The penultimate HF&MS Best of 2022 award goes to the Earmen CH-Amp Stack, which was only reviewed a couple of weeks ago. Nothing is more exciting than receiving a review product with no expectations and then the product in question knocking it out of the park in performance terms. This happened in April with the brilliant Earmen Tradutto DAC. The Tradutto had no streaming platform but as a DAC delivered an extraordinary performance at a competitive price point. The tantalising prospect of a matching streamer at the time was too good to be true. Fortunately, the streamer did arrive, called the Stacatto, and it came with a headphone amplifier, the CH-Amp, powered by a separate power supply unit.
We said in the Earmen CH-Amp Stack review:
The package is singularly greater than the sum of its parts.
The Earmen CH-Amp Stack arrival coincided with the new Meze Audio 109 Pro open-backed headphones arriving, at which point HF&MS said:
…this is probably the best I have heard these … headphones in the short time I have had them
With the Focal Radiance headphones HF&MS said:
…this CH-Amp stack has been the best I’ve heard these headphones driven for a long while…
Then with the Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro HF&MS said:
…they are sounding better than ever…
The theme was set and we concluded:
If this is near your budget, this is your headphone nirvana.
It doesn’t get much better than that. The full Earmen CH-Amp Stack review is here.
Congratulations to Earmen for their Earmen CH-Amp Stack and on an HF&MS Best of 2022 award.