Ideon Absolute Digital Suite | REVIEW

Ideon Absolute Digital Suite; the Stream, Time, and Epsilon DAC Benchmark Performance from Greece

My comprehensive findings on the astonishing Ideon Absolute Stream music server/streamer were published HERE last June. If you want an eye-opening look at what that superb device accomplishes – rather uniquely – please look there. This account will explore the synergies leveraged when using the entire suite of the exceptional Ideon Absolute series including the Stream Server, the Time Clock, and the Epsilon DAC as they were designed and intended to be enjoyed, as one complementary collection.

With that said, it should be absolutely clear that the benefits derived by the implementation of each of these three individual machines may be enjoyed when used to significantly enhance any system; they are not limited to being used ONLY as a complete Ideon system. In fact, my previously mentioned take on the Stream was just that, a study of what it offered as a stand-alone streamer/server. Be sure to check it out.

Words and Photos by Greg Weaver

Ideon Audio was founded in 2016, and rather than follow the standard set by many companies by cobbling their products together from the available menu of third-party, off-the-shelf products like pre-manufactured filtering circuits, Universal Serial Bus input systems, and mass-produced DAC chips, Ideon Audio’s philosophy has been to build upon a series of their internal technologies, including writing their own controlling software and the creation of some singular ancillary hardware.

Similarly, VP and Chief Designer Vassilis Tounas, an award-winning pioneer in circuit design, as well as CEO George Ligerakis, a senior executive and entrepreneur with over twenty-five years of experience in IT and the mobile apps industry, aren’t just in the audio business to make a living. They share an impassioned goal of presenting digital music in the most musically genuine manner possible and to find ways to make such exceptionally musical products accessible to everyone. While we are looking at their Ideon Absolute series of machines today, a visit to their website reveals a dozen different devices at widely varying price points with their current entry-level DAC, the Ayazi MK2, at just $4,000. But let’s take a closer look under the hood of each of the two Ideon Absolute series of machines joining the Stream under examination today.

Inside the Ideon Absolute Digital Suite

The Ideon Absolute Time Clock ($9,900) measures 19.25″ wide, just under seven inches deep, and slightly over four and a quarter inches tall, but it weighs in at a robust 33 pounds. The Absolute Time Clock capitalizes on lessons Ideon learned building proprietary 3R re-clocking circuits for their diverse client base.

It features separate electrically stable USB and coaxial (SPDIF) inputs, with a hand-made audiophile transformer to supply the massive linear, triple-stage, ultra-low noise and stabilized power supply. It offers several distinct outputs over several different lines to power its many diverse circuits. The use of multiple smaller silk-based audiophile capacitors throughout contributes to its remarkably low Equivalent Series Resistance, and it uses Ideon’s proprietary, femto clock re-clocking circuit, all built on an upgradable platform.

With Ideon’s proprietary, zero-noise rectification bridge that completely eschews the use of diodes, they claim to have been able to eliminate the usual diode-rectification noise. All this attention to detail ensures that the Time can deliver a remarkably phase-correct reconstitution of the audio signal with vanishingly low jitter. When this is all fitted into its considerable CNC-milled chassis, the result is a remarkably solid mechanical base housing some of the most intricate, advanced, and costly electronics available.

The Ideon Absolute Epsilon DAC ($47,000) is housed in a matching 19.25″ wide by just over four and a quarter inches tall CNC milled chassis, which is massive and resistant to resonance. But the Absolute Epsilon DAC is nearly 13.25″ deep, and it tips the scale at a brawny 65 pounds. Its massive multistage power reservoir is built using seventeen state-of-the-art, ultra-low noise power supply units, all with extremely low-tolerance ratings, with each stage individually regulated, employing over 80 ELNA Silmic II audio-grade capacitors specifically designed for audio applications. And, of course, all circuits are populated with only the highest-grade, purposefully selected, individual audiophile-grade components throughout. The use of such components delivers on several levels, affording both higher propagation speed and yielding a low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance), which Ideon asserts results in smoother sound with no loss of detail.

This unique approach to their next-generation analog stage uses symmetrical, ultra-low-noise power supplies running at more than three times the necessary current, resulting in an extremely linear power supply configuration capable of offering many different local power supplies to drive its many diverse circuits. The result is the ability to deliver highly stable, abundant, and clean power, managed by six separate stages to further establish an enhanced degree of clarity and linearity.

Another of the key highlights here is the implementation of the Ideon dedicated software, developed in-house, to run the ESS Technology ES9038PRO SABRE DAC chip. Understandably, Ideon does not share the specifics related to this operational software, but the exquisite sonic results would seem to support their choice. (More on this soon enough.) Fully balanced in operation, it offers both balanced and single-ended outputs and features Ideon Audio’s proprietary triple distillation USB input and S/PDIF input, and its proprietary three-stage noise eradication circuit is used to eliminate digital noise from the input signal. This unique Ideon Absolute Epsilon technology features a new and unique application of triple zero-noise, proprietary active bridges, in an ultra-high-end design approach used to further eliminate the noise from its AC rectification.

Three top-of-the-line femto ultra-low jitter and ultra-low phase noise clocks, each with its dedicated power line, make up its no-compromise architecture, yielding the highest precision and resultant phase fidelity audio signal they know how to deliver. The in-house designed balanced output incorporates four analog output channels, something they call the Quad Analog Output Principle, each with its dedicated power supply, with no capacitors in the signal path. The goal was to provide more than ample output energy, assuring the strength to drive virtually any load!

Finally, the Ideon Absolute Epsilon is built to be future-proof. Its thoughtful, modular construction ensures that if, or more likely when newer technology or formats arrive on the digital playback scene, the Absolute may be easily adapted and updated. My review models came in anodized black, with silver as the other standard finish. However, other custom finishes are available and regardless of color, they all come with a seven-year warranty!

Functionality

In terms of functionality, the Epsilon DAC will decode PCM signals up to 384kHz and 32-bit, as well as DSD up to DSD512, Octal DSD, or DSD 22.6 MHz, which is 512 times denser than the Redbook CD standard of 44.1 kHz. The Epsilon DAC is a Roon-certified endpoint, and inputs include a traditional USB B port, an RCA SPDIF jack, and an AES/EBU XLR jack. One set each of XLR (balanced) and RCA (single-ended) outputs are provided.

While I did experiment with the SPDIF input from my optical disc player, the vast majority of my evaluation was based on the USB connection from the Stream to the Time and then to the Epsilon DAC, my network-connected NAS using Roon, or the direct playback of files stored in the Stream’s internal storage. While the Stream and Time have only a round, blue, ring-illuminated power switch about one-third of the way in from their left side, centered vertically, with status lamps also located along its horizontal center line, the front panel of the DAC features a two-and-a-quarter-inch round multifunction combination dial and push button switch. Once powered on, a four-inch wide by two-inch tall blue display informs you of the device’s current status, including its active input, output level, decoding format, sampling rate – provided there is an active signal – and the currently selected filter.

Further combinations of pressing and turning the dial will grant access to its multiple screens and the management of its other control functions, including output levels, input selection, filters, and other settings. I’ll leave it to owners to explore and discover what each of the different settings offers. But enough digging into the technology behind this remarkable suite of digital electronics; let’s talk about the music they make.

The Four Pillars of Ideon

While it is true that I am a long-time, staunch vinyl proponent, it is just as true that the digital playback landscape has blossomed and bloomed quite significantly over the past eight to ten years. The early promise of the potential of the digital audio disc, first trumpeted by Sony and Phillips in 1976, took decades to develop into even an acceptably pleasing-sounding music source. Early digital was, well, it was not good.

My first exposure to compact disc playback came in the spring of 1983 and was appallingly underwhelming. But by the middle of the past decade, it had matured quite impressively, and the move to streaming naturally abetted its further development. That said, my reference analog front end has remained an insurmountable standard against which all digital playback comers must be measured. So, just how did the Ideon Absolute Suite fare against that remarkable standard?

While there can be no question that playing files using the Stream’s native web-based interface supplies its most refined performance, streaming was accomplished using Qobuz configured as a Roon service. While LP fans well understand that the provenance of the LP will have a great deal to do with how it sounds, first pressing, later pressing, reissue, remaster, and so on, many digifiles seem unaware that the same is true of their digital files. Enough said! Regardless of my choice of sourced files, natively stored files on the Stream, my NAS-based library, or when streaming from Qobuz, I was quite taken by what I may only describe as an unprecedented level of engagement and authenticity at the resultant voice with which this exceptional Ideon Absolute Suite gave them.

If the lowest range of frequencies being reproduced by our music system isn’t tonally truthful, accurately extended, and distinctly defined in pitch, the rest of the system’s performance is skewed and suffers irrevocably. Shortcomings in bass performance affect a wide range of sonic attributes, from overall fidelity and balance of tone, timbre, and texture, to the ability to accurately represent the acoustic of the recording’s venue and the dimensionality of the soundstage. Having established the importance of a system’s accuracy in rendering the lowest frequencies, combined with the fact that this region is, in my estimation, also commonly an Achilles’ heel of digital playback in general, I’ll start there.

The First Pillar: Bass

Streaming Saint-Saen’s Symphony No. 3 delivered a surprising and extraordinary result. While my analog front end is capable of routinely rendering overtly convincing bass realism, down into subsonic levels, the Ideon Absolute Suite presents with an unrivaled competence at portraying the collective weight, power, and articulation necessary to faithfully recreate that visceral compression of air in my space. This suite’s ability to capture that sensation, not just that sound, in a manner much closer to reality than I’ve heard expressed from other digital reconstruction engines, regardless of price or manufacture, represented an unprecedented first.

To further test the veracity of this exceptional experience, I moved on to several other challenging deep bass passages such as that of the sonorously reverberant double bass from Gary Karr’s 1989 release, The Spirit of Koussevitzky (VQR 2031). Playing Reinhold Glière’s “Prelude, Op. 32, No. 1,” the Ideon Absolute suite recreated its entire sonic envelope with the most realistic sense of bloom, body, and palpability in a manner more faithfully than I have ever heard it reconstructed and expressed before. It was so honest sounding that I could have easily been convinced that I was listening to a real instrument being played in a real space.

Given that my reference loudspeakers faithfully regenerate bass down into the 16Hz region, I suspect that I may be more sensitive and/or critical about the finer characteristics and nuances of bass performance than many. But given that so many digital rigs are simply unable to reconstruct this region anywhere near as accurately, when I run across such rare performance, this sophisticated, this faithful to the real thing, so effectively achieved, it is not only a surprise, it represents a significantly noteworthy accomplishment.

The Second Pillar: Space

Another attribute where digital routinely falls short of analog performance is in its ability to faithfully recreate the space of recordings, especially the shapes and sizes of instrumental voices as they are located throughout the soundstage. Imaging is typically flatter overall, less solid and corporal in its representation of images, rendering spatial cues more two-dimensionally. The Ideon Absolute suite pioneers a new space among the top echelon of performance in its ability to recreate spatial information, not only in its ability to faithfully recreate the depth, width, and height of a recording’s soundstage, but also in its ability to render the layering, corporality, and even its ability to communicate markedly accurate sizes of instruments themselves.

Two of my favorite tests for accurate soundstaging and image specificity include Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti, and Alligator Record’s 1990 blues-fest, Harp Attack! In this regard, this suite again reveals its prowess, offering the most exquisite sense of dimensionality, rendering layering, space, image location and size, in an utterly exceptional manner.

For the first time in my experience, the digital version of that specific performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony portrayed the distinct height differences among the four soloists during the finale of the “Ode to Joy” in a manner comparable to the specificity, location, and in particular, the height, of those voices as that so readily and effortlessly portrayed by my Kronos/DS Audio LP system. Further, during the opening cut from Harp Attack!, “Down Home Blues,” the four distinct voices and harps, or harmonicas, of blues giants Carey Bell, Billy Branch, James Cotton, and Junior Wells are portrayed equally spaced across the stage, left to right. Toward the end of the track they take turns singing and playing their harps, each one of a different key, and this Ideon rig not only precisely locates each of their voices across the stage, with remarkable palpability, in proper perspective and size, but regenerates their harps in a starkly realistic manner. And that opens the door to discuss the systemic transparency…

The Third Pillar: Transparency

There is something primal about the sound of a jazz harp blown live, right in front of you. There is this robust ferocity to its sound, a bite if you will, and a resultant growl that presents an enormous challenge to their faithful reproduction! With this Ideon Absolute suite, both transient and tonal attributes are transcribed in such a realistic and vibrant manner that I was forced to focus more closely on the system’s transparency and the heightened intelligibility it facilitates.

I’ve routinely attempted to define transparency over time with my work, and I see one of my first more successful attempts to do so realized in my 2019 Von Schweikert Audio ULTRA 9 evaluation. And if I’m honest, I was probably more successful at defining what it isn’t, rather than what it is.

With files of commensurate quality, this Ideon troika seems to almost breathe life into the music it recreates, giving well-recorded performances a sense of visceral expression that almost transcends the apparent limitations that we normally ascribe to reproduced sound. Its refined transparency carries several other benefits, allowing it to expose, reveal, and focus on minutiae in a drastically more lifelike manner than I’m accustomed to experiencing from most digital playback systems. This remarkably sophisticated level of resolve, and its resultant enhanced expressiveness, is so life-like in its depiction, further emphasizing its ability to transcend the final barrier between components and listener.

The Fourth Pillar: Dynamism

To my ears and experience, systems that offer more accurate, generous, and precipitous dynamic contrasts are unquestionably more real, involving, and convincingly transparent sounding. One of the biggest obstructions to our music systems’ ability to credibly suspend our disbelief and convince us that we are listening to a live performance is the dynamic constrictions imposed by the inherent limitations of the electronics and transducers used to reproduce music. Such restraint of scaling and vitality conspires to prevent our minds from accepting the sonic envelope created by our audio systems as musical truth. Yet this remarkable suite’s ability to render dynamic contrasts, from its ability to present near infinitesimally gradated nuance to its largess of scaling and grandeur, may just be its crowning achievement.

At the time of this audition, the Ideon Absolute Epsilon DAC sets the measured benchmark for the industry’s highest dynamic range, up to 140dB! The musical relevance of this supreme accomplishment is not an increase in overall loudness, but a resultant refinement and expansion of expressiveness. Its significantly heightened and augmented capability imparts it the ability to express the inherent, often minute dynamic differentiation of scaling and other musical transitions more accurately and eloquently. Think I’m exaggerating? Listen to “Fade to Black,” from Dire Strait’s sixth and final studio release, 1991s On Every Street. Mark Knopfler’s subtle, guttural, under-his-breath growl that typically escapes notice, or certainly, this kind of definition and lucidity, twenty-seven seconds in has never been more expressly fine-spun. Better still, listen for the visceral jolt of his breath hitting the microphone diaphragm as it simply explodes into the room with near concussive pressure and force at about one minute in when he pronounces the letter p from the phrase, “Bet you already made a pass…”

In my experience, the Ideon Absolute suite offers simply unsurpassed performance in this regard. This rendering so closely resembles the chilling experience this track offers when heard on my Kronos/DS Audio LP front-end, that I found myself demonstrating it repeatedly to visitors to my room for weeks afterward.

One other highly noteworthy attribute expressed routinely by this remarkable system, one undoubtedly attributable to the conflation of all its other remarkably salient traits, also deserves to be singled out. The Ideon sound offers a surprising and otherwise uncommon ability to deliver standard-resolution material with a level of vividness and richness that often had me scrambling to verify that I was not listening to a 24bit-192kHz or DSD source. In the real world, where streaming must be acknowledged as the most likely primary source of music delivery, this ability to portray the amplest material, standard resolution files, in a manner that is oftentimes indistinguishable from those of considerably higher resolution, affords a serious advantage over its competition and is yet another powerful motive to make this suite your reference!

The Ideon Absolute Accomplishment

As you may have gathered by this point, I find the Ideon Absolute sound to be more than merely exceptionally accomplished, offering corporal dimensionality, united with expressly articulate, and wildly dynamic performance. Fueled by its embarrassment of strengths, it offers the ability to render digital source files of all nature with the most authentically musical voice I’ve yet experienced. While I realize that the combined asking price of these exceptional components will place this magnificent music-making system well beyond the reach of most music-loving audiophiles, when compared to other highly-regarded suites from many more well-established, more often spoken about, and more costly contemporary contenders, as well as resetting the sonic bar against that competition, it also represents an unqualified bargain!

In the simplest of terms, what I hear with this absurdly well-built, elegant, and brilliantly designed system comprised of the Ideon Absolute Stream server/streamer, the Absolute Time Clock, and the Absolute Epsilon DAC, represents the most musical and engaging digital playback in my personal experience. After conversations with Ideon and Audio Skies, this magnificent suite will remain my reference for blissful digital playback. If you are looking to experience the pinnacle of digital audio playback today, you simply must audition the Ideon Absolute suite. But be warned! Once you are exposed to its crystalline, inviting, luxuriant, and breathtakingly authentic voice, you may find it as impossible as I have to settle for anything less.