Down the Rabbit Hole with the Nirvana Audio Chronos Optimizer (4/4)
Updated: 1 day ago
South Carolina’s only true high-end audio dealer takes a listen to Chronos Optimizer!
By Tom Gibbs from Positive Feedback Online Magazine
About a week or so ago, I made a road trip to Aiken, South Carolina, where audio good-guy Shayne Tenace has opened the only true high-end audio dealership in the state, Absoulute Audio plus Video.
He’s enlarging his space there to 5000+ square feet, with a total of twelve system rooms, a selection of high-end brands that few dealers on the East coast can boast, and he’ll even have dedicated spaces for home cinema and record sales! Finnbogi Sigurdur Marinosson and I met up there to check out the new construction progress and talk shop with Shayne about all things audio. And also spend some time listening to some of the finest high-end audio systems in the Southeast. Unbeknownst to me, Finnbo had brought his Chronos along for the ride, with hopes that Shayne might be amenable to having a listen!
When we arrived at Absoulute Audio plus Video that morning, we toured the improvements and eventually walked into the biggest room in the original section of Shane's shop. He played some music on a large floorstanding pair of Fyne Audio loudspeakers set up at one end; they played with an enormous scale of sound, pinpoint imaging, and impressive musicality. He played a number of selections, each rendered beautifully by the system, and I was beyond impressed with the sound quality. Due to the ongoing construction, we were unable to audition any other systems that day, and after grabbing some lunch, we returned for further conversation and another listen to the Fyne system. The sound was completely compelling, and Shayne remarked "Can you believe these speakers are only $900 for the pair? All you need is a source, they're self-powered!" I did a double-take, stared at him in total disbelief, then realized it wasn't the large loudspeakers we were hearing. Playback was provided by the smallish speakers sitting on the credenza behind them, the new Fyne Audio Cubitt system, which rocked the cavernous large room with incredibly low bass for such a small form factor! A "d'oh" moment for me for sure, but the sound was beyond belief!
At this point, Finnbo pulled out his Chronos unit, which had been concealed in a small metal box³ to prevent its effect from ambushing any listening sessions before its presence had been made known. (*³ In one of the Asian magazines, the reviewer also A/B’d between selections by placing his Chronos in a metal box he referred to as an “iron casket”!) We both attempted to explain to Shayne our relatively narrow understanding of how Chronos produced its effect and enhanced the performance of our respective systems. Mostly in an attempt to gauge his interest in hearing Chronos, if only on the small but impressively good sounding Fyne Cubitt system. Shayne’s curiosity was piqued, and he replayed the same selection of tracks we listened to during our earlier audition. Even though our exposure to the system was fairly brief, we all agreed that having Chronos in the system was a next-level improvement. Backgrounds were blacker, the already enormous soundstage and image height were more pronounced, and there was more air and space around the vocalists and musicians. The shockingly good Fyne Audio Cubitt system was even more impressive with the unpowered Chronos simply sitting on the credenza between the pair of loudspeakers!
Chronos for the win!
I’m a fairly level-headed, music-first listener, and in my forty-plus years as an audiophile and quarter-century as an audio and music journalist, I can probably count on both hands the number of demos of audio systems or devices that have truly impressed the hell out of me. Even fewer, the number that have shaken my core beliefs about high-end audio and its reproduction. The Nirvana Audio Chronos Optimizer now sits squarely at the number one position on that list, and what makes the situation almost untenable for me is that I’ve been constantly scouring my library for additional albums or music selections to audition with Chronos. Whereas my typical listening sessions might last 30 minutes to an hour, they’re now running an hour, two, maybe three – oh, wow, let’s listen to this one! Listening to discs I thought I knew intimately is now like hearing them for the first time!
It’s gotten even more convoluted; at the point when the Onix Zenith XST20 transport arrived, I re-engaged with physical digital discs in a way that hadn’t happened in decades. Listening with the XST20 also prompted me to do some comparison listening to ripped files from those same physical discs across my music servers, and all those rips had been verified by dBPoweramp as bit perfect. That said (and pre-Chronos), they typically sounded dull and lifeless when compared to the sound I was hearing from physical disc playback on the XST20. My brain at first told me it was probably some kind of new-equipment bias going on, but extended listening and comparisons made me start thinking about my countless thousands of disc rips. Which were made across a couple of decades, typically on low-cost, less-than-audiophile quality computer drives that might have injected jitter into the stream, possibly affecting their overall sound quality. With Chronos in the system, those same rips across the server sound on par with identical physical disc playback, so the Chronos experience has become even more maddening! While my experience with Chronos covered digital disc and streaming playback this go-around, I'll follup with my impressions of the device on the sound of LPs very soon!
My lifelong philosophy has been that I can glean everything I need to know about anyone or anything in the first five minutes of the experience. That’s been proven to be fairly misdirected over the years, and having had Chronos in my system has me rethinking that with regards to audio and music. I obviously don’t even really know what I’ve been listening to all these years! Here's the upside: in the first five minutes of my Chronos experience, I realized it’s indispensable to my music playback. Otherwise, I’m definitely not getting the whole picture. Chonos has impacted every aspect of playback in my system, offering glorious music that’s free from noise, has a more organic and natural presentation, produces nearly holographic imaging across a hyper-realistic soundstage, and plays with power and dynamics that strain credibility at any volume level. The effect of Chronos on my system has been about as subtle as a sledgehammer!
At $2500, the Nirvana Audio Chronos Optimizer isn’t inexpensive, but considering how it single handedly reenergized my enjoyment of music, it’s beyond priceless. And when you consider its price point in comparison to the other equipment in my current system, it seems entirely within reason. Thanks to Finnbogi Sigurdur Marinosson for his nearly non-stop campaign of sheer terror in bringing Chronos to my attention, and thanks to Michael Garner of Tweek Geek for making this evaluation possible. The Nirvana Audio Chronos Optimizer comes very highly recommended!
P.S.
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