Test
Text by WOJCIECH PACUŁA
translation by Marek Dyba
images by Bartosz Łuczak/Piksel Studio, “High Fidelity”
No 246
November 1, 2024
⌈ Sforzato is a Japanese company established in 2009, led by its founder, Mr. KYOSHI OMATA. It is based in Hino City, a city that is part of the Tokyo metropolitan area. It specializes in only one type of product: file players, both integrated and separates. We are premiere testing in Poland its entry-level DSP-07EX player. ⌋
I DON'T REMEMBER EXACTLY WHEN, although it must have been somewhere around 2013-2014 when I first heard about the Sforzato company. Yes, I reached into the HF archives and it turns out it was in 2014. Ten years ago. In fact, I didn't so much hear as I saw its products, listened to them and met the company's CEO, Mr. KYOSHI OMATA.
Because, you see, Japanese companies rarely contact the outside world directly and prefer to rely on their “agents”. This was the case in the 16th century, when, in 1541, a ship with Portuguese merchants and Jesuit missionaries on board reached the Japanese coast, it was the case for the next four centuries, and it is still the case today. Unlike historical contacts, modern companies choose this model of operation themselves, rather than it being imposed on them from the outside.
This involves small manufacturers being represented outside Japan by companies specializing in dealing with gaijin, or “outsiders,” “non-Japanese” (Japanese 外人). The reasons are many, ranging from a focus on one's business and work, to ethnic prejudice and an unwillingness to fit in with the rules of strangers, to fear, to - surprisingly in this modern country - a fairly widespread inability to speak foreign languages.
In my experience, all of these reasons and their combinations can come into play, but in the case of audio companies, another, pragmatic one may be the decisive factor: a specialized intermediary knows foreign markets and distributors, understands their operating model, and can also navigate the world of Western specialty magazines. And, believe me, in both of these cases the modus operandi of the Japanese is far incompatible with what we deal with on a daily basis.
To prove my point let me mention such brands as Leben, Oyaide or Acoustic Revive. For them, such a “gateway” to the Western world was the Muson company and Mr. Yoshi Hontai. The same one who, back in 2006, took a risk and sent to a completely unknown, young magazine, existing for only little over two years an amplifier that turned out to be a hit for this manufacturer, and for which “High Fidelity” turned out to be a pass to the world - we are talking about the Leben company and the CS-300 tube amplifier; more → HERE.
Sforzato has also chosen a similar course of action. Its representative outside Japan is Mr. Toshio Muroi, who also deals with other Japanese brands, including Phasemation, which you know quite well from our pages.
▌ Sforzato
JAPANESE STEREO SOUND MAGAZINE begins its text with a description of the DSP-Columbia player with a brief introduction: “Sforzato (...) is the leading Japanese audio file player company” (No. 231, Summer 2024, p. 103; excerpt - ed.). Such a distinction in one of the most important audiophile magazines in the world, and simply the most important in the East, is really something.
This is all the more surprising because, after all, there is no shortage of manufacturers in this country dealing with this type of equipment, and almost all of them are either part of even larger companies, and therefore have access to extensive R&D departments, materials and money, or are simply big players. And Sforzato, mind you, is a ONE-MAN company.
Founded in 2009 and right after that, in October, it debuted at the Tokyo International Audio Show. At that time, it unveiled a prototype of the DST-01, a two-box file transport (Digital Stream Transport). One chassis housed the transport and the other the linear power supply. The device offered dual AES output, compatible with the protocol used by dCS and Chord Electronics, and also had an input for an external clock. Initially, the transport supported only PCM files, but after a software update it also played DSD.
The device turned out to be quite a success and quite soon after a complete file player was introduced to the market, and later models DSP-03, DSP-05 and the flagship DSP-01 were added to the portfolio. This is how the first generation of the company's devices took shape. It’s interesting and important for this test to know that almost all these basic solutions that were chosen at that time can also be found in their devices made today. In the next-generation products, such as the DSP-Vela, Mr. Kyoshi-san used different D/A converters, which we will also see in the tested DSP-07EX, namely the ES9038PRO from ESS Technology, operating in dual mono.
It currently offers two models of complete players, of which versions intended for the Japanese market have different names than those available outside it. The lineup opens with the DSP-07EX, in Japan DSP-Corvus, and above it we find the DSP-05EX, in Japan DSP-Columbia. In addition to these, we can also buy the high-end PMC-07EX and PMC-07EX word clocks (Japanese names: Delphinus and Cetus); we will come back to the clock issue, as it is different here from all other manufacturers I know.
| Sforzato & „High Fidelity”
⸜ Mr. Omata Kyoshi-san at Munich High End Show 2014 with players offered at the time next to him
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