ON TEST
38 Australian Hi-Fi http://www.avhub.com.auestyle is a newcomer to
high-end audio, having
been established only
five years ago in Shen-
zhen, China, to build
products based around
a current mode circuit
its founder Jason Wang (Wang Fengshuo)
started developing while he was an electri-
cal engineering student at university and
only completed after graduation. The first
product to use this concept was the CMA800
headphone amplifier, the forerunner of the
CMA800Rs used in this Questyle Reference
Golden Edition System. Why two headphone
amplifiers? According to Wang, his thinking
process was:‘top power amplifiers are oftendesigned as monoblocs to improve performance,
so why not do the same for a headphone amplifi -
er?’ Why not indeed?THE EQUIPMENT
So, in addition to featuring two Questyle
CMA800R headphone amplifi ers (each of
which has a retail price of $4,299), enabling
‘dual mono’ operation, with the signal from
one headphone amplifi er going to the left
earpiece of a pair of headphones and the
signal from the other headphone amplifi er
going to the right earpiece, the Questyle
Reference Golden Edition System also has
a ‘Current Mode’ preamplifi er (CMA800P,
retailing for $5,199) and a DAC (CAS192D,
which retails for $4,299).As you have no doubt already realised,
Questyle’s model numbers are descriptive,
so that the DAC is capable of 192kHz opera-
tion and also of processing DSD signals.
The ‘CMA’ of course stands for ‘Current
Mode Amplifi cation’ and the ‘P’ is so obvi-
ous as not to need explanation at all.
However, the ‘800R’ in the headphone
amplifi er stems from the fact that Sennheis-
er’s HD800s were Wang’s favourite head-
phones, and he designed the CMA800R spe-
cifi cally for them, so he ‘borrowed’ the ‘800’
descriptor, as a ‘homage’ to the HD800.
(That said, the CMA800R can drive
dynamic headphones from any manufac-
turer... it’s not just restricted to driving
HD800s!)QUESTYLE REFERENCE
SYSTEM GOLDEN EDITION
DAC / PRE-AMP / DUAL HEADPHONE AMPLIFIERS