Three years have passed since my last encounter with Abendrot products when I reviewed the HENGST and STUTE. Since then, the HENGST and STUTE have become legacy products, and Abendrot has introduced the COLT, a one-box DAC that continues the legacy of Abendrot’s one-of-a-kind digital front end.
Abendrot
Abendrot was founded by a dedicated team of prominent master clock engineers and digital audio designers from the UK and Japan, to provide the very best in digital sound reproduction. Developed through the expertise of engineers with over 30 years of experience and a deep passion for circuit design, Abendrot products are time-aligned and correlate with an inspiring century-long milestone in audio history, pushing the boundaries of what was once considered impossible.
Abendrot crafts its products with fanatical dedication. Each Abendrot product is meticulously and individually handcrafted. The level of attention and precision in these top-tier, fine boutique products is inspired by the intricate and painstaking process of forging ancient Japanese samurai swords. These iconic objects of desire, still imbued with a mysterious aura, transcend the usual limits of manufacturing and are elevated to the realm of individual art.
Philosophy
In the era of organic analog sound, when music was most beloved, there was no digital noise or information loss due to clocks, synchronization, or other issues. With STUTE, Abendrot envisioned and introduced the first solution to this challenge, setting a new standard. Abendrot’s master clock technology is the result of the dedication and passion of high-end master clock engineers and analog/digital audio professionals.
As a starting point, the Abendrot Everest 701 – True Audio Master Clock was born from the dream of taking HD audio to the next level.
The original challenge was to find and experience the same fascination derived from old records but in the present day and through digital mediums.
Before finalizing their master clock, the Abendrot team had never experienced digitally produced sound with such transience and depth. This gave them the green light to delve further into research and create something with a meaningful difference.
Driven by the belief that digital audio reproduction can occur without any loss of information, the Abendrot team felt the possibilities of a new era in music production and reproduction were within reach.
With this vision, Abendrot imagined a new reality where artists, producers, engineers, and anyone deeply invested in the highest quality of music production and reproduction would share the same passion.
With all this in mind, a crucial question emerged: Why use and implement inferior master clocks that inevitably cause information loss?
As a result, Abendrot began manufacturing master clock signals that are perfectly synchronized with digital audio systems, positioning their technology as the ultimate reality in digital audio recording.
There is no doubt that we are witnessing a new dawn of high-definition, state-of-the-art digital audio. Abendrot has designed its products from the ground up to maintain the same organic quality that analog sound embodies.
The COLT intimately embraces all of Abendrot’s qualities in its DNA (with the Everest 901 clocking system), but as a complementary extension, Abendrot still offers the STUTE as a special order item, allowing the owner to further elevate the sound of the COLT.
The Colt
The COLT is a stand-alone D/A converter introduced to celebrate Abendrot’s 10th anniversary of high-precision technology. Born from the marvel of the True Audio Master Clock and proprietary D/A conversion technology, the COLT was designed to achieve an analog-like sound while preserving the inherent resonance and performance characteristics within the digital audio realm.
The new COLT can is a stand-alone version of the iconic STUTE & HENGST combo. It features the True Audio Master Clock Sphere X—an internal clock newly developed for the Everest 901 A/D converter, a highly coveted and proven technology in the Abendrot high-end studio DACs.
Compared to the STUTE & HENGST, the COLT has a slightly different design but retains all the strengths of the potent combo. When not directly compared to STUTE & HENGST, the COLT stands out with its exceptional transparency and zen-like clarity.
At the heart of the COLT, the digital signal is upsampled to 192kHz, without relying on faux DSP-generated sampling.
The COLT requires a premium preamplifier, and during its development, it was paired with the Goldmund MIMESIS REFERENCE preamplifier to maintain the highest level of performance.
Like all Abendrot products, the COLT DAC incorporates proprietary technology that demands ultra-precision manufacturing and cannot be mass-produced. For this reason, the COLT is built to order only.
The Music
Across all musical genres, the COLT resonated with a profound symbiosis to the overarching themes and motifs of the music.
As always, here are a few reference tracks/albums highlighting the state-of-the-art, one-box Abendrot DAC.
Violator – Depeche Mode
Violator, the seventh studio album by Depeche Mode, was released in 1990 by Mute Records and features numerous songs that catapulted the iconic English electronic band into multi-million album sales. Its subtle, catchy, pulsating sound caught on like wildfire, with now-legendary tracks like “Personal Jesus,” “Enjoy the Silence,” and “World in My Eyes.”
Violator is not a typical pop album but rather a stripped-down essence of Depeche Mode, presented with rawness, intimacy, and vibrancy.
The COLT revealed Violator in a new way—with more depth and detail, opening up a captivating experience. If the digital front is not properly equipped for its task, this album can quickly become a kaleidoscopic, hectic sonic encounter due to the extensive use of electronic sounds.
Unlike many DACs, the Abendrot flagship DAC never smeared the electronic sounds and vocals, nor glued them together forcefully. Instead, it created a seamless, enticing, and heartfelt storytelling experience that cuts through the surface, unveiling the intimate narrative of the album in a refreshingly different way, without ever interfering with the music—a rare quality, worthy of all the praise.
Dhunche – Timboletti
“Dhunche” by Timboletti track’s transients, demands a DAC with higher-order-resolution capability, fast attack handling, and the ability to provide the necessary density at any time.
With the Abendrot COLT, the transients were not just approximations, transcending any form of estimation that typically causes rounded leading edges of notes, ushering to fatigue, sonic congestion, or even pleasing, but unnatural saturation.
The COLT also spawned a surprisingly expansive, three-dimensional sonic sphere, and even when played louder (as”Dhunche” calls for), the music didn’t collapse horizontally or vertically, and remained holographic, as one large harmonic entirety.
Across the entire audible range, the COLT delivered “Dhunche” seamlessly, with no upper harmonic swell or artificial subsonic and ultrasonic notes bleeding into the lower register and mid-bass—a feat that cannot be claimed by many DACs, regardless of cost.
Balthazar – Fever
Fever by Belgian indie band Balthazar is one of my favorite alternative music albums in recent years. It stands as a testament to modern album-making, proving that great music is still being produced and that it can sound great.
COLT is one of the few DACs that can establish a genuine dialogue between music and listener, creating that rare, wonder-struck magic. COLT uniquely weaves the fabric of music, crafting an intoxicating experience where the listener becomes an integral part of the encounter, not just an observer.
With the COLT, you’re hit by reality, no matter how abstract it may seem. Fever evokes a Mulholland Drive-like mood, with a startlingly tangible aural impact and feedback.
COLT lets the music expand beyond a single dimension, something many DACs—regardless of price—fail to do.
When the zeros and ones aren’t properly deciphered, music unravels unevenly and incompletely.As an antidote, COLT’s flow allows the music to unfold, anchoring the present moment and meticulously revealing layer after layer in a meaningful, articulate way.
The Conclusion
Every one of my reviews starts with a straightforward yet profoundly simple premise: “If it’s interesting to me, it’ll be interesting to you”, with my pedantic brain focusing on the concentration of quality while keeping the enthusiasm unbottled.
Regardless of technology, novel ideas, or price tag, many modern DACs can still sound harsh and one-dimensional. This is often closely associated with streamlined manufacturing, which Abendrot escapes by all means, drawing its design choices from an impressive track record working with some of the most renowned studios worldwide.
One of the first things I noticed with the COLT was how differently it handles the discrete pitches of instruments across the full frequency spectrum, expertly avoiding the division of the fundamentals that form the realistic sound of instruments, voices, and acoustic spaces.
Too often with high-end audio products, we deal with intangible attributes that lead to subjective conclusions. However, understanding how instruments and vocals react in real acoustic spaces and studio environments avoids this sonic serendipity—and this is exactly how and why the Abendrot Audio COLT DAC stands out from the crowd.
The COLT is not only aurally inviting; it lets you dive deep into the music and stay there until the superbly enticing experience is over. It offers a one-of-a-kind clarity that naturally guides the listener into a zone of reality, where every detail matters, and where attributes like ultra-low distortion, fast frequency response, and precise timing feel completely at home.
There’s little doubt that the COLT is an expertly voiced DAC, never crossing the threshold into paradoxical sonic states, something that even some pricier DACs can’t avoid.
Music represents a series of small yet utterly significant moments—a fragile micro-universe that, when broken apart, disrupts fleeting emotions. Quite oppositely, the COLT delivers a unified sound, where a total sonic vision takes shape, becoming more than just the sum of its fragments.
Abendrot’s proprietary approach, its chameleon-like nature, and addictive sound champion immediate sound delivery—especially with attacks, where too many DACs compensate, making the music sound unnatural, rounded, and slow. This, along with the proper representation of the golden trinity of timbre, tone, and color, is where the COLT truly shines.
In the digital domain, when retrieving zeros and ones, there is often a wide variety of missing gaps that result in a loss of information quality. Once again, the Abendrot COLT stands apart with its exquisite handling in the amplitude domain, super-fast transient response, and the higher level of harmonic density, along with the life-like tone and timing.
An utterly important aspect of digital audio that isn’t discussed enough is what happens between the samples—a topic that can quickly veer into esotericism. Yet, when the music flow is disrupted, everything collapses, and this is where mediocre DACs (regardless of price) differ from the great ones. This is why some DACs elicit an emotional response while others fail considerably.
The Abendrot COLT establishes a unique position among upper-echelon DACs, with its uncanny ability to present music as it truly is, making the fluidity of digital audio an objective reality.
The COLT DAC doesn’t reinterpret music as digital code but delivers an immersive musical experience through a unique lens. It imparts no listening fatigue, even during extended sessions, allowing the listener to dive deeply into the music and experience it as a harmonic whole.
It’s rare for any DAC to unveil another layer of clarity that allows for a deeper dive into the music, but the Abendrot COLT does just that. It extracts bits from an endless musical cosmos in a unique way, where this micro/macro universe returns an enormous portion of information in a sublime, interactive way.
With the COLT, music comes through in real-time—a compliment worthy of all the high praise and not something I can say for many DACs. It delivers a vivid aural experience, where music thrives, going beyond the usual domains of linearity, elevating the sonic norms to a plane of its own, making this one of COLT’s most salient attributes, never imparting its imprint, expertly avoids timing lag and sonic fatigue, and perpetrates its “mathematical magic” deciphering zeros and ones seamlessly—and, most importantly, musically.
The Abendrot COLT is a digital tsunami in the best sense of the word, delivering unprecedented energy levels, and micro and macro details that forge meaningful connections.
Abendrot single-box DAC belongs to the upper echelon of high-end audio for all the reasons mentioned. Built to order, one at a time, created from the ground up to excel, as proven in many studios with the Everest line, and as already cemented with the Hengs/Stute combo.
Undoubtedly, the COLT represents a worthy investment, but unlike many competing DACs, the Abendrot digital-to-analog converter has strong roots in the pro audio market, where perfection is constantly sought, and with the impeccable track-record COLT exudes longevity.
Having been impressed by STUTE & HENGST’s impact, I had high expectations for the COLT, but they were surpassed in spades! The COLT is not merely a distillation of the Abendrot philosophy; it’s a digital epicenter, a potent hub that delivers music flawlessly and continuously.
With its sleek, minimalist exterior, it effortlessly blends contemporary and classical styles, setting the stage for a truly regal sonic experience.
For what it represents musically, and how refreshingly different it is from other products, I’m delighted to award the Abendrot COLT DAC the 2024 Mono & Stereo Upper Echelon Award. ❖
Price
- 55,000.00 USD
Specifications
Digital Input
- Input 1 AES/EBU XLR 110Ω x1
- Input 2 SPDIF Coaxial RCA 75Ω x1
- Sampling Rate 16-24bit 44.1kHz-192kHz
Analog Output
- Converter Type : Complete Balanced Dual Mono Wide Dynamic Range Topology
- Output : XLR Balanced L/R
- Output Amplifier : High Voltage Buffered Wide Range DC Amp
- Output Impedance : 100Ω (ATT 0dB)
- Output Signal Level : 20dBu（7.746Vrms Hi-Z weighted ATT 0dB / 14dBu（3.882Vrms Hi-Z weighted ATT -6dB）
- Output Attenuator : 0dB/-6dB Hi-Z weighted
- SN Ratio : better than 115dB TYPE
Clock Synchronized Circuit
Input : 10MHz 1V RMS 50Ω/5V P-P Hi-Z
BNC : x1 (Auto Synchronize Connection)
Electrical
- Input Voltage : 115V / 230V, 50-60Hz
- Wattage 30W(typical)
Environmental
- Operating Temperature Range 5℃～ 35℃
- Relative humidity : 35～85％RH(non-condensing)
Miscellaneous
- Size: 400 x 420 x 90mm (W x D x H), Weight: 11.5kg
Contact
Abendrot International LLC
202, 5-11-23 Minamiaoyama Minato-ku
Tokyo, 107-0062, Japan
Web: abendrot-audio.com
Email: Link
Tel : +81-3-6312-8310
Fax : +81-3-6369-4230