As we strive to push back the boundaries of what is possible in home audio, Gryphon Audio Designs occasionally builds highly experimental testbed prototypes. We create these no holds barred components for our own edification as tools in the development and refinement of real-world products.
These rarefied, strictly non-commercial laboratory instruments serve as an absolute reference for the current state of the art. They are take no prisoners exploratory projects, built with scant regard for cost, just as size, weight, appearance, transportability and spousal approval are wholly irrelevant.
The latest of these experiments, designed with no thought for the marketplace and no intention of being offered for sale have been dubbed the Gryphon Pandora preamplifier and the Gryphon Mephisto power amplifier.
They were conceived as a no-compromise, price-no-object design exercise to be the ultimate evaluative tools, to lend new meaning to such terms as resolution, soundstaging, transparency and, especially, musicality.
But, as was the case with the now legendary Gryphon Reference One power amplifier and Poseidon loudspeaker before them, both conceived for a similar higher purpose, history repeats itself, as friends, business partners, audio journalists and other visitors respond with ecstatic enthusiasm to the performance of these components in the Gryphon showroom.
