Although it may be unlikely that anyone will make use of the KECES preamp with headphones that are more expensive than the S4 itself, I'm trying out the Dan Clark Audio Stealth - still my benchmark for closed and open headphones: I simply don't know of a more power hungry model than the Stealth. With "Help Me" from Ten Years After's album Recorded Live, the KECES' volume display shows a three-digit value for the first time during the quiet intro: 105 out of a possible 128. Yeah, now even a slight hiss is to be heard. However, a tap on the virtual pause button quickly makes it clear that the noise must be coming from the analogue master tape, because now sudden silence sets in. No, not even the extremely difficult to drive Stealth can put the KECES in any distress. I should now - during the loud passage of the song - quickly find my way back into the two-digit volume range, otherwise it will get difficult to deal with the upcoming assessment of the input for DS Audio cartridges…

As aforementioned, DS Audio has published the specifications required for phono equalizers to match their cartridges, so that other electronics manufacturers can also offer input stages for these special cartridges. But that's not the end of the line: DS Audio exams their designs and presents them on their website if they meet the requirements. Among such illustrious names as Soul Note, Westminster Lab, Soulution or EMM Labs, also the S4 can be found here. No wonder, since you can spend up to 13,000 euros on a cartridge without an equalizer. However, DS Audio now also offers a kind of entry-level model, the E1, which retails for 1,450 euros, but this is not yet part of the third generation.

Instead of a thin aluminum plate, a much lighter one made of boron is mounted on the cantilever in the modells of the third generation. The plate moves between the LEDs and two light-sensitive resistors, each of which modulates a constant current in time with the music, which equal the signals of the left and right channels. These currents are significantly stronger than those generated by moving magnet and moving coil systems. And since the small plate - even the aluminum version - is much lighter than coils on their cantilever or even magnets, the cantilever with its low mass and the diamond stylus can follow the groove deflections faster and more precisely. More on the theory and practice of DS Audio cartridges can soon be read here. The German distributor, High-Fidelity Studio in Augsburg, kindly made a DS-W3 available to me at short notice for a first approach to the - for me - new technology, and which the chief designer Aoyagi-san declared to be the new in-house reference, although it is listed at "only" 6,000 euros in their price list.

So, although I can explore what the DS Audio concept is sonically capable of in conjunction with the matching equalizer retailing for an additional 8,000 euros, I am ultimately working with a cartridge that is oversized for the S4. In order to be able to assess the capabilities of the KECES' special input reasonably well, I make it the centre of my listening room system by connecting one of its balanced inputs to the DS Audio equalizer first and connecting the tonearm cable directly to the S4's dedicated input later on. The first surprise was just around the corner, when I listened to the KECES in the system instead of Einstein's The Preamp. The imaging remains just as large and stable as before, there are no changes in dynamics and no restrictions in clarity. Well, the sound was a touch warmer with the Einstein. But I don't even want to calculate how many S4s with a phono input and - as I now know - a very good headphone output you can get for the price of one The Preamp.