Gryphon BelCanto Owner's Manual
OWNERS MANUAL
THE GRYPHON BEL CANTO
THE GRYPHON
FEATURES
MUSICAL
OBJECTIVES
he Gryphon team would like to take this opportunity to congratulate
and thank you for purchasing the Gryphon Bel Canto. To ensure
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optimum performance and maximum satisfaction, please read the
owner's manual before proceeding to listen to your latest acquisition. As
designers, audiophiles and music enthusiasts, we ore well
aware that most manuals are read in the first healed moments of actually
listening to (he equipment, but we do advise you to read (his manual
carefully before installing the Gryphon Bel Canto.
The Gryphon Bel Canto is a prestige product in the on y meaningful sense
of the term: a handmade product in very limited numbers based on the extensive research and development efforts of professional audio engineers,
a component expert, a mechanical engineer and a designer. The Gryphon Bel Canto is the end result of six years of constant experimentation
and investigation into the behavior of audio circuits under real world
conditions. It is our intention to offer to the serious music lover a true state
of the art system control amplifier which will extract the full measure of musical satisfaction from whatever source is used.
Working for our own pleasure as much as for anything else, we have
challenged ourselves to push back the borders of audio component performance in a series of no-compromise, cost-no-object designs. The Gryphon Bel Canto is the latest realization of these goals and stands proudly
alongside the other Gryphon products.
Myth: Creature which combines the power of lion King of Beasts, with the
grace of the King of Birds. Known in Greek mythology as the guardian
of the source of gold and protector of the Dionysian cup of infinite
wealth. Reality: Danish audio engineering company employing cutting
edge technology and common sense in the pursuit of musical excellence.
• Dual mono configuration
• 24-position passive resistor volume control
• Fully discrete construction
• Select premium-grade components
• Short signal-path with limited internal wiring
• 40,000 micro Farad capacitor bank
• Flat megabandwidth frequency response
• Zero negative feedback
• Pure Class A mode x 100
• Custom-built C-core transformer
• low output impedance for long cable runs
• DC coupling with servo-control
• Independent, regulated power supplies with noise filters
• 24 K gold plated phono sockets
• Eleven-stage voltage regulation per channel
• Five year warranty
Let us make one thing perfectly clear:
The sound of live music must be the ultimate reference in the design of
any audio playback system.
Of course, there is on endangered species of " techno-freaks" who se-
THE GRYPHON
CREW
THE GRYPHON
DESIGN GOAL
riously maintain that the concert hall experience is irrelevant to the hi-fi experience. The techno-freak finds live music in real space duller than the
thrill of hi-fi, lacking the ultra sharp focus on instruments. The predominance of reflected sound in the concert hall also lakes the edge of
live music for the techno-freak.
The sole purpose of every Gryphon product is to recreate as accurate an
illusion of the live music experience as is humanly possible. We are successful only if our endeavours move you not to say What a wonderful amplifier, but to say instead, "What marvellous music".
he exterior design, ergonomics and basic philosophy behind every
Gryphon project are the brainchild of Gryphon founder Flemming
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E. Rasmussen.
More often than not, a full line of audio products is conceived and designed by a single person whose lack of overall expertise is revealed by
the fact that a fine power amplifier is followed by a mediocre preamplifier
or that the phonostage in an otherwise excellent preamplifier is not up to the
some standard.
The Gryphon design team consists of two permanent m embers to ensure a
consistent standard of performance, ergonomics and styling. They are assisted by a strong line-up of specialists who provide additional know-how
and creativity for each individual project.
One immediately obvious aspect of Gryphon products is the dual mono
concept which is carried to its ultimate extreme in the topology of every
Gryphon design in order to achieve minimal crosstalk and maximal channel
separation. The use of large, separate power supplies and multistage AC
regulation and filtering are also Gryphon trademarks. Simplicity is the
watchword in Gryphon circuit design, with painstaking attention to the
layout of grounding paths. Even the earliest version of the Gryphon Head
Amp in 1984 featured true star grounding. The presence of the MUTE
function the program selector switch is just one example of our deceptively simple approach to maintaining the shortest possible signal
path.
What is left out in audio engineering is every bit as important as what is
put in.
OO many audio engineers use large numbers of mediocre components in
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a vain effort to compensate for fundamental shortcomings in circuit design,
resulting in overly-complex products with textbook specifications, yet mediocre sound quality.
Equally irrelevant to the quest for realistic home music reproduction is the
school of thought which subscribes to the indiscriminate use of only the
"best and most fashionable" components, "dream caps", "superresistors",
etc. That approach guarantees nothing but a very high price.
The Gryphon design team employs premium grade components, some of
which one very expensive, others of which are less well known in consumer audio but held in high regard in the computer industry and other
professional applications. Rather than view these components in isolation,
the interface and synergy of every part of the whole is carefully scrutinized.
Because Gryphon products are designed with careful attention to the true
relationship of measured performance to subjective sonic performance,
the Gryphon Bel Canto is and ideal tool for the evaluation of other components.
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