Fezz Equinox D/A Processor – Stereophile Review

It wasn’t long ago that bottom-shelf DACs had this dry, gray, punchy, grainy sound, emerging from a weird mechanical clarity. Their sound reminded me of cheap whisky. The ones that didn’t sound like $1 shots replaced the dry grain with some blurry gel. No vitality. No subtle contrasts. No nuance. No air. No atmospherics, no reverberance, and nothing I would call transparency.

Digital’s rapidly evolving technology made the next wave of DACs sound strikingly clear and quiet, with some touchy-feely hints of wetness to suggest a more natural transparency. Unfortunately, most of these newfangled wet DACs sounded like distilled water tastes.

For me, digital transparency didn’t become truly wet, colorful, or naturalistic until I discovered NOS R-2R converters, which made midlevel four-figure DACs, like my Denafrips and HoloAudio, sound like bits bathed in luminosity. Very relaxed. Grainless. Ektachrome.

The dCS Bartók and Lina DACs showed me a completely different form of digital sound, a type I never imagined. The DAC was delivering a musical vision that with all its mapping, filtering, and oversampling options made me feel I was participating in some form of ritual remastering.

Using those dCS converters convinced me that, in contrast to analog masters, where someone can just play back the tape, no one really knows, or can show me, what’s actually in a digital file. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering, what should this CD sound like? What did the producers hear? Followed by, how can I know when a DAC is telling the truth?

Best I can tell, what differentiates one DAC’s sound from that of another is not the amount of truthfulness it provides or some form of measured linearity but the colors in and power of its vocal range and the perceived quality of its transparency. What else should I be listening for?

The main things I notice as I move up the digital-component price ladder are a more visceral, less processed feel; more precisely drawn images; more color-saturated tones; and, especially, a more captivating transparency.

Most of the six-figure DACs I’ve auditioned made recordings sound incredulously vivid and hyperdimensional, like MQA on steroids. Listening to these million-dollar sound systems caused my brain to wonder, how much of what I just heard was actually in the converted file? These over-the-top-shelf DACs made images feel denser than “normal” DACs and empty spaces feel energized in ways that felt different from any reality I knew. But I didn’t care. I love visceral sound, so I applauded the vibrancy of these painted visions and the fuel-dragster intensity of their presentations. Maybe, after 40 years, digital audio is finding its own identity.

It seems digital’s new identity began when powerhouse tech firms started carving out technically sophisticated, painstakingly tailored house sounds. Chord, dCS, Wadax, and CH Precision come quickly to mind as leaders in these pursuits. The closer I listened to this level of digital, the more I applauded what I called “painting with bits.” These DACs put some real magic in digital playback—not to mention, it’s been fun watching my upscale friends choose which of these competing audio aesthetics matched their personalities, like they do with cars, cologne, and phono cartridges.

What it is
The Fezz Equinox digital-to-analog converter was designed by a Polish engineering wizard named Łukasz Fikus, who is better known as Lampizator (aka tube terminator) for his shiny, expensive products with exotic-shaped vacuum tubes sticking out of the top (footnote 1).

Fezz Audio products are manufactured in Poland, in a factory shared with their parent company Toroidy, an OEM manufacturer of toroidal inductors and transformers. I asked Jay Rein of Bluebird Music, Fezz’s charming importer-distributor, what is the relationship between Łukasz Fikus’s Lampizator, Fezz Audio, and Toroidy?

Jay explained. “Fezz Audio has been supplying their Toroidy transformers to Lampizator for over 10 years. So a strong relationship existed between the two companies. When Fezz began scheming for a DAC to pair with their stylish integrated amplifiers, they naturally asked Łukasz Fikus if he could help.

He responded with a design he had in a drawer that would fit the Fezz chassis in terms of sound quality, value, and brand aesthetic. Fezz believed if they combined the high-quality Lampizator DAC with their custom-designed Toroidy transformers, they would have a winning product that offered excellent sound at outstanding value.”

I chose to review the Fezz Equinox D/A processor ($2995) because lately I’m into DACs that define themselves by the list of features they don’t have. In the case of the Fezz Equinox, that’s a long list: no ostentatious casework, no tycoon pricing, no high-tech volume attenuator, no touch screen OLED display. No menu or remote. No oversampling. No reclocking or equalization. No XLR output. No AES, HDMI, or RS-232 inputs. No Bluetooth. No DSD, SACD, or MQA.

Apart from the IEC power jack, an international voltage selector, a signal-ground disconnect switch, and a pair of RCA line-level outputs, the only things on the rear panel are two TosLink optical ports, one RCA coaxial S/PDIF port, and one USB Type B input.

Features the Equinox does have: a decorator-friendly CNC-formed chassis with rounded vertical corners that comes in seven fashionable colors with four superior-quality soft rubber footers and a sliding clear window on its top that exposes and provides access to its single ECC82/12AU7 tube mounted horizontally in a mirrored chamber. Tube rolling is thereby facilitated—and encouraged.

According to Jay Rein, “The Equinox is in stock now with a warranty of two years, 90 days on tubes. Later in the year Bluebird will begin shipping a second version of the Equinox, this one with balanced outputs, that will retail for $3795.”

Setup
Setup was child’s play. Crows and toddlers could do it. Just plug a few wires into their matching holes, switch it on, and select a source with the big front-panel knob. Qobuz recognized the Equinox as “FEZZ.” The rest I describe below.

Listening
It’s after the end of the world Don’t you know that yet?

Sun Ra’s It’s After the End of the World (Live at the Donaueschingen and Berlin Festivals) (24/88.2 FLAC MPS/Qobuz) is always a fun start to a good day, listening to this live German recording of Sun Ra pouring all his otherworldly outsiderness on the crowd, showing how vibrations bind us to each other and the cosmos. With the Fezz Equinox, this live 1971 performance displayed Webb Telescope–level imaging, like the Milky Way with black holes and planets exploding between the speakers. Bass and treble came through with extra-clean transients and extraordinary low-level detail. Sun Ra’s face, body, and piano were precisely outlined and placed with certainty. Presence and physicality were four-star, which is rare with streaming.

My first taste of the Equinox reminded me of the Wattson Madison streamer-DAC. The two DACs deliver a similar vodka-martini high that takes a few tracks to kick in. This same recording played through the Denafrips Terminator Plus had more of blissed-out, red wine feel.

Vs HoloAudio Spring 3 LTE ($3098)
The first time I heard Marianne Faithfull singing Shel Silverstein’s “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” it was coming out of the jobsite boombox around Christmas of ’79. On my way home from work, I stopped at J&R records, where Faithfull’s first album in what seemed like a decade, Broken English (Island Records ILPS 9570), was being displayed throughout the store. Since that day, I’ve played that disc on every record player I’ve owned, and every time I play it, I’ve shuddered to its bleak tone.

I did not see this coming: The reality of Marianne’s bleakness was never more tangible—I never before felt more eye-to-eye, hand-holding close to the legendary chanteuse—than it was while listening to the Qobuz-streamed version of “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” (16/44.1 FLAC, Island/Qobuz) through the Fezz Equinox. Through the Fezz DAC, Qobuz streaming sounded unusually alive and communicative. There was punch, and leading-edge transients felt electric. Images were conspicuously large. Faithfull’s persona was not submerged in overemphasized synthesizer energy. However, I did hear some momentary elements of glare and higher-than-natural contrast that may have originated in my American pressing or from the Voxativ Hagen2’s paper cone. Faithfull’s highest register occasionally jumped out and flashed me. Contrasts in the Fezz’s top octaves were sharper and less subtly rendered than they were with HoloAudio’s similarly priced Spring 3 LTE DAC. The Equinox played larger volumewise but cooler and drier and less meaty than HoloAudio’s Spring 3 LTE with its PLL engine engaged. The Spring 3 exhibited that quality of soundspace lighting photographers like: bright sun evenly filtered by gray clouds. The Equinox’s soundspace looked like a moderately bright cirrus-clouded day in my garden.

A better analogy might be: With the Spring 3 I feel like I’m seeing the world through a camera lens with a polarizing filter that reduces glare, naturalizes contrasts, and saturates hues. With the Fezz Equinox, I’m viewing recordings through a haze-reducing UV filter. The view feels crisp, bright, and haze-free.