It didn’t take long for Gryphon to complement its new Helios with a heroic power amplifier called the Hyperion.
Between the Apex and its 1,040,000 μF of capacitive load from its capacitor bank (including the zinc-foil capacitors used for decoupling the local power supply) and the Antileon with 335,000 μF, there was room for a companion ideally suited to the preamplifier unveiled in early April. With 500,000 μF and 40 bipolar output transistors (compared to 64 on the Apex), the Hyperion is available like the other models as a stereo unit, or as two mono units (which also doubles all components, and thus the filtering capacity per channel).
In a configuration that is obviously dual-mono from the stereo version onwards, this new large Gryphon designed by Tom Møller still uses zero global feedback technology and delivers a gigantic 180 W into 8 Ω per channel, 360 W into 4 Ω and 720 W into 2 Ω in Classe A; these power figures rise to 200 W, 400 W and 800 W respectively in mono mode, with the power doubling each time the impedance is halved, a linear response made possible by a very substantial power supply; in this case, that provided by two toroidal transformers of 1,500 VA each.
With a very understated front panel, the new Gryphon features on the rear panel a complete internal left-right separation, with a mains socket per channel for power supply, each fitted with its own switch. A pair of speaker terminals is then provided on each side, along with an XLR input terminal on each side.
With a depth of 65.4 cm and a net weight of 126 kg, the Hyperion seems almost reasonable compared to the Apex, which measures 88.6 cm and weighs 202 kg net per unit.
