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I'm curious to hear more about these commissioned energizers "built to a higher spec" than the iESL, which I currently own. The transformers in the iESL were custom-designed by iFi specifically for driving estats, and are very high tech. The biasing circuit is also very clever and high quality in the iESL. Given that, I'm a bit dubious that most, if any, DIY energizer solutions would best the iESL technically, but I'm open-minded.Both the SRD7 and Woo Wee are sort of low-end energizers, the iFi iESL I would rank above them, but you can also get commissioned an energizer built to a higher spec like with every other amp, this path is worth exploring, especially if you already own a very good speaker amp.
I'll also say that I'm getting very high quality audio though my iESL. I recently auditioned my Shangri-la Junior through a BHSE at The Source AV and didn't necessarily feel like it was on another level from my setup. The bass, in particular, was not as palpable through the BHSE. Mind you, I was using a different DAC (Chord DAVE) at the shop and didn't have my equipment there for a direct A/B, so I can't make any definitive statements at this point, but I did gain confidence that I'm not leaving a ton on the table with the iESL in my current setup.
As a relative estat newbie, I'm looking forward to auditioning more estat amps/energizers as I have access to them. Since I already own a stellar preamp, I really wish the makers of estat amps would sell discrete estat power amps in addition to the ubiquitous integrated amps they all offer.
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