Edd Harris's Pro Audio Web Blog's review of the Lynx Studio Technology Hilo Reference Converter is long - as it should be: Hilo is packed with features too numerous to cover in less than a doctoral thesis. I am now trying to suss a small fraction of them for a full review at Headfonia. My unit is on loan from Lynx's Japanese distributor, Hook Up. Yes, Hook Up.

Pro Audio Web Blog's review (which reads like a spec list), is disappointingly saccharine and full of vague audiophile tropes. But it does touch satisfyingly on a features that, as a simple audiophile, I simply wouldn't have sussed.

“...The final feature that is especially useful is the ability to sum the signal to mono and just hear the left or right channel, something that can be its weight in gold to mastering engineers.”

Which, in a review that ends with the enthusiastic jingle:

“We could not make a finer compliment than to award the Lynx Studio Technologies ‘Hilo’ with a full five stars, our outstanding award, and the editors choice award. Never have we ever before issued a single product with all of these accolades.”

is reassuringly grounded. And WOW! Three awards from The Pro Audio Web Blog? OMG! Hell, I'll have to add a couple, or more, myself. Imagine four awards from ohm. Take that, Ed.

As inscrutable, silly, and Steve-Guttenberg-level pointless as the review may be, Hilo anything but. It is powerful as both a DAC and a headphone amp (trouncing Antelope Audio's Zodiac Platinum), adroit at driving a wide range of headphones. And its XLR outputs and inputs are more than up to 24-bit snuff, bumping their way past many professional and audiophile competitors.

Unfortunately, Pro Audio Web Blog's review of Hilo is more saturated by audiophile jargon than it is with professional evidence. But at least it awarded a great product with three awards.