CH-Amp with PSU-3 power supply (€1,199)
Contents
We read the product information on EarMen’s website and, frankly, it doesn’t make us much wiser. Many weighty technical terms are used, but what exactly they mean is not clear to us. We would have liked more explanation on how the Composite Amplifier Technology is implemented. Or how the chosen components (WIMA, MELF, Soundplus) in the CH-amp interact with each other.
The separate power supply, the PSU-3 is something we become happy about. This can supply 12V DC and 2 x 12 DC. There are 3 connections for 12V and 1 for 2 x 12V with a mini-DIN connector. EarMen supplies the necessary cables with it. Again, little information about this linear power supply.
On the front of the CH-Amp, we see two headphone outputs; a standard 6.35mm stereo jack and a balanced 4.4mm Pentaconn output. In the centre is a display and on the right side buttons for source selection and gain. The volume knob is also the on/off switch.
The rear starts on the left with the power socket, a balanced output via a Pentaconn socket, a single ended output, 2 single ended inputs and 1 balanced input, again Pentaconn equipped.
Pentaconn?
The CH-Amp is fully balanced, according to the manufacturer. Even the single-ended signals are converted to balanced signals without phase correction. Unfortunately, we have not been able to test how these balanced connectors work. Pentaconn is a type of connector that is not yet widely available on the market. What we see for sale is easily 100 euros per cable. And we need several of them, namely between the DAC and CH-AMP and on the line output from Pentaconn to XLR, to connect to an active monitor. And if you have headphones you want to connect balanced you need an XLR to Pentaconn reducer. EarMen does not supply these cables with it, not even optionally. This creates a nice barrier to using the system balanced.
We would have liked EarMen to supply a set of Pentaconn interlinks with it (4.4mm- 4.4mm and 4.4mm – XLR) so users can more easily use the balanced inputs and outputs. In this price range, people are quite willing to pay a little extra for this.
