Review of Kora Hermes DAC

My Kora Hermes tube DAC was purchased used at around $1,000. It bested a long list of DACs. Two similar sounding DACs which were also great were the Audio Note 2.1.X and Monarchy NM24.

I asked Steve Sank of Talking Dog Transducer Co, Tucson (he has done several mods for me with stellar results) to modify the Kora and within my budget constraints he installed Nichicon's highest quality KZ capacitors, and Audio Cap Theta film capacitors.

Some of the many changes included altering the circuitry to allow me to switch between 6DJ8 or 12AU7 tubes (this model only used 6DJ8 tubes, unlike the newer one). The result of the changes were that the Kora was taken to a whole new level with increased musicality across the board including increased midrange richness, warm, & saturation, increased soundstage, more 3D depth spaciousness and dynamics, blacker less noisy background, and better extension at both ends of the spectrum.

Mullard Long Plate 12AU7 tubes with square getters sound best in the Kora to me (Mullard short plates sound hard to me and are not recommended). However, Telefunken's were also musical and provided more detail.

I use the Kora Hermes DAC primarily to stream my music from my computer's itunes library through a modified Logitech Squeezebox Duet, controlled by my iPad with wonderful results.