Two similar new gadgets from ecofan. Their main purpose is to provide a very high input impedance for a solid state unit such as a cd player or ipod etc to look into. This means the unit is ‘loaded’ as little as possible as it provides its signal to the rest of the system. This gives a much more relaxed and ‘airy’ feel to the music or other content, allowing the player to give its best.

The bufferzone is the more dedicated ‘buffer’ with an input impedance of 1.5MΩ (one and a half million ohms) and an output resistance of 2200Ω across the line. Having zero gain it matches the player to the rest of the system, minimising the losses even across several metres of cable.

The boost it does a similar buffering job, having 1MΩ input impedence, with the cable seeing 3300Ω at the output. This unit has 18dB of gain, which can be useful if the inputting player has its own volume control and you have a pair of powered speakers, or a stand-alone power amp. It thus eliminates the need for a preamp if only one source is required, or it can provide a welcome boost to a ‘passive’ preamp or selector box. Can provide some extra ‘zing’ to an otherwise bland system, and has been tried in situations such as those above and found to be indispensable.

Both units are in correct phase and have a frequency response of 10Hz to 200kHz. The addition of these pro units adds a 6DJ8 valve to each channel, and can give an open ‘valve’ sound to an otherwise bland or ‘dead’ sounding solid state system, be it analogue or digital.