I've reported on this pairing before in show reports, but this was, by far, the best and most transparent sound I've heard from JansZen and exaSound. The top was nice and alive, the height and openness quite lovely, and the sound very natural and musical. Doing the honors were the brand new JansZen zA1.1 single-panel loudspeakers ($4495/pair), JansZen zA2.1 loudspeakers ($9400), exaSound flagship e22 native quad-rate DSD DAC ($3499) with "the world's first and exclusive support for DSD256 on Mac" and third-generation headphone amplifier, Emotiva electronics, and a stock USB cable.
The zA 1.1 is designed primarily for near-field listening. David Janszen, who has so far built five of them, may add optional side-firing tweeters in the future. Its bigger brother supplies more midrange and detail, but this little baby is no slouch. Ideally it would be positioned lower in the room, but David couldn't find stands of the right height in time.
Ordinarily, I'd write something like, "Imagine what the sound might be like with even better electronics and cabling," but no doubt David and exaSound's George Klissarov would chastise me. In fact, no sooner had David said, in response to my query about cabling, "George and I don't go for fancy cables," than George followed up with, "I invest a lot of time to make my devices immune to cables." With that said, since I have yet to hear a component that didn't sound different with different cables, I'm more than eager to test out their claims in practice.
