Gryphon Audio Designs • Kodo Loudspeaker System

by Roy Gregory | June 23, 2019

© www.theaudiobeat.com

If you want to conjure up a sense of Gryphon Audio’s Kodo loudspeaker system, you could do worse than close your eyes and think substance. It’s a single word that encapsulates everything about this product, including its performance and its stature. From the sheer physical substance represented by the ten individual massive (and massively heavy) cabinets, arranged into four towering columns, to the simple elegance of the clear logic and theoretical concept that define them; from the huge associated numbers -- a shipping weight of over a metric ton, the 2000 watts of onboard, low-frequency amplification, the height of the towers and the 19 drivers a side  -- to the rib-rattling potential of such a potent system; there’s no escaping the sheer physical presence (or musical impact) of these speakers.

It’s easy to look at Kodo and see audio history encapsulated, a modern take on an age-old and well-established recipe. Ever since the Infinity IRS set the benchmark for audio performance, four-column, multi-driver speaker systems have been de rigueur -- at least if you were serious about your high-end chops. Whether you were a manufacturer, distributor, dealer or end user, four boxes quickly became the minimum requirement for state-of-the-art replay -- with ever bigger cabinets, ever more drivers and ever increasing price tags to match, whether the performance warranted them or not. A good little 'un does not necessarily a good big 'un beget -- not that that ever put a damper on audio ambition.

Of course, there are sound reasons for four-box systems, from the original WATT/Puppy on up -- mainly having to do with the benefits of putting bass in a separate box, the size of that box if you want realistic bandwidth, and not least the sheer impossibility of shifting a system that combined that box with a matching midrange/treble array. But to simply assume that the Gryphon Kodo is another me-too, stack-as-many-units-as-you-can exercise in audio excess and creative pricing rather misses the point. The Kodo an extension of the exact same philosophy and approach that generated the original stand-mounted Cantata, and it also shares that thinking with every Gryphon speaker since. The Kodo just writes the message in bigger letters. Also, in a world where audio pricing seems to have taken leave of reality, the Kodo almost qualifies as a bargain. A bargain? I can hear the spluttering gasps of outrage from here, but bear with me and I’ll make that case. But just for starters, in pure material terms, you get an awful lot of hardware for a price that can seem almost indecently modest for a flagship speaker these days.

Faced with four towering cabinets and 38 drivers, it’s tempting to simply reach for the loudest, most dynamic recording you can think of and advance the volume. I’d be lying if I claimed that thought didn’t cross my mind (or that it didn’t, just occasionally, get acted on), but there’s a lot more to the Kodo than its remarkable ability to push air and it all starts with that singular philosophy that binds all of the Gryphon speaker designs. Return to the Cantata for a moment and you find what appears to be a classic MTM/D’Appolito design: two midbass units flanking a centrally mounted tweeter top and bottom. But the Steen Dueland-inspired Cantata took the D’Appolito concept a stage further, with a phase-coherent and dielectrically biased crossover, creating the phase-consistent symmetrical array that has become the core principle of each and every Gryphon speaker.

Look at the Kodo and the first thing that becomes obvious, once you get over the sheer size of the thing, is that it. too, is a symmetrical array. Naturally, trying to arrange 19 drivers in a vertical column is not a practical proposition, thus mandating the four-cabinet format. Even so, at 2.4 meters tall (almost eight feet), its ceiling-scraping dimensions are well beyond sensible or the norm. When Gryphon launched its first four-box system, the Poseidon, reviewers and customers alike wondered why the speakers were so tall. Expecting some arcane explanation involving acoustics or golden ratios, they were surprised when Flemming Rasmussen responded, "It’s in case we can’t sell them -- at least I can be buried in them!" But that jokey response concealed a crucial aspect of the system’s design, one that achieves full realization in the latest flagship.

Look closer at the Kodo and you’ll notice that it’s not just the drivers themselves that are symmetrically arranged. The baffles on both the midrange/tweeter and bass towers present a gentle but consistent curve, bending forward from their center point. In fact, the speakers are arranged so that the baffles create a constant radius from the listener: position the speakers five meters from the listening seat and you ensure that each and every driver is on the axis of and the same distance from the listener’s ear. Place the four speaker cabinets symmetrically on a five-meter horizontal arc and they form the outer edges, upper and lower limits of a rectangular segment, cut from a sphere, a sphere that’s centered on the listener’s ears. Reverse the model and it’s like you are sitting at the center of that five-meter sphere, with the driver arrays facing you, mounted symmetrically upon its inner surface. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase being in the bubble -- and it explains an awful lot. Suddenly it becomes clear just how seriously Gryphon takes the question of phase coherence, how it might be possible to maintain that coherence across a four-cabinet system and why the Kodos are built the way they are.

A shipping weight of 1.3 metric tons means the practicality of installing a Kodo system demands that the towers break down into component parts, while the symmetrical nature of the system means that splitting them about their center line makes perfect sense. The complete system consists of ten individual cabinets, a tweeter, upper and lower box for each midrange/treble tower, upper and lower boxes for each of the woofer towers. These are individually crated and need to be manhandled and then bolted together using substantial alloy side plates.

The individual cabinet elements are heavy enough to make just unpacking them quite a workout, while the resulting set of building blocks requires considerable space to arrange, check and then assemble. This is done with the cabinets flat on the ground, and it’s no mean feat, especially when it comes to the lower-bass elements that also contain the 1kW low-frequency amplifiers. These might be class AB, but they still come out of the Gryphon factory, and no Gryphon amp skimps on the power supply. Fortunately, Gryphon is well used to working with enormously heavy products, and carefully devised packaging helps arrange the various building blocks at approximately the right heights to interface. To help in final aligning and attaching the cabinet modules, they also supply some simple air-wedge lifting cushions. These flat black squares are inserted beneath a cabinet and inflated using the attached hose and hand bulb. They lift even the woofer modules with precision and ease. Wilson Audio’s jack has become a very necessary, very expensive legend amongst those who work with large, heavy speakers. The lifting cushions that come with the Kodo may not do exactly the same job, but they cost a fraction as much, making home ownership a real possibility. They’ve promised to let me have the source details, but meanwhile (and until they do) Gryphon won’t be getting the ones that arrived with the Kodos back. Once the towers are bolted together and the feet attached, they need to be heaved upright and then slid into place. Although the towers are surprisingly easy to manoeuvre, it still pays dividends to build the speakers with their bases roughly where they're going to stand.

The cabinets themselves are constructed from laminated MDF and aluminum, with heavy internal bracing. Each driver is mounted on its own baffle, machined and carefully profiled from thick slabs of MDF, an essential arrangement if the constant-radius geometry is going to be achieved, although this has additional benefits in terms of reducing intermodulation distortion between drivers and frequencies (and the resonant signature of large slabs of MDF). The actual driver lineup consists of a large AMT tweeter, four 4 1/2” (114mm), six 5 1/2” (140mm) and eight 8” (203mm) drivers per channel. All the cone drivers are custom built or specified for Gryphon by Scan-Speak. Heavy umbilicals terminated with Speakon connectors join the cabinets in each tower, with the input terminals positioned sensibly close to the floor. The four outrigger legs on each cabinet are fitted with large-diameter adjustable Delrin feet and locking rings, although these could be replaced with Gryphon’s Atlas composite conical feet. That adjustment is crucially important if the spherical geometry of the setup is to be optimized, with rake angle proving critically important. The center of the tweeter is positioned at 115cm off the floor: my seated ear height is 108cm, thus demanding a forward tilt of not just the midrange/treble towers but also the woofers too. I ended up compromising with a combination of forward rake and a cushion to sit on, as the speaker’s balance evolved with warm-up and settling in. You also need to work with your room nodes in terms of final positioning, but that just means placing the speakers first and then working with the listening seat. I actually arrived at an optimum listening distance of 4.9m, but the important thing was that it was the same 4.9m to all the drivers.

As previously mentioned, the woofer towers each contain a 1kW class-AB amplifier built in-house. Although these amps might eschew class-A operation in favor of higher power outputs, the power supply is still suitably massive, allowing each amp a peak output of 4kW for transient demands. The top and bottom cabinet segments are divided by a narrow acrylic panel that carries an illuminated Gryphon logo to indicate their powered status -- although it’s hard to miss the fact if they’re not switched on.

Unlike most speakers with powered bass units, the adjustments for the Kodos (and other Gryphon speakers) are carried out by remote control rather than with trim pots on the electronics package. The speakers come with a small, angled display that is joined to one of them by a long umbilical, similar to the one that allows the two speakers to communicate. This allows you to position the display wherever you wish for setup and remove it altogether once the speakers are dialled in. The remote itself is my favourite such device, a model of common sense and practicality. A handy-sized slab that’s solid without being ridiculously heavy and perfectly sculpted to fit your hand, its six large-diameter latched buttons give you control over system Q (three settings) and level (in 0.5dB steps) as well as allow you to mute the woofers or apply a low-frequency roll-off -- useful if you are playing discs with exaggerated bass or records that are less than flat. With this much bass power on tap, niceties such as that low-cut control matter, and given that it is rarely included on preamps these days, adding it to the speakers makes perfect sense -- especially when the solution is this elegant.

Once the speakers are positioned, the final task is to hang the curved body panels on either side. Laminated from aluminum and MDF, these are mainly cosmetic (although they do help dissipate the energy stored by the cabinets), their brightly colored contours increasing the bulk of the Kodos but also softening their otherwise overbearing visual impact. Positively threatening in appearance when naked, the speakers -- once you get their glad rags on, along with the rubber string grilles -- take on a far more sculpted, poised appearance. While most big speaker systems are physically impressive, few ever manage to convince non-audio visitors on a visual level, generally attracting "But who would have them in their house?" comments. Despite being bigger than most, the Kodos also managed to win over civilian visitors, the majority of them exhibiting an irresistible urge to get close and start stroking those side panels.

Along with the Kodo, Gryphon sent a Zena line stage and (just in case the shipment wasn’t heavy enough) a Mephisto stereo power amp, along with the necessary cables to hook the whole lot up. Past experience has shown that the Gryphon electronics, in particular, are seriously cable sensitive, and I’ve always achieved the best results using the company's own wires. In this case that meant Guideline interconnects and VIP Reference speaker cables. I also ran the system on my resident VTL TL-6.5 II/S-400 II combination, of which more later. Nothing in this system could be described as small or discrete, but although these Gryphon speakers are undoubtedly big, they are also clever, not in the sense of their complexity or the use of exotic, innovative materials but in the exacting way in which they scale up the essential conceptual simplicity of the Cantata without diluting its purity or elegance. In many respects this really is just a small system that’s been magnified -- and then magnified again. If less is more when it comes to audio, the Kodo certainly succeeds in delivering a lot more of that "less."

With all of the tedious detail out of the way, surely it was time to give in to my basest instincts and unleash the beast lurking within this Gryphon system [cue maniacal laughter and a digital volume control set to max]. Well, not quite. Let’s start by going large, but only in instrumental terms. When it comes to the sound of the Kodo, I’m going to start with a solo instrument -- even if it is the largest solo instrument that’s actually portable. The piano has always been an acid test for audio systems, partly because it’s a single instrument that covers such a wide range, partly because we are all at least passingly familiar with its sound, but mainly because getting piano right is so extraordinarily difficult, whether in terms of playing or reproduction. It’s easy to forget that this is a percussion instrument and to overlook the expressive limitations imposed by that -- especially given the range of material available. The difference between great pianists and the merely good ones is that the real stars can make the instrument sing and dance. For a system, matching the dynamic range and attack of the playing, revealing the weight of the notes and their pitch, is one thing; capturing the artistry that reveals the patterns and phrases that shape those notes into meaningful, affecting music is quite another. That needs a special pianist, a special recording and a special system. It’s something at which the Kodo excels.

It might have been Argerich or Zimerman, Benedetti Michelangeli or Clifford Curzon, but in this instance it was András Schiff who flipped the switch on this particular light-bulb moment. Playing his late Beethoven Sonatas [ECM New Series 1947 476 6187], I was captivated by the fluid, articulate grace of the playing, the sheer presence of the instrument. Incredibly stable, the piano sat squarely centered -- big, weighty and dimensional, solid yet vivid and vibrant. For all its weight, it seemed agile and enthusiastic, full of energy just waiting to respond to Schiff’s deft playing. But what lifted the performance above the norm (apart of course from the playing) was the way the speakers were able to project that sense of effortless range and internal volume that so characterize the instrument. There was no missing the body of the piano or the tension in the strings it contained, the air around them or the way it was energized. Schiff conjured the instrument to living, breathing life -- life that was captured by the recording and rendered with utterly convincing grace and authority by the Kodos. The joyously uninhibited opening Presto of Sonata No.25 was played with such lightness of touch and with such precise lines that the gradual intrusion of more emphatic notes and more serious phrases flowed utterly naturally, the interior energy of the instrument exciting both its body and the acoustic on this live recording. When Schiff added weight to a note or a shift to the pace of a passage, there wasn't the slightest hesitation or compression on the part of the system, absolutely no intrusion from the amp or speakers. Instead, I listened, rapt, held in the same space as the instrument, the same space as the performance. The transition to the Andante was just as natural, the slower, more measured pace an extension of Schiff’s playing, his reading of the piece. Rather than individual notes, it was all about the musical whole and the expressive range in the playing. It was a remarkable demonstration of the speaker’s unfettered dynamic response, resolution, musical fluidity and spatial/dimensional coherence -- qualities that together made the performance as engaging as it was credible.

In broad-brush terms, I’d have to describe the Kodo system’s overall balance as slightly warm, a tonality that suits its dynamic capabilities and ability to shock, keeping things musical without pinning your ears back or having you dive for cover. With their overall warmth and considerable weight, the speakers reminded me of the Rockport Arakis -- but with a lot more energy. The other side of this coin is that they are not the most obviously detailed or starkly transparent of speakers, but then they don’t need to be. They have other, far more fundamental ways of making their musical point. The one thing these speakers will never, ever be is musically threadbare. For those who have suffered in the glare and overexposure of ultra-resolution audio systems, that’s going to come as a major relief. There’s no missing what the Kodo puts first -- and it isn’t audiophile recordings. Despite appearances, this is temperamentally very much a real-world system for real-world music.

Given the nature of the Kodo’s focussed driver array, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by the speaker's ability to project substance and energy, a solid central musical presence. But this isn’t just some kind of turbo-charged super-mono presentation. This is an instrument with scale and shape, physical volume and a clear position, both upon the stage and within the acoustic space. It made me realize just how two-dimensional many systems sound on piano music, especially those that lack the sheer bandwidth of the Kodos. But even amongst the really wideband competition, this is still a standout performer, rivaled only by those systems that cost, in many cases, considerably more.

Of course, the Achilles Heel of many really big, wide-bandwidth systems is their inability to go small. Schiff’s quicksilver right hand helped demonstrate the Kodo system’s ability with texture, dexterity and microdynamic discrimination, not to mention its ability to start and stop, to define the space between and the placement of rapid sprays of notes. But to really appreciate just how delicate these speakers can be, we need something both smaller and larger: smaller to investigate just how small the speakers can go, large to see how well they preserve the delicate in the face of the powerful.

Where better to start than the Bach Sonatas and Partitas, BWV 1001-1006? Playing Julia Fischer’s peerless performance (recently transferred to vinyl [PentaTone PTC 5186 666], the Chaconne from Partita No.2) the Kodos projected both her presence and her performance. The image was perfectly life-sized, the instrument at just the right height and uncannily still -- just as it is when Fischer plays. The harmonics and the tonality of the instrument were beautifully captured, the bowing graceful, poised yet vivid, while changes in bow pressure, attack and energy, bite and rhythmic accent, push and emphasis were bound into the ramping intensity of the piece, the brilliance of the playing. Yet as impressive as Fischer’s note-on-note precision is, it’s the clarity that she brings to the complex, interlocking phrases and elongated lines that makes her performance so compelling -- and that really test the clarity and articulation of a loudspeaker. This was a challenge the Kodos passed without notice. That stable image between the speakers seemed so lifelike and so divorced from those huge flanking towers that the system achieved that willing suspension of disbelief without apparent effort. So yes, the Kodos can absolutely do small -- with intimacy and texture, sense and sensibility, delicacy and authority.

Another equally impressive PentaTone LP invites further comparison. Russian Violin Concertos (Fischer, Kreizberg and the Russian National Orchestra [PentaTone PTC 5186 728]) contains Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.1 and the A Minor Concerto from Glazunov, but the real star of the show is the Khatchaturian D Minor Concerto. The lively score and the fluid passages of both the opening and closing Allegri involve energetic exchanges between the soloist and orchestra, yet the Kodos kept the relationship stable, the violin never being swamped or overpowered by the massed instruments. Part of that is the ability to focus and separate the different instruments within the soundstage, but a big part was the sheer stability of the image, the constant scale of the instruments, the way the locations are fixed in space, with no shift in size or perspective as the musical focus moves from the front of the stage to the back or vice versa. It’s a performance that’s indicative of not just genuinely wide bandwidth but real control at the frequency extremes.

Nor is it limited to the PentaTone LPs and Fischer’s poised performances. Even an old favorite like the Ricci Carmen Fantaisie (Gamba and the LSO [Decca SXL 2197]) takes on a new sense of presence and purpose. The violin is still characteristically overvoiced, Ricci a towering colossus of a soloist if the image is to be believed, just as the stage narrows toward the rear in classic Decca style. But whatever the spatial anomalies of the recording they were perfectly maintained by the Kodo system, allowing concentration instead on the impressive musical gymnastics of Ricci’s virtuoso playing. That anchored presence, the solid foundation on which the soundstage rests, made a massive contribution to the Gryphon speakers’ convincing, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable performance. It was a rock-like stability that only the biggest systems can offer, and yet it depends on more than just size.

Once you start listening to really big recordings, from the largest orchestral or choral works to the most extravagant soundtracks, the Kodo system's characteristics really start to emerge, along with the way they shape the overall character of the sound. That planted sense of musical authority and absolute stability is key, but so too are other aspects of the performance. I’ve already talked about the natural perspective and dimensionality that the Gryphon speakers bring to the soundstage, a soundstage that can extend well beyond the width of the cabinets when called upon to do so, and is both beyond and utterly divorced from them. The Kodo towers stand as if mute and immobile, the music occurring in the space beyond them, but that very separation of speakers and sound imposes its own character on proceedings. Listen across a range of material and it soon becomes apparent that there’s a pervasive warmth to the Kodo’s acoustic that invests it with an inclusive sense of presence but also limits its internal spatial separation. While the stage is wide and deep, and it possesses both a tremendous sense of air and a firmly defined height for the band within it, the warmer balance and the overall perspective are both consistent with a midhall listening position -- and a midhall position that’s more Disney or Musikverein than the more structured delineation of Davies or London’s Festival Hall.

If you are looking for the sort of etched hyper reality that so often passes for high-end sound, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Instead, the Kodos deliver the sort of scale and presence, body and weight, more associated with big Wilson systems, but without the individual dimensional definition of instruments or the inter-instrumental space within the soundstage that are such a part of the Wilson sound. So, listen to the brilliant Polskie Radio SACD of Górecki’s 3rd Symphony, a live concert conducted by the composer [Polskie Radio PR SACD 2] and you hear the audience applause that opens the concert spread right to left and reach forward of the speakers to include the listening seat -- which is both impressive and gives you some idea of the coherence of the expansive acoustic. The opening bars spread their complex layers and measured phrases across the split sections of basses and cellos, before reaching across the rest of the strings. The Kodos separated the layers beautifully, but they were separated in tone and pitch rather than space. Whereas the Wilson Alexxes with Thor’s Hammers give the separate rows of instruments, angled but also arranged in depth and height, the Gryphon perspective is softer in focus, the orchestral spread more general. This is neither a good nor a bad thing; indeed, there are plenty who will argue that Gryphon's spatially coherent and holistic sound is actually more realistic -- or at least more akin to what you here in the concert hall (or Bierkeller). It is also a question of degree -- just how much spatial separation do you want or need? Certainly, while I was aware that the speakers didn’t separate as much as those I’m more used to, this certainly didn’t diminish my musical enjoyment -- or appreciation.

Last year, Deutsche Grammophon released an eleven-CD boxed set, Giulini In Concerto [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft 482 9510], to mark the great conductor’s passing, a set that should be at the top of every classical listener’s shopping list. Giulini himself disliked the term conductor, preferring to refer to himself simply as a musician. Listening to the array of performances here (piano concerti from Beethoven/Benedetti Michelangeli, Chopin/Zimerman and Liszt/Berman; choral works from Brahms, Fauré, Mahler, Rossini, Verdi and several orchestral masterworks from Mussorgsky and Ravel) the differences between orchestras, soloists and venues are fascinatingly apparent -- but not as apparent as the overarching sense of musicality that binds them together. The live concert recordings of the Beethoven and Chopin are justly renowned (and worth the entry price alone), but there are other gems here too, including a surprising Pictures with the Chicago Symphony, whose stately tempo brings added pathos to what is too often a party piece, while making the most of the CSO’s smooth strings and rich brass, orchestral playing that the Kodos deliver with real substance and power. The breadth of the orchestra and the width of the soundstage are both impressive, but what really impresses is the Kodos’ ability to separate the overlapping bass instruments in even the loudest passages and fanfares. Doesn’t that contradict what I said above? No, because, again, the separation isn’t so much spatial as textural and tonal. The instruments are identified more by their sound than by their locations, and the clarity with which they are identified makes you appreciate just how muddy the bottom end of most speaker/room combinations is.

That low-frequency definition and attack are present across recordings and genres, from the pace, pitch definition and pluck and release of the bass guitar on the Cure’s "Play For Today" (a title that makes more sense if you know that it was a popular one-hour BBC drama spot that saw many of today’s more celebrated British filmmakers making their small-screen debuts) to the flanged bass patterns on Nils Petter Molvaer’s Khmer [ECM 1560], beats that literally suck the air out of the listening space. Slim floorstanders with multiple small bass units have garnered a reputation for offering an impression of bass rather than the real thing, but I guess it depends on how slim, how small and, not least, how many. The Kodo’s eight bass drivers per side are backed up by substantial sealed-cabinet volumes, not to mention that kilowatt of onboard power -- all dedicated to the narrow band between 16 and 50Hz. It’s dangerous to read too much into simple numbers, but in this case at least those numbers do seem to equate to what one hears. In terms of swept area an 8” driver delivers roughly 50 square inches. With eight such drivers, the Kodo possesses slightly more swept area than the twin 15” drivers in the Thor’s Hammer -- although it lacks the dual motors, long-throw and reflex loading of the Wilson subs.

What can we deduce from this? That the Wilsons will probably deliver weightier fundamentals, the Gryphons greater attack and texture -- those little cones are an awful lot easier to accelerate, and that’s exactly what you hear. (It’s interesting to note in passing that the latest subs that Wilson has built for the WAMM Master Chronosonic employ three 12” units in each cabinet.) Nobody in his right mind would describe the Kodos as lacking bass, although the untutored might find that bass less obvious than expected. But like all the best bass, the Kodo’s is bass that you only hear when you should -- and then there’s no missing its depth, power or impact. This isn’t about the amount of bass the speakers generate; it is about the nature of that bass -- and that leans towards the quick and articulate rather than ultimate weight. Of course, you can dial up the level on the Kodo’s bass towers -- indeed, you can do it from your listening seat and on a disc-by-disc basis if you choose, but that rather misses the point. You can get lumpy, overblown bass in plenty of places and for a lot less money than this. Instead, Gryphon's bottom end relies on attack and impact to impress -- and impress it certainly does.

With this many drivers to share the load, the Kodos go loud and they do it very cleanly indeed. Now, that might not seem like a problem, but combine the speakers’ gigantic dynamic range with that clean delivery and it’s easy to forget just how loud you are listening. Look for that first hint of edge or glare, the aural equivalent of the red band on the rev counter, and you are going to be playing the system a lot louder than you think -- which is fine until the signal gets bigger still and suddenly your amp is struggling to keep up. Past experience has left me well aware of the system synergy that exists between Gryphon electronics and speakers, which is why I requested amplifiers to go with the Kodos. As previously mentioned, Gryphon duly obliged, dispatching their latest one-box Zena line stage/DAC and a Mephisto stereo amp to partner with the speakers. They should have sent a Pandora and monos! At 175Wpc (albeit in class A), the Mephisto is a wonderful thing, but with a speaker that has the sort of dynamic potential available from the Kodos, I’m afraid you really need more. The monos don’t give that much more power, but they do deliver considerably more headroom -- and with speakers that simply beg to play at realistic levels, you’ll relish it -- while as impressive as the Zena is, it simply can’t match the dynamic authority of the two-box Pandora, something underlined in emphatic style with the flagship’s belated arrival.

Alongside the Mephisto, I also ran the Kodos with my resident VTL S-400 II, an amp that doubles the Gryphon’s output power, as well as the Connoisseur 4.2LE line stage, a single-ended alternative to the fully balanced Gryphon rig. I’m not so concerned about the minutiae of the presentational differences between the various line stages and amps, being more interested with what they told me about the speaker, but the big news is that the extra power on tap turned the Kodos into some sort of unburstable monster, unleashing dynamic range and impact that were genuinely awesome on occasions -- in the true sense of the term. Listening to the Gravity soundtrack [Silva Screen SILCD1441], I was pinned to my seat, wondering just how much louder this was going to get, while the bass textures and vast, synthetic acoustic, mournful trumpet and ripping bass ejaculations of Khmer never sounded so vividly menacing. The Kodo teaches its lessons with a clarity it’s hard to ignore, and feeding this system properly is the most important lesson of all.

A big part of that is down to the preamp, the Kodos reminding me in no uncertain terms of the importance of the line stage in terms of the overall system architecture. If you think you are going to run a speaker system like this on the end of a variable-output DAC, you seriously need to think again. With this much bandwidth and bottom-end definition on tap, there’s no hiding the difference made by the quality of the line stage being used -- or the qualities specific to it.

The speakers also reminded me of the musical distinctions between the microdynamic intimacy of single-ended circuitry, as opposed to the ultimate locational and dimensional stability of balanced. But I’ll admit to some surprise at just how clearly the Gryphon speakers defined those differences -- and just how enthusiastically they embraced them. The Connoisseur/VTL pairing was conspicuously successful with the Kodos, bringing immediacy and a sense of life to proceedings, with low-level dynamic discrimination to match the dramatic jumps in wider dynamic range and the remarkable headroom, duly supplied by the VTL amp. If you want to transform your listening room into a heaving club interior, look no further than this system and Joe Jackson’s Summer In The City LP [Intervention Records IR-018] or the Elvis Costello bootleg, Live At The El Mocambo [Universal 602517913790]. A bigger venue? How about the Lyceum (Bob Marley and the Wailers Live [Island ILPS 9376]) or the cavernous Royal Albert Hall (Siouxsie and the Banshees' epic Nocturne [Polydor 815979-1])? The Kodos rise effortlessly to the challenge, be it the menace of Israel, the fractured beauty of Robert Smith’s guitar on "Dear Prudence" or the rousing "Get Up, Stand Up." But it was with the Pandora firmly ensconced and calling the Mephisto to heal that the speakers’ ability to respond to the driving system really started to emerge, the contrast between the fully balanced solid-state Gryphon electronics and the single-ended Connoisseur partnering the tubed VTL amp, their musical strengths and tradeoffs writ large.

One album that really brought those differences home was Peter Gabriel’s Passion (the 45rpm reissue [Real World RWLPR1X]), a perfect storm of huge scale and sweeping loops and samples combined with a breathy, almost claustrophobic intimacy. The presentational differences between the two driving systems were stark. The Gryphons delivered solidity, substance and instrumental separation, underpinning an insistent sense of rhythmic purpose and drive. The bass definition was remarkable, the rolling thunder of drums and percussion/synth loops on tracks like "Of These, Hope" was both impressively powerful and powerfully musical. The Connoisseur/VTL rig couldn’t match the low-frequency clarity of the Gryphons, but created more space between the multiple layers in the mix, a deeper soundstage and wider textural distinctions through the midbass and up.

This last point is possibly the most critical -- and one of the things that make the Connoisseur so special. Where the solid-state electronics emphasised the synthetic and the substance, the Connoisseur and VTL leaned more to the human contributions, the ethnic instrumentation and remarkable vocals (Baaba Maal, Youssou N’Dour and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is quite the lineup), with an impressive combination of uninhibited microdynamic life and sudden wide-range dynamic jump and impact. Where the Gryphons instilled the music with an almost relentless urgency, the Connoisseur and VTL delivered a more emotive, undulating groove. These are significant contrasts, extending way beyond the presentational and well into the realms of musical sense and sensibility. Which is right, which you prefer, is in the ear of the listener, but the real significance of all this lies in just how clearly the Kodos communicate those differences. Believe me when I say that both sets of electronics are seriously impressive and musically engaging. They’re also very different -- to the extent that they encourage you to listen to different material and appreciate different performances.

That’s a first for me as far as Gryphon speakers are concerned -- at least since the demise of the original, remarkable Cantata. Each subsequent design -- and I’ve played with a few -- has seemed firmly embedded in the Gryphon system architecture, giving of their best with -- and only with -- matching Gryphon electronics and cables. The Kodos represent a genuine step change in both the coherence and rigor of Gryphon's technological solution and the versatility of their application. Roll these various qualities together and you’ve got the recipe for a consummate musical performer. The dynamic discrimination, clarity and texture, especially at the bottom end, together with the rock-stable presentation and astonishing headroom combine with the speakers’ geometrical symmetry to deliver music with real drive and purpose, music that stems from a solid central core, almost as if the speakers are actually a single driver -- but a driver that can adapt in size and scale to the recording being played.

Gryphon is justifiably renowned for the quality of its electronics, from the emergence of that first, iconic phono stage to the visually and musically impressive likes of the Mephisto or the stunning appearance of the Colosseum. The speakers have always had a lower profile, perhaps not surprisingly considered mainly as the final step in an all-Gryphon system. With the Kodo, that’s a situation that seems set to, and certainly should, change. Whilst there’s no denying the clear synergy that exists between the speakers and the matching electronics, the amplifiers with which they were developed, the philosophical elegance of the thinking behind the Kodo’s conception and the mechanical integrity with which it has been realized makes this a speaker system that is more than capable of exploiting as well as being exploited by a whole range of electronic partners. More than any previous Gryphon loudspeaker, the Kodo stands alone, capable of comparison to and consideration alongside the likes of Wilson and Stenheim, Tidal and Focal, irrespective of your chosen electronics. For the first time I can see it reversing the status quo: rather than Gryphon speakers representing an option for owners of Gryphon electronics, I can easily envisage a situation where Gryphon electronics are an option for a customer who has already opted for the Kodo loudspeakers.

That alone is significant enough, but it makes a lot of sense when you actually consider the speaker itself and just what it offers, from its remarkable bandwidth and dynamic range, to its striking appearance and engaging musical qualities. Then there’s the kilowatt of power residing in each bass tower, delivering not just bandwidth but remarkable low-frequency definition and transparency. Finally, there’s the sheer physical reality of the Kodo. Even amongst the world of high-end flagship speakers, this one is big, heavy and loaded with hardware -- something that, having unpacked and repacked the review pair (not without help), I can certainly attest to. Factor in all those considerations and it’s hard to disagree with the notion that this is a lot of speaker for the money. How much money? Well, that depends. In the US the Kodo system will set you back a rather weighty $390,000. But in Europe the asking price is considerably less -- €260,000 to be exact, a number that makes this enormous, four-cabinet, part-active system just a little more than a pair of Wilson Audio Alexandria XLFs or Focal Grande Utopia III Evos. That’s what leads me to the faintly bizarre conclusion that the Gryphon Kodo actually represents something of a bargain, especially when compared to much of the competition.

One thing’s for sure: Kodo owners are never going to feel short-changed, whether in material or musical terms. If part of being a genuinely high-end system is the ability to impress, instantly and without question or qualification, then the Gryphon Kodo system ticks that box -- and ticks it as emphatically as it delivers the music you ask it to play.

Associated Equipment

Analog: Grand Prix Audio Monaco v2.0 turntable with Kuzma 4Point 14 tonearm; Lyra Etna and Fuuga cartridges; CH Precision P1 phono stage with X1 power supply; Connoisseur 4.2 PLE phono stage; Stillpoints LPI record weight.

Digital: CEC TL2 CD transport, Wadax Atlantis DAC and transport.

Preamplifiers: Connoisseur 4.2LE, Gryphon Pandora and Zena, VTL TL-6.5 Series II Signature line stages.

Power amplifiers: Gryphon Mephisto and VTL S-400 Series II Reference stereo amplifiers.

Cables: Complete loom of Gryphon Audio VIP Reference and Guideline, Nordost Odin 2 and Crystal Cable Absolute Dream from AC socket to speaker terminals. Power distribution was via Nordost Quantum Qb8s, with a mix of Quantum Qx2 and Qx4 power purifiers and Qv2 AC harmonizers. CAD Ground Control and Nordost Qkore grounding systems.

Supports: Racks are an HRS RXR frame and various HRS platforms as appropriate, along with modified Hutter Racktime elements. These are used with Nordost Sort Kone or HRS Nimbus and Vortex equipment couplers and damping plates throughout. Cables are elevated on HECC Panda Feet.

Acoustic treatments: As well as the broadband absorption placed behind the listening seat, I employ a combination of RPG Skyline and RoomTunes acoustic devices.

Accessories: Essential accessories include the SmarTractor protractor, a USB microscope (so I can see what I’m doing, not for attempting to measure stylus rake angle) and Aesthetix cartridge demagnetizer, a precision spirit level and laser, a really long tape measure and plenty of low-tack masking tape. I also make extensive use of the Furutech anti-static and demagnetizing devices and the Kuzma ultrasonic record-cleaning machine. The Dr. Feikert PlatterSpeed app has to be the best-ever case of digital aiding analog.

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