Ferrum is the new brand of quality hifi products created by HEM "to combine sustainability, durability, and quality, focused on delivering the best possible audio experience at an affordable price level" (for high end audio) - proudly made in Poland. ERCO is the third product from the new brand.
"It is no small feat when you realize you’ve probably succeeded in creating yet another winner. The only thing we had to do, was to put one and one together. Like a professional chef we set out getting the ingredients from our own back garden. We simply had to integrate parts of the awarded HYPSOS technology and lend some of OOR’s magic to make ERCO really work. The final ingredient proved to be the culmination of 20+ years’ worth of experience in making DA converters. And man, did we pull it off," says Ferrum enthusiastically of this latest development effort.
According to the company, the new ERCO headphone preamp and DAC combines key design elements from the company's two first products, the OOR headphone amplifier and complementary HYPSOS, a sophisticated hybrid power source. Basically, by adding a D/A conversion stage using a chip from ESS Technology, Ferrum created the ERCO as close to OOR as possible, just fine tuning the IC power design with discrete elements. The HEM engineering team also optimized the code for audio in all the unit's digital ports (USB, coaxial and optical S/PDIF) using a specialized ARM processor that also allowed capacity to add more efficient MQA decoder and renderer. ERCO also has a truly balanced topology, borrowing heavily from OOR's preamp and power stages.
On the product's front panel - with the Fe logo cut in corten steel - there are only three knobs: one to control volume, one to set the gain level, and one to select one of four inputs. A small LED indicating MQA status sits beside the two headphone outputs, one balanced Pentaconn and one unbalanced jack. On the rear, the ERCO offers four inputs and a trigger output. This allows users to connect one analog and three digital devices (via optical, coaxial or USB-C) and two output devices, one balanced (XLR) and one unbalanced (RCA). The logo brightness can be dimmed with a dial and there are two DC power inputs (the proprietary Ferrum Power Link (FPL), and standard 2.5mm DC pin) to connect the unit with the power supply of choice.
Suited for high end personal audio, connected to any favorite headphones or powered loudspeakers, the Ferrum ERCO offers a truly balanced signal path from the D/A stage and becomes truly balanced from the auxiliary analog RCA inputs and fully balanced modified IC power amp. The whole design is focused on a low noise, transparent sound signature, to avoid listening fatigue, and provide "the perfect canvas, with a background of absolute silence," as the company describes.
The Ferrum ERCO retails for 2,395 EUR/USD.
www.ferrum.audio
