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Jun 23, 2023

Review: Thrax Enyo Signature Integrated Amplifier

No matter how deep I tried digging into the sound of the Thrax Enyo Signature Integrated Amplifier, music kept smacking me in the face foiling any attempts to listen past the tunes. “Critical

No matter how deep I tried digging into the sound of the Thrax Enyo Signature Integrated Amplifier, music kept smacking me in the face foiling any attempts to listen past the tunes.

“Critical listening” or whatever else we want to call listening to the gear at the expense of music is not something I enjoy doing which is why it’s called work as far as I’m concerned. While I get the idea of listening past the music to suss out what the gear is imparting on the sound, the entire point of buying a hifi is to put that kind of listening behind us, ideally forever, so we can get on with the lifelong journey music has in store for us all.

Sometimes amusical things do stand out and apart from the music, something easily heard in early digital replay, in rooms with lumpy modes, or improperly setup or underpowered speakers for just a few examples. Things that distract from the music experience by calling attention to sounds. That said, anyone who’s listened to music in a car while driving knows how to block out extraneous noise and possibly poor playback quality to get at the heart of the music in play even though we can’t hear all of it because the noise is as noisy or noisier than the quiet bits. We make do.

But in a home hifi, one that’s used to listen to music while doing nothing, not a thing else, the quality of the experience matters more. Here, we want to build a hifi that honors music by reproducing recordings in a manner that sounds natural, in a manner that makes connecting to music an effortless activity whose only requirements are time and attention.

During its Barn stay, I paired the Thrax Enyo with four different pairs of speakers—the Vivid Kaya (review), YG Acoustics Summit (more info), Living Voice Auditorium R25A Loudspeakers (more info), and the Barn resident DeVore Fidelity O/96 (review). One thing I can say about the Enyo’s performance is it sounded at home with every pair, helping to create music in Barn that at once captivating, thrilling, and endlessly enjoyable. That, in my experience, is a very good thing.

Rumen Artarski is Thrax Audio’s chief designer and he founded the company in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2009 after spending a few decades in and around the business of hifi. Thrax offers a broad line of products that includes a turntable, tonearm (designed by Frank Schröder), a DAC, a step-up transformer, preamplifiers, power amplifiers topping out with the $90k+ SPARTACUS 300 Pure 300B Power Amp, integrated amplifiers, and speakers. As I said, broad. I recommend a visit to the Thrax About pages where you read about the people behind the products and the company’s Philosophy.

Here’s an interesting quote from an interview with Artarski on Mono and Stereo:

Generally, I am after clarity with a bit of warmth in the tone. Stress-free dynamics with enough resolution and contrast are the main qualities I seek. Being able to convey the modulation and change in tone and texture as an instrument is played. Each stroke of a bow will have a slightly different tone and sometimes the music is in those variations. Hearing them conveys the emotional message.

Let’s bookmark those thoughts for now.

The Thrax Enyo Signature houses a Roon Ready streamer, a discrete DAC that supports up to 32-bit/768kHz PCM and DSD256, a MM and MC phono stage, passive tube preamp, and a pair of 50 Watt per channel fully differential DC-coupled single-ended triode-based mono amps all wrapped up in a single black anodized aluminum chassis. The full tube compliment finds two pair of 6N6Ps in the input and driver stages and Russian GU50 power pentodes providing output power. There is no global negative employed in the Enyo.

The business end of the Enyo Signature tells the full in and out story with 6x digital inputs, 1x MM/MC input, 2x single-ended and 1x balanced line level inputs, and 4 and 8 Ohm speaker taps.

Six multi-function buttons, a 4.3″ LCD display, and two stainless steel strips adorn the simple front end. Signature buyers get the matching aluminum Thrax remote that comes with their higher end preamps. Nice.

Seeing as the Enyo includes a Roon-Ready streamer, DAC, and phono stage builtin, I ran with it as digital front end as well as phono preamp. The full review system also saw the Barn resident Auralic ARIES G1.1 Streamer (review) feeding the totaldac d1-unity (review) or the Mola Mola Tambaqui (review) take a turn with the Michell Gyro SE ‘table/Michell T8 tonearm/Ortofon 2M Black cartridge paired with the Enyo’s Phono In. All cables were from AudioQuest including ThunderBird interconnects, Robin Hood Speaker Cables, Diamond AES/EBU cable, and Thunder High-Current AC power cables plugged into a AQ Niagara 3000 power conditioner. The Box Furniture “Fallen A” supported the cast (full system and Barn details).

Shannon Lay’s Geist is a gem of loveliness, deceptively simple singer-songwriter music that has more twists and turns than a snake stuck in a maze.

From the liner notes:

Lay tracked vocals and guitar at Jarvis Tavinere of Woods’s studio, then sent the songs out to multi-instrumentalists Ben Boye (Bonnie Prince Billy, Ty Segall) in Los Angeles and Devin Hoff (Sharon Van Etten, Cibo Matto) in New York; trusting their musical instincts and intuition. She then sent those recordings to Sofia Arreguin (Wand) and Aaron Otheim (Heatwarmer, Mega Bog) for additional keys, while Ty Segall contributed a guitar solo on “Shores.”

An extended family affair and the depth and breadth of Geist more than hints at all these masterful hands in the mix. With the Thrax Enyo as streaming DAC and in control of the DeVore O/96 as integrated amp had this music ringing out in Barn with resplendent voice, sounding and feeling right and rich. There’s a sweetness to the Enyo’s sound, both as DAC and amp, that trades extreme incisiveness, some might argue an artificial edginess some digital seems to enjoy, for a fuller bodied human warmth. This kind of sound sounds right to me and allows for effortless entry, a completely relaxed yet thoroughly gripping presentation.

Seems to me that some digital has a hard time with timing and this is evident on music that gets its infectious energy from same like Toots & The Maytals In The Dark from 1976 which I love more than I love Funky Kingston because the former contains “54-46 Was My Number” a song I’ve never successfully sat through. The Enyo as digital front end and amp driving the O/96 had me up and dancing in no time flat, its smooth and inviting sound offering an irresistible invitation to the Barn’s dance floor. I would go so far as to suggest that hyper-detailed DACs that look great on paper do so at the expense of the stuff that happens in time but it’s only a hunch.

In any event, the Enyo is a groove machine that offered bountiful fat and fully formed bass response from every speaker I paired it with. Of course I know the DeVore’s the best and the Enyo coaxed some of the best and fullest bass from them to date, only edged out by the Audia Flight FLS 10 Integrated Amplifier (review) which was truly remarkable in this regard.

The Enyo as amp is wonderfully rich sounding, not sloppy mind you, and it makes music feel timbrally right. Ripe, not mushy. Lulu Bear, our Bernese Mountain dog, won’t touch an overripe banana, otherwise a bite of a banana is a favorite treat, and her keen sense of smell means she won’t even put her nose near one. I know some people feel the same way about a ‘tube amp’ as if every tube amp sounds overripe and mushy. Of course this could not be further from the truth and the Thrax Enyo is one such beast that puts that poor excuse for an observation to bed for good with its controlled weighty rich voice.

Paired with the Vivid Kaya K45, music was superbly startlingly present as if all of the energy that existed in the people making the music was somehow captured on record only to be fully unfolded in Barn. Like lightning in a bottle, the Vivid/Enyo combo made music feel vitally present.

But this trait, making music sound vitally present, was one of the other things that traveled with the Enyo no matter the speaker in play. The Thrax seemed to be able to push the best out of the Vivids and DeVores and while it’s too early in my listening to be conclusive, it sure lights up the YG Summits and Living Voice R25A in similar fashion.

I also spent real time spinning records with the Enyo’s phono stage taking the output from the Michel Gyro ‘table. The Ortofon Black cartridge is of the moving magnet variety but the Enyo’s phono stage can also accommodate MC carts using the menu system to access the relevant settings.

There’s nothing like a good 12” EP if you love making a meal out an appetizer as much as I do and The Birthday Party’s The Friend Cather, released on 4AD in 1983, is among my favorites. Bold, brash, loud and angry, Nick Cave and the boys in this band including Fender Jaguar guitar whiz Roland S. Howard are in tippy top form and this record contains more energy than a barrel full of bees. Angry bees. My favorite track among these five favorite tracks is “Release the Bats” for Nick Cave’s not so subtle nod to the man from Graceland, if Elvis had ever sung about sex bat horror vampires.

Backed by Phil Calvert on drums and Tracy Pew’s sexy bass line, Cave rumbles in his best pseudo baritone, “my baby is alright / she doesn’t mind a bit of dirt / she says ‘horror vampire bat bite” and then Howard shrieks in and explodes the whole thing. Brutal energy and the Enyo’s phono stage got it all with the very similar relaxed yet gripping sound of the DAC. We’re not talking about ultra sheen metallic highs, we’re talking more of a burnished brilliance. No matter the words put to the sound, I was in the mix feeling every ounce of venom The Birthday Party bottled on this tasty slice of a 12”.

Seeing as this Signature version is the only version available in the USA, and it comes with the streaming DAC and phono stage, owners should, in my opinion, live with them for some real time before even thinking about adding outboard replacements. Of course you can get more from a separate streamer and DAC, I tested this theory using the Auralic AIRES G1.1 / totaldac d1-unity combo and it upped the visceral impact, exploded the sound image to even greater dimensions, and seemed to offer finer grained texture and resolution but we’re talking about adding more than $15k to the Enyo’s price. The same goes for the phono stage and sure, the Manley Chinook (review) improves on the Enyo’s inbuilt option for about $3200 bucks. But this kind of thinking, better at any cost, is more of a disease than a pursuit to better connect with music. In my humble opinion.

Let’s finish the music selections with a lovely, complex beauty from Sudan Archives Natural Brown Prom Queen from last year. Violinist, singer, and songwriter Brittney Denise Parks is Sudan Archives and she really let it all hang out on Prom Queen, a rich sonic tapestry of earthy delights. This is driving dense music with layers of sound over infectious beats grounded by bottomless bass and the Thrax/DeVore combo filled the Barn with kaleidoscopic energy in every direction sounding big, fat, rich, full and fun. There’s real grunt and growl behind the Enyo’s way with music that imparts weight, tone, and texture with life-like energy that turns listening into an action sport. Especially if you move around to the beat, something Sudan Archives and this system made almost mandatory.

Infectious music-inspired energy of this caliber released into the Barn by the Enyo through four different speakers speaks to a voice that loves music as much as I do. The last thing, the very last thing I want to be thinking about when listening to music is dissecting it like a corpse as if the heart of music can only be found in bits and pieces of detached sonic minutiae. The Thrax Enyo as streaming DAC, phono stage, and integrated amp pulverized this kind of sonic taxidermy making the act of listening to music completely captivating, thrilling, and endlessly enjoyable.

Thrax Enyo Signature Integrated AmplifierPrice: $21,500Company Website: Thrax AudioUS Distributor Website: High End by Oz