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As you'll have gleaned, Cliff Orman is sensitive to and very inquisitive about electrical signal and material reactions to it. His powerline products are encased not in typical folded sheet-metal boxes. Nor are they machined from solid bar stock. Instead they exploit multi-layer bonds of precision-machined Krion. That's a Spanish-sourced composite developed by Systempool as a subsidiary of Porcelanosa. This synthetic material consists of 2/3rds aluminium trihydrate and resin binders. It can be machined, thermo-curved or injection molded. Whilst I couldn't speak to exact compositional overlap, it reminds me of Crystal Cable's newest Minissimo speaker shown for the first time at the just concluded Munich HighEnd 2014. That compact monitor is machined from a German composite which suspends aluminium particles in resin. Its interior walls are routed into an anechoic chamber type profiling. Test-bench maestro Edwin van der Kley of Siltech explained how measuring their new cabinet's behaviour [lower left] for mechanical response to internal air pressures and distortion, they hit a new low over their previous Arabesque Mini enclosure [lower right] which was still assembled from dissimilar solid aluminium panels bolted together for seams and plenty of fasteners. The Minissimo approaches monocoque construction though obviously the bottom panel is bolted.

Borrowing from my prior review of Cliff's Three 11R, here are some photos of its 5-layer construction.


Three 11R chassis parts viewed from above, top to bottom layers left to right.


Three 11R chassis parts viewed from below, top to bottom layers left to right.


As Cliff said at the time, "here is a photo of the filter section before elastomeric injection. The internal wiring is Acrolink 7N pure stress-free copper. I listen to and select all the components for each filter, rejecting those that aren't up to our standards. I also listen to the phase of each component. Even though there are parts supposedly not sensitive to polarity, reality shows that this is not so and must be checked carefully for best results. Our diodes are ultra high-speed soft recovery types with very high current capacity which is of utmost importance to avoid any kind of dynamic compression.

The DC filter components are the 4 diodes, resistor and 18 small capacitors.

"As this layout might show, I agree with Einstein's famous quote of 'everything should made as simple as possible but no simpler'. It's easy to complicate a design to try and solve a problem but the more contacts and components you use, the less information is likely retrieved. Of course a product stuffed with bits and bobs does look like you're getting a lot for your money. In most cases though you are just getting a bin load worth of cheap parts. As they say, not all that glitters is gold."


How much would Cliff be willing to divulge about the latest Granada? The above photos I published last year were the first ever he'd allowed on the physical makeup of his biggest AC/DC filter. Apparently having suffered no commercial incidents of IP theft in the interim, he promised to take some of the Granada too. If you or I attempted it, we'd screw up the intended torque. The above photos explain why I've pinned my very positive Three 11R results—and Two 1R on my amps—on DC not AC filtering. The majority of the device's physical parts are dedicated to the former.


Again, I'd never considered this subject until the on/off hum of amp transformers in my former flat. I owned and used various conditioners over the years. This included balancing transformers from BPT and various more or less passive versions from Walker Audio, Furutech and GigaWatt. Discovering the audible benefits of primary DC filtering changed my power religion. I've not gone back to dedicated AC filters though I do retain such Furutech and GigaWatt devices for various secondary systems. This explains my keen personal interest in the 'double-strength' attack of the Granada on the same DC topic.