Ferrum Erco Headphone Amplifier

Ferrum Audio, from Poland, followed up their sold-out Hypsos linear power supplies with headphone products, so that Hypsos' excellent linear power supplies could be matched with their own equipment. They have two types of headphones, the pure headphone Oor, and the DAC headphone Erco, which integrates digital analog functions.

The Ferrum Erco's DAC uses the ESS Sabre ES9028PRO DAC chip, which can support up to PCM 384kHz/32bit and DSD 12.288MHz sample rate decoding (USB-C), and with the ARM processor, it can also decode MQA files, which is a good helper for listening to Tidal services. Three digital inputs, including one each for USB Type C, optical, and coaxial, and all inputs are optimized for audio transmission to ensure playback performance. The line is fully balanced all the way from the beginning of the DAC to the headphone amplification, even with Erco's analog input, the signal will be converted to balanced. This eliminates all noise and makes the output music signal much cleaner.

The analog output includes one set of RCA and one set of XLR, so it is very flexible to use with equipment. There are two headphone outputs on the front panel, one 6.3mm single-ended output and one 4.4mm balanced output, which has 1.2W output for 300 Ohms headphones and 6.1W output for 50 Ohms headphones. The gain of the headphone output is also adjustable in three bands: -5.8 dB, +6 dB and +17.8 dB for balanced output, and -11.8 dB, 0 dB and +11.8 dB for single-ended output.

In addition, the Erco's power input uses Ferrum's own defined Ferrum Power Link (FPL) 4-pin terminal, which eliminates cable impedance interference and enhances the efficiency of power transmission. The overall performance will be improved if the Ferrum Hypsos linear power supply is purchased.