Källa in the media

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Källa in the media

Post by lejonklou »

The French magazine VUmètre have reviewed Källa in their latest edition.

Five very, very positive pages.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ekay2012 »

Here is the Google lens translation - hopefully it helps others. Looking forward to reading it.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ekay2012 »

The rest
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by lejonklou »

Thank you ekay2012!

I really like the closing sentence: 'If you adhere to this type of sound aestetic, you are likely to crack.'

I was told that the reviewer owns an LP12.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by Arjen »

“Pas de ‘bling bling’, mais ‘une sensation a nos oreilles’ “. Congratulations Fredrik with this review francais.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by Fred11 »

Great review! Congratulations, Fredrik!
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by matthias »

Fred11 wrote: 2022-04-08 06:59 Great review! Congratulations, Fredrik!
+1.......and thank you ekay2012 for the translation
Last edited by matthias on 2022-04-08 13:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by El Mero Mero »

Congratulations!
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ThomasOK »

Truly lovely review. Thanks to ekay2012 for the translation. Strangely enough it is the first time I have seen the insides (strange because I'm usually one who opens things up to see what is inside).
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ekay2012 »

No problem, sorry about each page being a bit out of order. Great review, congratulations!!!
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ThomasOK »

Källa will be reviewed in Alex Halberstadt's Stereophile column "Brilliant Corners" in the March issue. I have seen the proof and supplied a Manufacturer's Comment. It is just as enjoyable a read (if you stick with it) as his Entity review was, and rather funny in places. I think you will all like it. It should come out some time in February.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ThomasOK »

I just received the March Stereophile issue in the mail. The Brilliant Corners column is on page 29 and the Källa review takes up most of pages 32 and 33. It is a very nice and amusing review. My Manufacturer's Comment didn't make it into the issue, it appears likely due to space constraints, but it contained no great revelations.

The column is not up on the website yet but should be before too long. Since I am connected with Lejonklou HiFi as the North American Distributor I am not allowed to quote from the review until after it ha been out and online for a period of time. But that doesn't have to stop anyone else. ;-)
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by matthias »

ThomasOK wrote: 2023-02-03 18:04 But that doesn't have to stop anyone else. ;-)
Nobody here who can post some nice photos?
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ekay2012 »

I stopped by the local bookstore today and they still only have the February issue :(
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Re: Källa in the media

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Stereophile we view:

Recently, while looking back over what I’d written for this magazine, I noticed that I mentioned “engagement” in nearly every piece. It makes sense. I believe the sole job of audio gear is to bring us closer to our favorite recordings and make us feel things. Musical engagement may sound frustratingly subjective, but in practice it’s straightforward: If I find myself focusing on what the musicians are doing, engagement is happening; if I find myself thinking about the soundstage or the transient response, it isn’t.
A component’s ability to engage and its sound quality are distinct phenomena, but mostly we assume that they are complementary, travelers along the same road to meaningful listening. But what would happen if these roads diverged? What if an audio designer pursued musical engagement at all costs while paying only cursory attention to sound quality? Could such a thing even happen? And which road would you follow?
This is the philosophical quandary posed by the Lejonklou Källa. The manufacturer’s website describes it as “a digital music streamer designed, built and tuned in Sweden.” The next sentence reads: “Its only purpose is to bring you closer to the emotions of music.” The italics aren’t mine.
I first heard about the Källa from Lejonklou’s US importer, Thomas O’Keefe of Nokturne Audio, while I was reviewing the Lejonklou Entity moving coil phono stage. O’Keefe mentioned that Fredrik Lejonklou, designer of the Källa and all other Lejonklou products, believed that using his streamer with lossy Spotify streams offered more musical enjoyment than lossless files streamed from Qobuz and Tidal—more enjoyment, even, than high-resolution files stored locally on a hard drive. This assertion, sure to piss off audiophiles everywhere, had to come from someone who was supremely confident in his listening skills or, in all probability, a knob. (In either case he’s got to be a bit of a masochist.) And after listening to the superbly engaging Entity, I figured that Lejonklou was the former.
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Re: Källa in the media

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*Review:

The Källa—the word means “origin” or “source” in Swedish and is pronounced “shel-LA”—is a featureless black box with only the company logo on the front panel. The back panel has an Ethernet RJ45 input for a network connection, a pair of unbalanced analog outputs, an IEC power inlet, and a power switch. The self-contained streamer/DAC is limited to 16/44.1 resolution and offers no selectable anything. While it can be used as a Roon endpoint, it’s designed to work best with AirPlay, a wireless protocol that requires an Apple device to control playback.
If you’re curious about what’s inside the Källa, or the provenance of its DAC, forget it—Fredrik Lejonklou keeps this information to himself, often filing the identifying markings off the tops of the components.
At first, everything about the Källa annoyed me. I just knew that it was a fool’s errand, and not only because it seemed to contradict everything I knew about digital audio. When I began reviewing gear for Stereophile’s late blog AudioStream, editor Michael Lavorgna made sure my home setup conformed to best practices: I connected the modem to my router with 55' of AudioQuest’s top-of-the-line Ethernet cable, bought a dedicated audio computer that runs Linux, inserted an optical filter to reduce noise on the Ethernet line, and used a digital-to-digital converter that enabled an I2 S connection to be used with my DAC. I also began using Roon due to its matchless interface and ability to integrate streamed and local music libraries.
All these decisions stemmed from a series of truisms. Wired connections sound better than wireless connections. Local files sound better than streamed files. And lossy, sub-CD-resolution files are to be avoided like a case of shingles.
The Källa called all of this into question. Fredrik Lejonklou wanted me to use a wireless connection to stream lossy files. Apparently, AirPlay control devices all sound different from each other, too, a development I found galling. According to a list Lejonklou maintains on the company’s web forum, the iPad Mini 6, which I don’t own, sounds best. As my luck would have it, the list ranks my iPhone 12 Mini as the second worst sounding option. Great.
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Re: Källa in the media

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To add to my annoyance, I was instructed to remove ancillary devices, like my optical filter, before playing music through the Källa and to set the streamer to a fixed IP number for “improved performance,” a seemingly simple operation that required logging into my router and changing the IP address in the Källa’s web interface.
Did I forget my router’s password? Did I then perform a hard reset on said router, creating a self-inflicted network outage that took more than an hour to restore? I won’t bore you with the embarrassing details other than to share that I was only getting angrier.
Disregarding Lejonklou’s directions, I first listened to the Källa as a Roon endpoint, just as I do with my Sonnet Morpheus DAC. Music played through the Swedish streamer sounded lighter and less impactful than through the Morpheus, noticeably less resolute and a bit grayer. I had to admit that it wasn’t much better at musical engagement.
Next, I used the Qobuz application on my MacBook Air M2 to connect to the Källa over AirPlay. Now I heard a presentation that was sonically improved and musically livelier but still fell short of what the Morpheus mustered when driven by Roon.
For a while, this brought an end to my experiment. I felt vindicated that Fredrik Lejonklou’s AirPlay device was a provocative lark that hadn’t reached its potential.
For more than a month, I refused to try the device with Spotify. For one thing, I didn’t have a subscription, in part because of the company’s paltry remuneration of artists and its opportunistic politics, which led Joni Mitchell and others to remove their music from the service in 2022. And to me there was something unseemly about streaming lossy Ogg Vorbis 320kbps files through a device that cost $8495. Besides, I just knew it wouldn’t make much of a difference to the Källa’s sound. Not for the better, anyway.
Being old enough to not place much stock in my assumptions, I relented. Streaming from the Spotify application on the Mac-Book Air, I listened to “Show Me the Place,” from Leonard Cohen’s ridiculously well-recorded Old Ideas. When I heard Cohen’s droll, gravelly voice, I may have squinted in surprise. Captured in 2012, a few years before the singer’s passing, it boomed out from between the speakers, sounding as alive and emotional as I’d heard it. By the time the backup singers came in a minute or so later, I was riveted.
Källa + Spotify drew me into my music in a way I hadn’t experienced previously with digital. It did away with the invisible glass wall digital often places between the music and the listener more thoroughly than any device I’ve heard. Even when I tried to dissect the sound, I couldn’t do it for long before I became distracted by the music. What’s more, I found myself enjoying recordings that for me have always been nonstarters on digital. Foremost among these are wonderful tracks from the 78rpm era that can end up sounding like mush. Yet listening through the Källa to Djangologie 1928-1950, Pathé’s essential 20-CD Django Reinhardt anthology, I could feel the wit, finesse, and swerve of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “I’se a Muggin’” nearly as vividly as I do on the original French vinyl.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by Gammaboy* »

As much as I enjoyed this—which, frankly, was a lot—the lossy, low-rez thing kept nagging at me. What was going on? Digging through Fredrik Lejonklou’s posts on the company’s web forum, I came across the following passage about the Källa’s development: “What really helped us understand and make progress was to look at the entire chain of digital reproduction, from the static file to the analogue out of the DAC, and treat the whole process as if it was analogue. When you do that, you find there are certain things that shouldn’t matter in a digital context (like the waveform or the compression ratio) but actually do when reproducing music. And things that ought to be crucial (like the digital resolution) that turn out to be less important than anticipated.”
Going back to feeding the Källa lossless Qobuz streams, I now heard slightly more solidity, more incisive detail, and maybe a bit more tone color. In other words, marginally but perceptibly better sound. But with Spotify, the music simply soared and jumped, while with Qobuz it kind of sat there, glowering. This situation confounded me. I am an audiophile, after all. I want both engagement and the best possible sound quality.
Still, when I used the Källa to audition other components, I’d fall into the music, switching from track to track, discovering new records, and eventually forgetting about my minor misgivings. Soon I was clicking Spotify’s heart icon with abandon and bookmarking several dozen albums from all corners of the world, which I discovered thanks to the Källa: Ghazal’s The Rain, J.J. Cale’s Naturally, Asnaqetch Werqu’s Ethiopiques Vol. 16, Ney Matogrosso’s Interpreta Cartola, and Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper’s Dinner Party: Dessert are just the most recent. This was proving addictive.
Then, on the Lejonklou website, I encountered this sentence: “Källa will radically broaden your taste in music.” I guess Fredrik Lejonklou is on to something after all. Damn it.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by beck »

Great writing! That is praise indeed. :-)
Playing cd’s…………
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by Spannko »

Great review, and one I wholeheartedly agree with! Congratulations, yet again, to the Lejonklou team 😃
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by matthias »

Indeed a great review, congrats and thank you Gammaboy!

Interesting the ranking of AH in the review:

1. Spotify > Källa
2. Roon > (some undisclosed device(s)) > Sonnet Morpheus DAC
3. Qobuz > Källa
4. Roon > Källa
Last edited by matthias on 2023-02-09 14:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by lejonklou »

Thank you for posting the review, gammaboy!

I absolutely love how the reviewer shares his entire journey, from initial skepticism to falling into the music. So well written.

The only thing I can object to is the following:
“If you’re curious about what’s inside the Källa, or the provenance of its DAC, forget it—Fredrik Lejonklou keeps this information to himself, often filing the identifying markings off the tops of the components.”

Not true. There is nothing erased or filed off inside Källa. And there aren’t really any secrets either, just a ton of details that can sometimes be a challenge to explain.

In some of our amplifiers, we used to erase some markings with a laser. The reason was that the components were pre-measured and selected, so if someone else would repair it and the ic said for instance ‘OPA1641’, that wasn’t enough information for a proper repair. An off the shelf standard OPA1641 would not result in the amplifier performing optimally, or even correctly. As the markings were missing, they would have to contact us and we’d ship them a selected ic for the repair.

My new Swedish assembly company dislikes using laser to erase markings, so we’ve abandoned the practice.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by ekay2012 »

Awesome review. Congratulations to all of the minds who created Källa.
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by tokenbrit »

Really enjoyed the review. Damn it. :)
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Re: Källa in the media

Post by Fred11 »

Congratulations, Fredrik!
Amazing review.
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