Constellation Inspiration: One of the very best integrateds I've ever heard

[Puma Cat]

A Constellation Inspiration integrated amp arrived today from the friend that is very kindly loaning it to me. My understanding from him is it's brand new with zero hours on it.

Here's a quick piccie taken with the iPhone 12. Right now it's sitting on a rock maple board but once I finish up the CJ ART 150 amp review in the next day or so, I'll pull the First Sound preamp out of the main rack, and replace it with the Constellation Inspiration (then I can send the First Sound's dual external power supplies to Emmanuel for their CCI-X update. Woot! 👍 😀...but I digress).



After reading the manual, I connected my Lampi Baltic 3 DAC as source, fed by the Aurender N20 that's in for review.

First impression: very, very, very neutral and uncolored. Transparency and timbral resolution are pretty fab, as is the imaging. It's so clean and quiet it's kinda nuts. Zero hours on it, and just off the UPS truck, so it needs to settle and then rack up hours on the clock to open up to it's fullest extent. Stay tuned.