar aspect I have noticed in other DACs that go discrete. Then again I’ve spoken with a number of manufacturers over the years who maintain that a carefully laid-out board with SMDs is the way to go. It would seem the folks at Calyx agree. As with everything in audio, there are many roads to Rome. Take your pick.
In conclusion, the Femto is a wonderfully built full-featured DAC that came across clean clear and revealing but also with an unprecedented naturalness and convincing sense of flow. It gave me the detail and the luv. The Femto was superior to the $2.149 24/192 in every way: build quality, features, performance and pride of ownership. Did it sound three times better? I think it’s silly trying to put a numerical value on a product’s performance. Is Renoir three times better than Degas? Determining value is a personal issue. In my neck of the woods the Femto was deemed worthy the additional dosh and I suspect it might embarrass several of the more expensive DACs. Still, a buck shy of $7.200 is a considerable sum for any digital component be it DAC, server or streamer all of which are increasingly mirroring the state-of-the-art today/obsolete tomorrow world of computers and handheld devices. That said, in the here and now the Femto demands a spot on your audition list. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and very nearly pulled the trigger on purchasing one for myself. It’s a hottie.
Quality of packing: Excellent.
Reusability of packing: Seems reusable several times.
Quality of owner's manual: Everything you need but an explanation of the digital filter settings would be welcome.
Condition of component received: Outstanding.
Completeness of delivery: No issues.
Website comments: Okay but nothing special.
Human interactions: Professional, friendly and accommodating as always with this Canadian distributor.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor.
Pricing: Does not offer the same bang for your dollar as the 24/192 model but the really good things in high-end audio as in any other hobby rarely come cheap.
Final comments & suggestions: With the inclusion of the onboard volume control, why not gild the lily and include one or more analog line inputs?
Calyx responds.
“Thank you for your great review. I would like to add something to your final comments & suggestions. As you describe, including more line inputs on the Femto would be “gilding the lily”. Femto was designed to maximally exploit the space of its chassis and there is no more room on the PCB or back panel. For users who want line inputs as you suggested, we are preparing a matching preamplifier and you will see and listen to the Femto preamplifier next year.
Regards,
Seungmok Yi"