The Horning Digital Combo

ShanghaiBigPiece

PT, I recall the listening impression of a Japanese Belt Drive transport + a modified French Tube DAC at your old apartment. It was quite good and had a strong analogue feel. Can you share a bit more on how they are compared with the Horning?
Thanks
Big Piece

Unknown

If you close your eyes and try as hard as you can to look for digital sound, you won't be able to find them. This is what the Horning could do. The design objective is to get the reproduction of CD as close to vinyl as possible. The realism of the mid-range is quite shocking. You will have enough extension both at the top and bottom but do not look for frequency extreme extension. It has enough but the design objective is not to expose everything to you. If frequency extension comes at the expense of coherence and timbre realism, Tommy of Horning would rather cut them off. The first buyer of the Horning combo was using the German flagship CD transport for many years. He compared the horing combo with the german transport plus US made top dac. In his own descriptions, the Horning plays music whereas the old combo plays sensational sound. It is hard to say which is better, depending on your need. The reason why he wants to change to another source after using the most expensive source equipment is because he find himself could not involve in the music anymore, sometimes the ears become very tired.

If you listen back to Zanden, you can still find traces of digital sound here and there in bits and pieces, but for Horning you can't find them at all. For live recording, the Horning however lost that very lively atmosphere depicted by the Zanden.

I think the Horning combo is very big band for the buck. Another friend of mine who heard the horning transport side by side with the famous german transport could not comprehend that the german transport does not seem to have any edge over a brand that nobody knows.