HiFi+ intro of Companion One

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rustydoglim

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HiFi+ intro of Companion One
« on: 4 Mar 2015, 05:06 pm »
Very detail and long blog with sound impression at the end.
http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/first-listen-celsus-sound-companion-one-portable-headphone-ampusb-wi-fi-dac/

Full review later.  But you can tell it is good. Instead of paying $1K for a top of the line portable player, this is a better solution. The sound would be better, you keep your music in your phone. If you don't want to tether them with cable, just direct stream over.

rustydoglim

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Re: HiFi+ intro of Companion One
« Reply #1 on: 30 Mar 2015, 07:58 am »
Another review: http://headfonics.com/2015/03/the-companion-one-by-celsus/
Looks like Companion One achieved a rating higher than most, if not all the DACs in the < $1K category.

giordy60

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Re: HiFi+ intro of Companion One
« Reply #2 on: 5 Apr 2015, 10:50 am »
excellent item, I'm using as dac on a system of studio monitors.

rustydoglim

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Re: HiFi+ intro of Companion One
« Reply #3 on: 8 Apr 2015, 06:27 pm »
This came from a user on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Celsus-Sound-Companion-Portable-Headphone/dp/B00RLHDQ42/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428517509&sr=8-1&keywords=Celsus+Sound+Companion+One#customerReviews

I've been living with Celsus Companion One for the last week or so and I'm quite pleased with the purchase. I own Astell and Kern's AK100 (original version) and Sony's NW-ZX1 for my portable high-rez music solutions, but the former is very finicky with storage media and the latter sounds a little muddled to me. Companion One (I'm using mostly AKG K3003 for listening) definitely puts the experience above those in combination with my iPhone. You can download third party apps from the App Store so that you can transfer greater than 44K/24bit audio to your device and Companion One does a great job of instantly adding body and dimensionality to your music, including lower quality music but to a lesser degree in my impression. My principle concern was that headphone amps often add audible hum/hiss when sensitive IEM, but Companion One is relatively quiet, although I can hear some hiss during operation of iPhone, which generally does not persist. I haven't had so much experience with the wifi functionality and am looking forward to testing it out. But the fact that the amp/DAC supports so many different ways of enjoying music is a recommendation by itself.