Two anniversaries collided at once in this room - Gryphon Audio Designs turning 40 and its flagship Antileon amplifier line turning 30, and the Danish company marked both with the fifth-generation Antileon Revelation, first shown publicly here alongside a genuine mono-brand system. Hifiverse's own Munich 2025 verdict, "amazing detail" with every note and nuance heard "clearly and transparently," reflects what happens when every component in the chain comes from the same design team working to the same philosophy.
The system at a glance
Four components, all from Gryphon's own catalogue, tracing the Antileon amplifier lineage back to the original 1991 DM-100 that established the company's dual-mono, pure Class A design DNA. The appeal here is a single-vision electronics chain, source, preamplifier and power amplifier engineered together rather than assembled from competing brands.
Why these components work together
The Antileon Revelation continues the same dual-mono, pure Class A circuit topology every Antileon generation has used since 1991, available in 165-watt stereo or 180-watt mono configurations, and Gryphon states explicitly that this design lineage has remained capable of driving "virtually any loudspeaker to its ultimate potential" across three decades of refinement. The Ethos CD/SACD player and DAC, housed in a distinctive triangular top-loading chassis, runs a pair of ESS Sabre ES9038PRO conversion chips handling PCM up to 384kHz and DSD512, with its output stage also running in pure Class A to match the amplification philosophy downstream, while Gryphon's proprietary asynchronous upsampling extends even CD playback toward that same high-resolution ceiling. The Commander preamplifier shares its dual-mono circuit foundation with Gryphon's previous flagship Pandora, adding a single-stage Class A buffer built from just two transistors and one resistor, a minimalist signal path specifically engineered for zero feedback and substantially lower noise than earlier Gryphon preamplifiers. The EOS 5 loudspeakers complete the mono-brand chain with bespoke drivers built for this model - a 6.5-inch midrange and dual 9.5-inch woofers using Thin-Ply Carbon Fibre diaphragm construction and Gryphon's proprietary Impulse Optimizer Rings, engineering developed in-house rather than sourced from a third-party driver manufacturer, ensuring the loudspeaker's own design philosophy matches the electronics driving it.
How it sounds
With every stage of the signal chain, source, preamplification, amplification and loudspeaker, designed by the same team under a consistent pure Class A, dual-mono philosophy, the system delivers exactly what Hifiverse's own Munich verdict describes - amazing detail with every note and nuance rendered clearly and transparently, the kind of coherence a single-vision mono-brand system can achieve more readily than one assembled from independently voiced components.
4 components
- Floorstanding loudspeakers
EOS 5
All four drivers are breakthrough designs which are bespoke to EOS 5: the 6.5” Midrange and dual 9.5” Woofers utilize the Thin-Ply Carbon Fiber Diaphragm cone construction and Gryphon’s proprietary Impulse Optimizer Rings.
- Power amplifiers stereo
Antileon Revelation
While maintaining the proprietary concept of dual mono and pure Class A, as with previous Antileon models, the Revelation amplifier delivers high power output and stable performance with a wide range of speaker systems. The Gryphon Antileon Revelation amplifier will be offered in two versions – Stereo with 165 watts per channel and Mono with 180 watts.
- CD / SACD players and transports
ETHOS
Gryphon Ethos is designed in a unique triangular case and is equipped with a top-loading mechanism. "On board" is a pair of ESS SABRE ES9038PRO chips with the ability to receive (there is also a USB input) signals up to PCM 32/384 DSD512. Proprietary asynchronous upsampling to such parameters is also possible on a CD. The Gryphon Ethos output stage operates in pure Class A.
- Preamplifiers
COMMANDER
The base for the Commander was the "dual mono" circuit, which was previously used for Pandora preamps. The novelty also received a single-stage A-class buffer built on two transistors and one resistor. The Commander's important features include zero feedback and a reduced noise level several times when compared with previous Gryphon Audio products.