Gryphon Commander Preamplifier
OVERVIEW
Since Gryphon’s founding in 1985, the company’s philosophy has remained constant: the relentless pursuit of sonic perfection without compromises in design, construction or cost. The culmination of Gryphon’s four decades of design and engineering expertise are fully realized in Commander: the most advanced preamplifier ever made.
THE DRIVE
Launch Pad for Commander was Gryphon’s brilliant Pandora, widely regarded as one of the world’s finest preamplifiers. Commander shares Pandora’s Dual-Mono layout with four separate chassis—two apiece for signal and power supply circuits—single-ended Class A input buffer (which passes the signal through the fewest possible parts) and zero global negative feedback. These designflourishes yield a sound that is exceptionally transparent, fast, natural and open: qualities that achieve their highest expression in Commander.
Naturally, Commander embodies major engineering advances including a high-precision voltage reference which delivers approximately 50 times lower noise than Pandora. A pair of fully discrete, linear power supplies (one per channel) are dedicated to analog circuitry while a third feeds the digital control circuits, maintaining absolute mechanical separation and electrical isolation between digital and analog sections. Weighing over 50 kilos, Commander’s dual-mono power supply chassis includes four custom-made toroidal transformers engineered for minimal noise. Two of these (one per channel) power the dual-mono preamplifier circuits while the second pair are reserved for upcoming Gryphon source components, ensuring a future-proof upgrade path.
Extensive use of aluminum chassis components lays a solid foundation for performance, yielding non-resonant enclosures that minimize both mechanical and electrical degradation, providing optimal working conditions for Commander’s finely-tuned amplifier circuits. Unique among preamplifiers, Commander’s constrained-layer-damped bottom plate—a “Sandwich” of three individual layers of Kerrock, bitumen and steel—reduce vibrtation to an absolute minimum. All amplifier and analogue power supply circuit boards float above these bottom plates on purpose-engineered isolators. A quartet of Gryphon Atlas Spikes under each chassis move resonance control even closer to theoretical perfection.
Needless to say, every part of Commander is the finest available: from the Charcroft Audio ultra-precision resistors used in our volume control to the premium, oversized Mundorf MCap® ZN foil capacitors specified for local power supply decoupling to the four custom-made 36VA toroidal transformers, no expense has been spared ensuring performance and build quality that defines the state-of-the-art.
ETERNAL BEAUTY
The “Nordic Noir’ design ethos, created for Gryphon by Flemming Rasmussen, reaches its zenith in Commander and its siblings, the Apex Power Amplifier and Diablo 333 Integrated Amplifier. The distinctive finish of these components, combined with the powerful imagery of their large triangular displays, conveys the authority and vitality of their music reproduction.
Presented in an extra-thick, 4mm glass window, Commander’s 4.3” TFT touch-sensitive display ensures an utterly intuitive user interface. In a unique design flourish, Commander’s display changes with the listener’s distance from the system, enabling Volume and other settings to remain perfectly legible regardless of listening position. The massively thick, hard-anodized aluminum chassis reinforces the impression of power and authority, a sculpted Gryphon crowning each chassis. The result is a preamplifier as beautiful to the ear as it is to the eye, a classic whose style and sophistication will stand the test of time.
With the Commander, you’re in control. Take command of the world’s finest audio system: only from Gryphon.
