The sleek lines, low profile and stylish blend of metalwork and high-gloss acrylic in the exterior design of the Gryphon Ethos CD player can only begin to hint at the sophisticated technology concealed within as Gryphon Audio Designs again takes up the challenge of creating the definitive combination of CD transport and digital-to-analogue converter. Gryphon Audio Designs have stood for major innovations throughout the digital era with an acclaimed series of CD players that, perhaps more than most, deserve to be described as integrated transport/DACs. In the once crowded, but now nearly vacant field of CD player design, the Gryphon story began with our very first digital source component at the close of the previous millennium. In 1998, The Gryphon CDP-1 CD player introduced the world to the sonic improvements offered by 88.2 kHz asynchronous sample rate conversion, the world’s first implementation of this advanced technology, now ubiquitous in digital audio.