It includes a MM-MC phono stage, discrete solid state 1W headphone amplifier, a remote control, a OLED front panel display and the best home theater passthrough I’ve yet encountered in a stereo preamp. The American made RP-1 is probably the best value stereo preamp I’ve encountered.

The stereo preamplifier is one of the most critical parts of a hifi system, and one that is hard to get right, especially on a budget. Distributing and amplifying the relatively low voltage line level signal from your sources is easy to get wrong and will rob the music of the detail and subtle spatial cues that are the hallmark of a system that is great, not just merely good. The Rogue RP-1, from the tube-meisters at Rogue in Brodheadsville, PA, promises excellent performance, several useful modern features, but none of the useless surround sound processor-like bells and whistles sometimes found in more budget minded preamplifiers. While I’m not typically a fan of the “tube sound”, tubes doesn’t necessarily have to mean that. I was very curious to know if Rogue has come up with an excellent value preamp, tubes or not. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out they most definitely had.

Outwardly, the Rogue RP-1 looks like pretty much any other high end preamplifier. Given the relatively bargain price, this is a good thing. The RP-1 uses a nicely made machined aluminum front panel, turned aluminum knobs for the balance and volume controls, and even a custom turned power pushbutton. The volume control can also be depressed to toggle between input sources, while pressing the balance toggles the OLED display on and off. The clean front panel’s only other adornments are an oval blue illuminated OLED display and a ¼” headphone jack.

The rear panel consists of an array of RCA inputs and outputs. The RP-1 is a single ended preamp, so no XLR inputs are present. The RP-1 offers 4 line level inputs, a MM/MC phono input and the home theater bypass input. There are two variable outputs controlled by the volume knob, allowing easy connection to a subwoofer or second amplifier, and a fixed unity gain output. There’s also an unswitched IEC jack for the power cord, and a simple screw terminal for the phono ground. Annoyingly, the phono ground screw is relatively far away from the phono input RCAs. This might require you to extend the ground wire on your turntable interconnect cable. I had to.

The case itself is relatively heavy gauge sheet steel. The whole package is certainly solid and well built, particularly for the price. Internally, you’ll find a main circuit board with a cutout for the toroidal transformer, a front panel circuit board managing all the front panel controls and display, and the rear panel board containing the input and output connectors and the tube output stage with a pair of 12AU7 vacuum tubes. As I’m new to tubes, I made no attempt to mess with the tube complement. I just used what was there.

Mechanical relays on the main board switch between sources. There are also two banks of DIP switches and a couple of slide switches to set the cartridge loading and the gain. There are 8 loading settings from 30 Ohms to 47 kOhms, and two gain settings, 58 dB and 43 dB, suitable for MC and MM cartridges, respectively.

The volume control is a digital pot controlled by the front panel knob. The output stage is tube, but all other circuitry is solid state, including the phono preamp stage, the headphone amp (which uses discrete transistors) and input signal conditioning. The quality inside is every bit as good as the quality outside.

Functionally, the RP-1 is very easy to use. The power switch starts a warm-up cycle when depressed. The preamp comes online after about 30 seconds of tube warmup. Balance, source selection and volume are all digitally controlled (the actual signal path is all analog!). The headphone output is always on. Plugging in headphones does not automatically mute the preamp. You need to mute the preamp yourself or turn off the power amp.

Source selection toggle, balance, volume and mute can also be controlled with the included infrared remote. This is the only part of the RP-1 I’d like to see improved from an aesthetic point of view. It’s a very light remote made of particularly flimsy plastic. While I admit ridiculous billet machined remotes are a bit of a waste, the RP-1’s remote really feels cheap. But it works.

The RP-1 lived in between my NewClear NC1000L IcePower based power amp and my Oppo BD-105 Blu-Ray player used as a USB DAC. I broke in the RP-1 by leaving it on playing music over the weekend with the power amp turned off. Since the HT bypass is active when the RP-1 is off, I couldn’t use my normal trick of just watching TV and movies casually to break in the preamp.

When I started listening, I got the immediate first impression of space, air and relaxation. It actually reminded me very much of listening to Sennheiser headphones. The RP-1 presented an enormous sense of space, with a relatively distant and wide soundstage with plenty of spatial cues to fill up all that space. On well recorded classical and jazz, the room sounded huge. Even on my favorite obscure electronica, the laid back soundstage presented a lot of space. My favorite of late, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories had a wide and deep soundstage and managed to sound both relaxed and exciting at the same time. I think the key to this result is that the RP-1 does an exceptional job of extracting detail, operating with low noise and avoiding any sort of tube like coloration while still giving you the smoothness and lack of harshness that tubes are known for.

While some listeners and engineers rag on tubes as old fashioned, they have one property that turns out to be excellent for audio. Like Nelson Pass’ discrete no feedback transistor designs, most all tube electronics keep all their distortion in low order harmonics (2nd and 3rd). This is a guarantee of a sound that’s easy to listen to and never harsh. If that distortion level gets too high, then you start to get that tube coloration. But if the product is well engineered you can get the best of both worlds.

It’s a particularly good match to my NC1000L, which is super clean, powerful and detailed, but will easily pass on any sort of upstream harshness. I particularly like big soundstages, so the extra space of the RP-1 was very welcome. Some might find the presentation a little too laid back if they like lots of added excitement, kind of like with headphones. Some people love the open, airy, spacious sound of Sennhesiers, some find them a bit boring. I am definitely in the former camp. I love my HD600s and I also am very attached to the RP-1.

The Rogue preamp managed to simultaneously increase the amount of detail I heard directly and indirectly (like spatial cues that make a soundstage wide, tall and deep), and made the sound more relaxed, smooth and easy to listen to. It reminded me very much of the difference between Redbook CD format at 16 bit 44.1 kHz sampling rate and a 24 bit, 96 kHz high resolution format recording. A little more detail, but mainly the removal of the harshness and glare that’s present with the lower sampling rate file.

In operation, I found no hiccups with the RP-1. No technical problems or weirdnesses I had to deal with. Unfortunately, I was not able to test the phono stage of the preamp. I was about to, and found that my turntable’s cartridge had the stylus cover missing and the stylus had been damaged. I didn’t manage to get it fixed in time to do the test. Given the performance of the line level section of the RP-1, I would expect good things from the phono stage as well.

Really, the only criticism I could come up with is the lack of balanced inputs and outputs. My amplifier is balanced, so real balanced outs would be nice, but that would really jack the cost of the RP-1 up if done right. For the price point Rogue was trying to hit, single ended only was the right choice.

Measurements were performed with a M-Audio Profire 610 Firewire sound interface and Spectra Plus FFT analysis software. No fancy loads were necessary here, just the soundcard as the input and output. Measurements were done at 192 kHz sampling rate and 24 bit depth.

Distortion spectra were measured at 50 Hz, 1 kHz and 10 kHz. The measured values of THD and THD+N was less than 0.01% at the lower two frequencies and a bit higher at 10 kHz. The THD numbers are lower because of the 60 Hz pickup I get between my sound card and pretty much everything I measure, due to a ground loop I can’t get rid of. Most distortion is concentrated in the second and third order, which is a clear indicator of a good sounding piece of electronics.

The THD+N versus frequency plot shows levels below 0.01% until about 4 kHz, then rises gently to about 0.04% at 20 kHz. Still, very low numbers.

Intermodulation distortion, measured with 60 Hz + 1 kHz tones was a super low 0.002%. Again, you can see the 60 Hz pickup in the spectrum, but that doesn’t affect the calculation of the IMD.

Frequency response is flat as a board as expected all the way to the limit of the sound interface. I also measured the noise floor of the preamp. The 60 Hz pickup is 90 dB down, and the broadband noise floor not including the 60 Hz pickup was about 120 dB down. This is almost at the dynamic range limit of the sound interface. It’s a very quiet preamp

THE ROGUE RP-1 Might Be The Best Value Stereo Preamp You Can Get. It’s Certainly The Lowest Price Preamp I’ve Listened To Where I Couldn’t Find A Thing Wrong With It That Really Mattered. It Sounds Fantastic, Has All The Features You Could Need (As Long As Single Ended Is Ok), And Nothing You Don’t Need. I’m Buying One Myself.

The Rogue RP-1 is a great preamplifier. For only $1695, it’s a benchmark for value-priced high end preamps. You’ll have to work pretty hard and spend a lot more money to do significantly better. Unless you really demand balanced inputs and outputs, I’m not sure it’s worth it to try. Especially if you have a solid state power amp, the RP-1 might just be the perfect preamp for you. I know I loved it and am planning to keep it. I’ve had my previous preamp for almost a decade, so this upgrade is not taken lightly. If the worst thing I can say about it is the remote control is a bit cheesy, that’s a really good thing.

The post Rogue Audio RP-1 Preamplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Their latest release is the XPA Gen3 series amplifiers. This is the next incarnation of their venerable XPA amplification line. All Gen3 amps share the same chassis and high-current switch mode power supply module with multiple power rails for Class H operation. They can then be configured for anywhere between two to seven channels through an individual modular Class A/B power amplifier “blades”. The amplifier modules are rated at up to 300 watts per channel (8 ohms) for the two channel configuration down to 200 w.p.c. on the seven channel set up. And power rating is with all channels driven. Each power amplifier module has its own Class H control circuitry and high current FET rail switches for improved efficiency.

This amp delivered the goods power-wise but also impressed with a balanced, detailed sound.

I first saw these amps at the 2015 Winter CES Show. Emotiva was in the Venetian with a great many new products to show. Though they had the XPA Gen3 amps there, they were non-working prototypes. But the design really piqued my interest nontheless. A modular case with up to seven channels and power to spare (up to 300 watts per channel).

That wasn’t all; the amps were based on a new Class H amplifier design and a switch mode power supply. With my growing concerns about the environment, I am always seeking components that use modern technology to reduce waste and power consumption. But I haven’t always liked the sound of Class D amps so I thought a Class H design might very well offer a good compromise between energy efficiency and audio quality.

So you can see that I was very interested to review one of these and I was fortunate to receive one of the first production units for this review. I was able to see first- hand if this product could live up to the hype.

This amplifier embodies more than a few interesting advancements and features that are borne of several design advancements by Emotiva. I consider its modular architecture to be the most important of these features but this modular design is only made possible because of the amp’s high tech power supply. In a nutshell, the Emotiva XPA Gen3 amplifier can be configured for two to seven channels depending on the number of amplifier modules installed in its modular case. The high current switch mode power supply is on a separate card and it is shared among all the installed amplifier modules.

This explains the interesting power ratings in the Specifications sidebar. Each output module is designed to be capable of up to 300 watt RMS output into 8 ohms. But the power supply, though quite robust, is nevertheless limited in its capacity. So the power ratings range from a high of 300 wpc for a two channel configuration down to 200 wpc when set up for 7 channels. Bear in mind, these ratings are FTC ratings with all channels driven (RMS, continuous power output).

I see this sharing of a single power supply as something of a hallmark for Emotiva’s multi- channel amps from the very beginning. It makes a lot of sense to me. Look at it this way, the 7-channel Emotiva XPA Gen3 amp I have in front of me produces 7 x 200 watts, which means it is essentially a 1,400 watt amp. Let’s say you really crank it up and the front three channels are popping 250 watts each (this would be extremely loud with anything but the most inefficient speakers). Then you would have 650 watts hanging (1,400 – 3 x 250 = 650). That leaves 650 / 4 = 162.5 watts available for each of the other four channels. On most soundtracks, it is unusual for the rear, back or height speakers to play anywhere near this level when the fronts are raging as in this example. Then when you turn around and listen to two-channel sources in a stereo configuration you all of a sudden have 300 wpc on tap. It is in many respects the best of both worlds.

The modular design of the XPA Gen3 amplifier is marketed to consumers who may want to start out with a few channels and then upgrade when they expand their system. This was true for me. My initial surround system was a 5.1 system but I needed to move up to a 7-channel amp when I installed height speakers for a 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos set up. But I think relatively few people would go this route (adding channels). I think a more likely scenario would be to buy two or more XPA Gen3’s, thereby getting even more power. For example, consider a 3-channel unit for the fronts and a 4 or 6-channel unit for the surrounds. This would yield more power. And the value price of these amps makes this a very appealing concept.

Let’s take a minute to talk about the circuit topology. The circuitry in each output module is based on Emotiva’s exceptional-sounding short signal path Class A/B output circuits that were designed for their XPA Gen1 and Gen2 amplifiers. I have used an Emotiva XPA 5-channel amplifier for years and can attest the sound is strong, rich, clean and dynamic. I can fully understand why Emotiva wouldn’t fiddle with such a successful design.

But the real story here is the XPA Gen3 power supply. The Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS) Emotiva designed combines high efficiency, substantial long term power capacity and significant short term dynamic power reserves. The controller chip and basic circuit design used in Emotiva’s new SMPS have a long track record of reliably powering commercial and automotive devices.

Emotiva’s Soft-Switch™ Class H power supply topology increases the efficiency of the new XPA amplifiers. At lower power levels, the amplifiers operate on a lower supply voltage to minimize quiescent power consumption and standby power losses. When the amplifier control circuitry detects a fast rising input signal that will exceed the lower power voltage, it instantly switches to a higher voltage rail to ensure that the signal can pass cleanly without clipping. This process happens on a continuous basis, in real time and it allows greater efficiency than previous designs.

I recently reviewed the Arcam AVR850 receiver which uses Class G amplification. Emotiva’s Class H design bears many similarities to a Class G amp with the biggest difference being that Class G amps have discrete voltage rails where a Class H amp operates with “infinitely” variable supply rails. The most critical part in either design is the frequency of the switching devices which, despite great advances in recent years, are still plagued somewhat by lower signal to noise ratios than you would see with a linear power supply.

The Emotiva XPA Gen3 amplifier is housed in a heavy steel 4RU chassis with a milled aluminum faceplate. This is a solid and good-looking case. Emotiva maintained much of the family appearance, albeit in an all-black front panel – the soft touch power toggle with the blue Emotiva logo and the status LED’s that glow blue or red depending on each channel’s condition.

Around back, there are both balanced an unbalanced inputs, Gold plated five-way speaker binding posts with clear shields, a DC trigger input and output and a main power toggle. The status LED’s can be toggled on or off via a rear panel switch. Finally, the unit automatically senses and operates on any line voltage between 100 VAC and 250 VAC 50/60Hz and is protected from faults by a rugged resettable circuit breaker.

Setting up and installing this amplifier was very straightforward. Emotiva doesn’t sell the output modules directly to consumers. You either get your amp configured at the factory or by your authorized dealer. Adding modules would be the most complex part of the set up so thankfully you don’t need to mess around with that.

What this means is that I had a 7-channel power amp that despite its high tech design was essentially as easy to install as any other balanced multi-channel power amp. It was in some ways easier to install because the advanced circuitry leads to a lower unit weight which is a much welcomed “feature” when moving it around and getting it into the rack.

I used the balanced XLR inputs for this review. I connected them and verified that the input toggles were all set to the balanced input setting. The Emotiva’s XLR inputs are of the locking variety which is a nice touch. (The unbalanced RCA’s are the heavy duty machined type that are mounted to the back panel – not to a circuit board; also a nice, high-end touch.)

I then connected the speakers using banana plugs. I use banana plugs because I’m a reviewer and this streamlines switching out components. If I were not a reviewer, then I would use bare wire or spades which give a better electrical connection particularly with Emotiva’s high quality gold-plated binding posts.

I then connected the trigger cable from my pre pro, plugged the unit into the wall and turned on the main power toggle. In this set up, the unit remains in standby until it senses a turn on voltage from the trigger at which point the amp automatically switches into active operation mode. When you turn off your pre pro, then the toggle switches off the amp. I used the amp in this configuration throughout the review.

Once I had the amplifier all set up and ready to roll, I was actually very much excited to give it a listen. Like I mentioned earlier, I was just coming off my review of the Arcam AVR 850 receiver. The Arcam has Class G amplification which is a close cousin to the Class H design of the Emotiva XPA Gen3. The Arcam’s amp section impressed me with the strength of its power delivery and the apparent transparency it offered. So I was most definitely wondering if the Emotiva would excite me in the same ways.

This movie starts off with a battle scene that is underpinned by very strong electronic bass pulses. The effect of these bass waves created a whole new sense of slam in my listening room. Not only did the Gen3 amp pump it out with no compression, but the extension and force of the waves was nothing short of incredible and it shook my bones unlike anything I’d played in my theater at any other time in the past.

Not all scenes in “Free State” were this amazing and frankly there were some scenes where the effects were obviously done in a studio as opposed to being captured in the field. This was readily apparent through the Emotiva. But on the better recorded material, the Emotiva Gen3 impressed with a vivid, somewhat forward sense of detail retrieval that was far better than I would have suspected at this price point. Above all, my lasting impression of this movie will be the sheer intensity of the audio as laid down by this excellent amplifier.

Just like the Arcam receiver, this Emotiva amplifier was ripe with inner detail. I thought the XPA Gen3 may be a little different because I thought I was hearing a forwardness in the upper mid-range and lower treble. But over time, I came to understand what I was hearing was really just excellent detail retrieval being mistaken as a forwardness. This isn’t to say that the Emotiva didn’t shine a bit of spotlight on the presence region because it did, it’s just that this effect wasn’t due to a frequency imbalance, it was instead borne from the incredible detail that the Emotiva so adeptly unpacked.

What I am talking about are the massive scenes of destruction and amazing superhuman powers. Hey, this movie has scenes of the Earth getting torn apart from the inside! Not only are the images incredibly awesome, but the audio effects were equally enrapturing. And it was all unveiled by the Gen3 amp. I like to crank up movies like this when I can and this takes a lot of power so I don’t lose the inner details due to distortion or compression. The XPA Gen3 is tailor made for that mission with its strong output and incredible power reserves.

The audio on this disc is presented in DTS HD Master 5.1 and it was chock full of incredible musical numbers to enjoy – “Let’s Go Crazy”, “When Doves Cry”, “Purple Rain” and even “Sex Shooter” by Apollonia.

The Emotiva started this one off on the right foot, blasting “Let’s Go Crazy” in lossless surround bliss. This may have been the best I have ever heard this song sound. And things continued on an upward spiral with the remainder of the music. There was one minor issue I heard with digital sources – there was the faintest hint of grain in the midrange that I don’t typically hear with Class A or Class A/B amplifiers. It wasn’t objectionable to my ears. In fact, it added a little to the excitement factor. But it did detract slightly from the sense of neutrality of what was being reproduced.

“Rich Man” is his first solo release in over 15 years and offers 13 blues-soaked tunes brought to life on silent, heavy vinyl. I was stunned at the quality of its the sound over the Emotiva XPA Gen3 amplifier.

The attack and decay of each note was quite natural sounding. The treble was balanced, extended and free of any congestion. The bass was full, tight and in balance as well. But like all albums of this genre, the main life of the music was in the power band and the vocals. The Emotiva performed like a true champ in these areas as well. In fact, I heard no obvious weakness in the sound on this album.

THE EMOTIVA XPA GEN3 POWER AMPLIFIER Lives Up to its Billing as a High Power, Low Distortion Amplifier Platform. They are Available in any Configuration from two to Seven Channels and Priced Right.

The Emotiva XPA Gen3 amplifier probably isn’t the most refined amplifier on the planet. But that was very hard to tell short of a direct A-B comparison. In actual use, the Gen3 really floored me. It was extremely powerful with good frequency balance and low distortion. On movies, especially the kind where things blow up, the sound it put out illuminated my listening space like very few amplifiers have.

It didn’t disappoint on music, either. With musical reproduction, the Gen3 offered a bubbly, vivid and dynamic performance that did not sound anything like the multi-channel amps from years past. It actually approached the sound of many of the better solid state stereo amps I’ve used at various times. This amp most definitely has the chops to serve double duty for cinema and music. It earns its keep on movies and then pays dividends when you want to enjoy some music!

This amp maxes out at $1,899 for seven channels. That is a very low price for a piece of gear like this. Emotiva also offers a no-risk return policy in case you don’t like what you get at this price. But I doubt very many of these amplifiers will be returned.

In closing, this amp may be for you if you enjoy action movies and love to crank them up! Oh and when it is time to settle down for a little music listening, then this amp won’t disappoint. Highly recommended.

(Editor’s Note: The amplifier reviewed here was an early production run. Emotiva has made some on the fly revisions to the circuitry in later runs that we at Secrets have yet to evaluate. These changes could possibly affect the audio performance and we will be checking out the updated version in a future installment.)

The post Emotiva XPA Gen3 Power Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

I think one of the best days an engineer can have is the day when management comes and says: “We want you to design the absolutely best (computer, car, phono stage) that you can, cost is not an object.” If that happened more often, we’d have more products like the 810LP from Moon by Simaudio. Weighing in at 40 lbs, with balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, a vast array of resistance and capacitance loading possibilities, you don’t even have to know what a phono stage is to realize that some serious effort has gone into making this thing.

A Pi filter cleans up the mains for the transformer, the output of which will then encounter 24 stages of power supply regulation, namely Simaudio’s iDCf (Independent Inductive DC Filtering); 1 inductor for each and every IC in the audio circuit’s signal path, and then on the circuit board itself, 4 stages of the M-LoVo discrete DC regulation circuit that Simaudio has designed and used only in their highest-end products.

The circuit board is of the four layer variety, dedicating a solid plane of copper to the power supply and another to the ground thus providing shielding to the circuit traces in between. Said circuit board is supported at five points by gel mounts to control any vibrations that manage to make it through the heavy chassis. On that circuit board are some custom designed parts including capacitors matched to within 1%.

Gain and cartridge loading adjustments are made by an array of dip switches mounted on the bottom of the chassis. This makes adjustments a bit of a chore as the unit (which is heavy, did I mention that?) has to be unplugged, removed from its shelf and flipped upside down. Once you’ve done all that it’s easy. Choose from 16 capacitance settings, 64 resistance and 16 again for the gain (40 to 70db). There’s also a switch (per channel) for choosing between the IEC and RIAA equalization curves. My sample arrived with IEC selected. I switched to RIAA and left it there.

It’s quite alright to flip this beast on its back, by the way. That’s one fact not mentioned in the otherwise comprehensive and readable user’s manual.

Is that enough? Oh, I forgot to say that it’s fully dual-mono and fully balanced. As in dual-differential balanced wherein the positive and negative signals each enjoy their own amplification around a center point. Beware components that claim to be balanced merely by the offering of a balanced input or output.

If it’s not enough, well you’re being silly then but you can upgrade with the 820S power supply. With “just” the built in power supply the total harmonic distortion is specified as a vanishingly low 0.0008% and the signal to noise ratio is equally amazingly low, it depends on the gain setting of course but somewhere around 100db. Other specs are also of the ‘out of this world’ variety. Let us set these engineers loose more often!

All of this of course takes some serious shelf space. I could barely fit the 810LP onto a Sovereign Series shelf (by Lovan). ‘Barely’ as in the unit has to be slightly skewed so that the rear connectors are able to take cables which are carefully routed around the center-rear post of these shelves. Said skew-age means that one of the front feet of the phono stage is within ¼ inch of the front of the shelf. If the 810LP is to stick around, I’ll have to make a slightly larger shelf.

Not so fast! A component like this, with lots and lots of circuitry, fed at low levels as we see from a phono cartridge is going to require significant break-in. Lionel Goodfield of Simaudio recommended “350 hours or about 2.5 weeks.” I think the 350 hours (which really closer to 3 weeks) is a very accurate number as, after diligently counting each day of the recommend two and a half weeks I did find that a little more break-in happened while listening. The bulk of the break-in was accomplished with the Granite Audio Phono Burn-In CD (Model #CD-101.1 Moving Coil & MM Phono Burn-In & RIAA Test CD)

Kindly provided by Don Hoglund, President of Granite Audio, this CD is a gem. There aren’t any other solutions that I could find for a phono stage set to MC gain levels. This is something to watch carefully I believe, had I kept the gain high and used a typical break-in CD, I would have certainly been overloading the outputs of the 810LP. Given the fact that most CD players drive their outputs to up to twice the expected 1V swings for a line level connection there seems to be the possibility of causing some damage. I set the gain on the 810LP to 60db for the break-in period and then settled on 66db for listening. With my Dynavector XX2 Mk2 cartridge, which outputs only 0.28mV, even the maximum 70db setting might be in order. It’s a bit of a chore (see above) to adjust the gain so I’m sticking with 66db for now.

While balanced inputs are available on the 810LP, balanced phono cables are still a rarity so I connected my Nottingham Space Deck via the conventional single ended inputs and then connected the balanced-out’s to my Simaudio P8 preamp via Nordost Heimdall 2 cables. I used a Shunyata Venom 3 power cord throughout the review period.

There is some debate going around the audio industry about the use of a balanced input on a phono stage. Seems like such a good idea for these low level signals and the cartridge output is naturally balanced right? I finally figured out that even though there is a ground wire, it is not referenced to the plus and minus signals from the cartridge. This is not the conventional balanced signal that we typically pass around between components. I pestered Lionel Goodfield for Simaudio’s thoughts on all this: “cartridges do indeed produce a balanced signal, but the signal is not dual-differential. As well, there is no reference to ground, so yes there is a floating ground.” Well, I might try a balanced connection someday just for fun but it helps to know that I might not be missing out after all. What this is telling us is that with a single ended connection to a cartridge, the receiving circuit will still amplify the complete difference between the plus and minus while utilizing chassis ground as ground. What I don’t know then is what happens when a balanced connection is used. I think that the initial inputs to the amplifying circuit must be exactly the same or very similar to the single ended connection and that the ground wire and the ground connection from the turntable are basically ignored for the purposes of amplification. That is my theory but I won’t claim it belongs to me.

Enough with all that! How did it sound!? Umm… uh.. “Wow” might be the way to say it. Music is profound through this thing. Compared to the venerable LP5.3 (also by Simaudio) which I have happily enjoyed for years, I heard way more detail in attacks and the highs. I could hear cymbals in detail – as in, that cymbal there sounds different from the one over there and both of them sound like cymbals, not a splashy sound. Drum sticks hitting drum heads become almost visual, the attack of guitar notes or piano, also palpable and ‘in the room’. Vocals rendered with so many detail on my records that I hadn’t heard before. The uninitiated are not aware of how much information is in those grooves. Way more than on CD or even the high res audio files I’ve heard, it’s not even close. When I was using the LP5.3, vinyl was always more enjoyable than digital and had moderately more information, with the 810LP, way way more information.

This would be a good point to add that I clean my records with the Audiodesk Systems Ultrasonic Cleaner.

With specs on a phono stage as good as this one it makes sense to have a more signal and less noise to amplify. Besides, clean records last longer and when they sound this good you’ll need that because you’ll be wanting to play them. I found this was the case for all the records I played, even when the recording or production was not the best, the 810LP brought the music into my living room. I think with the LP5.3, I gravitated a little towards the records that happened to sound the best, but while with the 810LP, which can certainly distinguish good recordings from bad, it doesn’t matter as much, all records are lifted, so it’s just more a matter of what music I want to hear.

I noticed two phenomena related to my record collection once the 810LP was installed. One was that once I listened to one record by an artist, even if I had heard it many times, I had to listen to all that I had from that artist. This happened with Jenny Lewis in all her incarnations, likewise with Radiohead, Blonde Redhead and the Roxy Music studio albums box set. The other thing was that records that I thought were bad recordings weren’t so bad, maybe great in fact but they evidently needed a great phono stage to make sense of them. This is what I heard the Moon by Simaudio 810LP do that I haven’t heard before. With so many records, from whatever genre, it made them sound ‘right’. As if the band or singer was in my living room.

“Biophilia” seemed a good choice to cool down slowly and hopefully, be able to get to sleep. Dang if that record doesn’t have a bit of digital sheen to it. Didn’t know that either but it might explain why the record hasn’t gotten much play in my household. I still listened to the whole thing but it was a bit of a let-down after “Volta”.

I noticed a similar effect in my listening room. With the 810LP it’s good, the room is fine. Previously I have employed a series of amateur sound treatments that get installed during listening sessions. Various cushions and pillows that I sometimes pile up in front of or behind the speakers just seem less necessary with the 810LP in the playback chain. I can still hear a difference with my various tweaks but it’s a harder call and there’s nothing compelling me to do them.

Some audiophile notes: Soundstage: Wide and deep. The band is there in my living room and it’s a tight fit, I’m sitting right between the guitar player and the singer. Bass: Gobs, more than I knew my system could do (dang, all these years and who knew!?). Treble: effortlessly extended. Midrange: Liquid and sweet. At all frequencies the Moon by Simaudio 810LP could not only produce the note but effortlessly produce the overtones as well so timbre is exquisite. The crunchy sounds on Bjork’s “Volta” are crunchier than I knew. Pace, rhythm and timing: Yes, music moves and the listener goes along with it.

Macrodynamics are on display when a song that is inherently loud like “The Next Messiah” which over the course of nine minutes does have a couple of quieter moments but mostly it is loud and getting louder. The 810LP delivers all that while keeping the instruments distinct but part of a coherent, musical, whole, without breaking a sweat. I guess I want my musicians to sweat but my playback system should be able to easily handle whatever is on the record. Listening to this one was a combination of toe tapping and shaking my head in disbelief. Occasionally looking over at the turntable to make sure there was only one groove producing all this.

In the microdynamics category, the newest record from Debendra Barnhart, “Ape in Pink Marble” is quiet and intimate throughout. Everybody and everything is close-miked. Listening with the 810LP in the chain, it seemed I could tell exactly how close (about five inches for the guitar, a little more for the drums and less for the vocals). This record was repeated every night for about a week. This brings me to another phenomenon I have noticed since I’ve been reviewing this beauty: Less trips to the record store. Who has the time? I have records, and I need to listen to them.

The Price of a Cost-no-object Component is Going to be High. But, What is the Value of Having Music, Real Music, in Your Home? THE MOON BY SIMAUDIO 810LP is a Champion and Will Likely Become Part of a Daily Ritual.

Here’s how people describe improvements in digital playback: “It sounds more analog.” With vinyl playback it’s a little trickier because even with a phono stage costing a small fraction of what this one does you can really enjoy the experience. With vinyl playback there’s generally not anything that needs to be corrected (as long as the record is properly cleaned) so the description for improved sound in the analog realm is: “Well, there’s more.” Exactly. More timbre, more dynamics, more vocals, more music. If there’s anything more in the grooves of my records than what the Moon by Simaudio 810LP phono stage was revealing, I don’t know about it. This is the current state of the art.

Excuse me while I climb on my soap box: The real test of hifi is not what you can hear in A/B comparison, it’s: How long and how much do you listen? How intently and how much do you enjoy it? Do you look forward to doing it again? With the Moon by Simaudio 810LP I’ve gone from one record per night to several and I look forward to it every day and so even though the cost is steep, I’m buying the review sample.

The post Moon by Simaudio 810LP Phono Preamplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Featuring 60 watts or more per channel of tube power, the amp’s ability to run in either triode or ultra-linear mode offers more versatility than most any other amp I know of. If you want to have fun with that romantic tube sound while keeping the accuracy option, then the ST-120 is for YOU!

The Vacuum Tube Audio (VTA) company is the brainchild of Mr. Bob Latino (power amplifiers) and Mr. Roy Mottram (preamplifiers). Doing business at the Tubes4HiFi.com website, all products are available Internet-direct. To get to the ST-120 directly, use www.tubes4hifi.com/bob.htm Based in Massachusetts (Mr. Latino) and in Puyallup, Washington (Mr. Mottram), the company sells to thousands of customers who strongly believe in American made products with TUBES.

• Mystere pa21 Stereo Tube Power Amplifier

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By the time tubes entered their golden era (mid-1950s to mid-1970s), most of the engineering problems of producing reliable and accurate amplifiers had been solved. Gone were the days of needing an electrical engineering degree to keep your equipment running.

Instead, companies such as Dynakit and Heathkit sold do-it-yourself kits that allowed you to build your own audio gear from a well-thought-out, carefully documented and easy-to-read checklist. Provided you could learn to solder and you could read, you could build your own stereo electronics that actually sounded good. OK, make that really good compared to most commercial gear available at the time. Needless to say, these companies were household names, and their reasonably-priced kits were wildly popular.

So what happened? The one-two punch of Japanese audio and trial lawyers. When companies like Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Technics-by-Panasonic, and others began producing and shipping in quantity, there was no longer any savings benefit to building your own gear. In addition to that, tube equipment that used 400 to 600 volts was just considered too dangerous for consumers to have access to.

And so the great names of the DIY era faded into history. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Yet here at the birth of the twenty-first century, the VTA company rises from the ashes resurrecting the ghosts of Dynaco and Heathkit. It’s probably true that most of VTA’s sales are of pre-assembled amplifiers, but if it’s your predilection, you can order a kit and assemble it yourself! The disclaimers offered by the company make it clear that they’re not responsible if you fry yourself while assembling the kit (aka Darwinism in action), but if you follow the instructions, such a result is highly unlikely.

And before moving on, a quick philosophical comment about component cost. Throughout most of my life, my discretionary budget had to be split between a variety of family choices with the (small) remainder used for my audio hobby. For many of those years, a thousand-dollar-plus expenditure on audio gear seemed impossible. Yet in retrospect, the collection of purchases that I made and discarded could have added up (easily) to the cost of a single premium purchase that would have remained satisfying for many, many years.

So, to quote one of my parents – I was “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” And I’ll drop the conclusion to this review now – I wish I had encountered the ST-120 (or another component of its quality) many years ago. And without further ado – on to the review…

Design

The chassis size and shape of the ST-120 is identical to that of the Dynaco Stereo-70 power amplifier. The advantage of this choice is that original Dynaco accessories (such as the tube cage) can still be purchased and will fit. The curse is that the clunky slide-switches and obsolete parts (the stereo/mono switch, for example) are ALSO preserved.

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The original Dynaco chassis parts were made of nickel-plated steel, and few have survived the passing decades without significant surface rust. Although the ST-120 chassis has identical dimensions, it is made of heavier gauge metal (16ga VTA vs. 18ga Dynaco). Additionally, the VTA chassis uses non-magnetic stainless steel chassis plates and screws.

In addition to the upgraded chassis, the ST-120 also sports larger transformers than the original Dynaco amps, allowing for higher power output. These have tighter specifications than the original Dynaco transformers as well as wider bandwidth.

Regarding the original Dynaco ST-70, Mr. Latino says “The original driver board was made of an inexpensive phenolic material with open solder traces on the bottom of the board. This phenolic material was not very heat resistant and the board would many times turn black from heat under the 7199 tube sockets. The open solder traces sometimes lifted from the board. The carbon composition resistors found on the board would, after many years, stray from their original values.”

Regarding the ST-120, Mr. Latino says “The VTA board is made of epoxy/fiberglass and has no open solder traces. It has plated through holes so that parts may be placed on either the top or bottom of the board. It has an on-board power supply with Nichicon low ESR caps and an on-board bias system that allows individual biasing of each output tube. The new board also uses 1% metal film resistors that will not stray from their original value over the years.”

The chokes, power supply capacitors, input and output jacks and internal hookup wires are also upgraded beyond the original Dynaco specs.

Further, the ST-120 amp comes with switches allowing the output tubes to be run in either ultra-linear or triode mode (the latter with slightly less ultimate power output).

An optional stepped-volume attenuator can be added per the customer’s request that will allow control from the amplifier’s front panel. My unit was fitted with this part, although I left it at 100% and opted to control volume from a (remote-controlled) preamplifier.

Yet another option for the ST-120 is to use a solid-state rectifier rather than the usual tube-type. My unit was fitted with the latter. Should you opt for the solid state rectifier, then the VTA Time Delay Relay (TDR) is recommended to allow the tube heaters to warm the tubes before B+ voltage is applied. This extends their service life.

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The amp can be wired with a single pair of speaker terminals set for four, eight, or 16ohm loads (your choice), or for $35 extra, any two of the impedance options can have separate jacks.

If you have children or curious pets in the house, and want to keep them away from the (very) hot tubes, original Dynaco tube cages can be had from www.dynakitparts.com. The cages cover the top of the amplifier, keeping hot gear away from curious hands & noses.

As to the design philosophy, Mr. Latino stated that the goal was to create a tube amplifier (in both wired and kit form) that would advance the circuitry and sound while correcting many of the things that the original Dynaco ST-70 amplifier received as cost-cutting measures.

That philosophy is both a strength and a weakness, in my opinion. Keeping to the original Dynaco chassis design allows backward compatibility with the Dynaco ST-70 so that owners of those amplifiers could upgrade their rusting chassis with the new stainless steel one. But it also keeps some of the “cost-cutting measures” including the cheap slide switches, the poor location of the power switch on the back of the chassis, and the captive (ungrounded) two-wire power cord instead of the currently-common IEC socket. Furthermore, the umbilical cord Dynaco sockets (on the FRONT of the chassis, that no longer serve any complete purpose) are retained. These are not only ugly, but are also the only way of checking tube bias.

I’d much rather have seen a more spacious chassis. This alone would have helped with heat dissipation. The abysmal slide switches could have been replaced with something more modern, and even a 12V trigger socket could have been added to allow for automatic on/off functions. The tube bias functions could have been clearly labeled, and the obsolete Dynaco connection socket dispensed with.

Nevertheless, the amp is what it is. And many (most?) like the design just as it is, thank you very much. So take my complaints with the grain of salt they deserve.

And finally, the tube complement – the three factory-supplied tubes on the driver board are 12AU7 Sylvania tubes. These tubes strike a balance between the more sterile and accurate Genelex Gold Lion tube sound and the more romantic sounding Mullard tube sound. One can also choose to use the (theoretically more linear) 12BH7 tubes, but I prefer the sound of the original 12AU7s.

Also, on the driver board, the two outermost tubes are merely phase splitters, with the actual amplification done by the center tube only. So to tube roll, the center tube alone can be changed to get 90%-plus of the differences in sound.

Right out of the box (I bought a wired amplifier – not a kit), the amplifier sounds very, very good; excellent dynamics and tight bass with no glare at all. This amplifier can be fitted with 6550, KT88, KT90, or KT120 output tubes (some use different bias). I’ve heard this amplifier with both the 6550 and the KT120 tubes. Of the two, the KT120s have more bass, but the 6550s have a better treble. The review listening was performed with the (factory-supplied) Tung Sol 6550 output tube set.

I found the triode mode more romantic-sounding than the ultra-linear mode. In fact, with a Genelex Gold Lion tube set, and the amp in ultra-linear, I’d bet that most wouldn’t be able to tell any difference between this amp and a good solid-state one. But the ability to change the voicing of the amp with the flip of a switch is a definite advantage.

Set Up

Nothing much to this – plug in the tubes (they’re keyed only go in one way, so you can’t mess it up), set the output tube bias (a multimeter & small screwdriver will be required), hook up the speakers & inputs, turn it on – and instant music!

It should also be mentioned that tube amplifiers generally produce MUCH more heat than solid-state amplifiers. Therefore, ventilation is important. This amp should not be set directly on carpet, for example, because that will block the airflow through the chassis. So place the amplifier on a hard surface with plenty of vertical clearance above.

Additional equipment used for this review included:

• jRiver Music server 22 for Mac
• WAV files ripped from CDs
• Some SACD high resolution audio discs
• Oppo BDP-105 connected via DLNA and (sometimes) used as a DAC
• Apple Airport Express as a listening room WiFi source
• iPad mini running jRemote as a system controller
• Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC
• Emotiva BASX PT-100 preamplifier
• Tekton Pendragon speakers
• BlueJeans Cable interconnects and speaker wires
• Emotiva power conditioner
• Room treatments by ATS acoustics
In Use

First, some general comments. The amplifier is dead quiet. Even with my ears against the woofers and tweeters, I could hear no hiss, hum, or noise. My speakers are very sensitive Tekton Pendragons, so if noise of any kind was there, I’d be able to hear it. A quiet amplifier is indicative of good design – so the first impression was a reassuring one. With break-in, I expect the sound to improve. But even when new, the amplifier is impressive-sounding.

Treble

The treble on Feed the Fire by the Geri Allen Trio should be clean, crisp and extended. Cymbals, in particular, should be lifelike without any sibilance or splash. And as always, I contend that cymbals are one of the most difficult instruments for an audio system to get right. Price is never an indicator of success on the cymbal test. But the ST-120 is as good as I’ve heard.

The bells and other treble sounds in Icecream by Lou Bega should sound live. Background sounds should provide a sense of location. If the intro to this song doesn’t sound like a live sidewalk recording, something’s wrong! And yes, the ST-120 puts you there.

The opening brushed cymbal on Come Away With Me by Norah Jones should have sufficient brass and shimmer without excessive tizz. You’d think that this would be simple, but there are a lot of amplifiers that struggle to get this right. The ST120 does.

The treble effects in Mala in Cuba by Mala should jump out from the mix. Too smooth? Your amp isn’t doing the treble justice. Treble dynamics are preserved properly by the ST-120. Of course, this cut is included because I like electronic music. Not to your taste? No worries!

Midrange

The unique tonality of Dolly Parton’s voice on Coat of Many Colors should be immediately recognizable and unique. Her somewhat nasal tone can easily become shrill with some amplifiers, but the ST-120 avoids that anomaly.

The voices of the Eagles’ Seven Bridges Road should be distinct, not just a blur. This is also a live recording, and the ambience of the crowd should show through. A sense of space should abound here, with the feeling of a wide-open outdoor stage – not an enclosed room. The midrange bloom of the ST-120 can be exceptional (maybe its best attribute) depending on the recording.

The voices of Free Hand by Gentle Giant should not only be present, but should also blend without blurring. Each voice has its own tonality, and the amp should keep them recognizably separate, as does the ST-120.

K.D. Lang’s voice on Sexuality should have just a hint of breathiness to emphasize the erotic lyrics. Hearing this song on the ST-120 was enough to stir up my single remaining hormone!

Bass

The string bass on Twisted by Joni Mitchell should be fat and (above all) should lack blur. Since bass blur is a traditional characteristic of tube amplifiers, it is a refreshing surprise that the ST-120 keeps the bass line crisp and tonally accurate.

The thundering bass of Dixie Chicken by Little Feat should be visceral and deep. The Grateful Dead is another band with plenty of bass thunder. The ST-120 brings it all!

Merill Bainbridge’s Mouth should have surprising and clear bass lines. This cut is a favorite of mine, and I’ve never heard it sound better than through the ST-120.

If Love Was a Train by Michelle Shocked should display bass dynamics as the electric bass guitar becomes louder and softer throughout the song. Again, the ST-120 keeps the bass crisp and tuneful despite the significant volume changes.

Imaging

The dynamics of Milton Hallman’s piano performance of Capriccio in B Minor, Opus 2, No. 4 by Ernst von Dohnanyi should reveal the acoustics of the LSU Music theater. I have an advantage with this recording, since I’ve often listened to many live recitals in that very hall. With the ST-120, you get a feel for the size of the original recording space.

Imagining You by Leah Andreone should spread various sounds about the soundstage. This is yet another of my favorites. Leah’s breathy voice should be in the room with you – not spread over a 10-foot area. The ST-120 (despite its ability to throw an amazingly wide image on demand) keeps Leah’s voice focused and centered.

Erich Kunzel and the Rochester Pops orchestra plays The Syncopated Clock by Leroy Anderson just wonderfully. The auditorium size should be evident from the soundstage. The orchestra should sound very large, and I’d guess that the microphones used for the recording were close inside the curve of the players and on the stage. It certainly sounds that way, and the ST-120 brings the sound of an orchestra in an arc to the front of your room.

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon should also provide a sense of movement on stage during the performance. All of Mr. Simon’s releases seem exceptionally well-recorded, and I often use them to evaluate equipment. The ST-120 captures perfectly the chorus and the (separate and centered) voice of Mr. Simon.

Dynamics

The percussive sounds throughout Strauss’s Explosions Polka should be startling. The opening cannon shot, if you’re not careful, can damage your speakers (it IS, after all, a Telarc recording). As the echo of the explosions dies away, the decay should also be noticeable. With the ST-120, both the sharp percussive sound and the decay are clear.

Sleepwalk by Leo Kottke is a piece with a LARGE dynamic range. Many systems compress this or make it sound like a recording – not a real guitar in the room. The ST-120 again distinguishes itself by making this sound like Leo is in the room with you, but only if your other components are up to the task. One preamp I used, which shall remain nameless (not the Emotiva) made this sound like a recording, not like a real guitar in the room. But given a high-enough fidelity source, the verisimilitude of the performance shines through.

Linda Ronstadt’s Perfidia starts out softly, with just a strummed guitar and Linda’s voice. But when the orchestra comes in, the dynamic slam should grab your attention. Few amplifiers (tube or solid-state) get this right, but the ST-120 does. I’ve yet to determine why. With some amps the sound just gets louder, while with others, the transition to full orchestra is simply astounding. I’ve heard only one other amp that did this transition better than the ST-120. And, since I know that someone’s bound to ask “what was the other amp?” I’ll tell you up front that it was (surprisingly) a Luxman 1070 stereo receiver! Why that unit had the dynamics it did, I’ll never know – But I’m really sorry that I sold it!

Bye Bye Blackbird by Luther Kent should transport you to a New Orleans Bourbon Street jazz club. If it doesn’t, something’s wrong (but that something ISN’T the ST-120). Brash, sassy, and with some very loud sax and vocal work, this cut will give any amplifier a workout.

On The Bench

Since I have no electronic test equipment other than a multi-meter, I could not measure or verify the specifications. I will comment, however, that the distortion specification quoted by the manufacturer (1.5%) is the distortion at the clipping point (full power) and the amp runs at a much lower number throughout its functional range.

With the high-quality parts in the ST-120, I’d expect very good reliability. The VTA company has now been in business for 10-years and honors its warranties. Google the company for a feel of the current customers’ comments.

Conclusions

THE VTA ST-120 POWER AMPLIFIER is a Bargain in its Wired Form and an Unbelievable Bargain in its Kit Form. If You’re Looking for an American-made Tube Amplifier of Great Quality and Sound, You Will Not do Better.

Likes
• Sound (above all)
• Cost
• Parts Quality
• Durability
• Ability to alter sound with different tube models or different brands of tubes
Would Like To See
• Larger chassis option with IEC power cord
• Elimination of Dynaco slide switches & chassis layout
• Built-in bias-meter option

What can I say? There are few other American-made tube amplifiers at the price of the VTA ST-120. The closest I can think of are the Audio by Van Alstine Ultravalve ($1,500 @ only 35wpc) and the Rogue Cronus Magnum (a fully-tubed integrated amp at twice the price of this unit). Of course, when you add the cost of a good preamplifier to the cost of the VTA ST-120, the Rogue may become more competitive.

You can get Chinese-made amplifiers for the price of this ST-120. But those tube power amps contain parts that don’t even approach the quality of those in the ST-120. In terms of ultimate value, I believe that the ST-120 is absolutely amazing.

What a nice amplifier! I plan to keep this one. Its 60-watts plus per channel (and that’s with the modest 6550 tubes!) is more than sufficient for my speakers, and the tube soundstage is to die for. Any equivalent amplifier from Audio Research, McIntosh or Conrad-Johnson would cost far, far more. Do yourself a favor – If you think you might be in the market for a tube power amp, put this one on your short list. You won’t regret it.

Glenn Young

The post Vacuum Tube Audio ST-120 Tube Power Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Then, theoretically, those newbies will be future buyers of their more expensive products. Know what? It’s a gamble that’s likely to succeed!

The Emotiva Audio Corporation, based in Franklin Tennessee, has been in business since 2005. Owners Dan and Cathy Laufman have built the company into an Internet juggernaut by offering exceptional performance at factory-direct prices. The Basic-X, or BASX series of components (including this preamp, an integrated amp (TA-100), three power amps (A-300/500/700, and a new surround processor) are the newest products from Emotiva.

The PT-100 preamplifier is designed by Mr. Ray Dennison (Emotiva’s VP of Engineering) and Mr. Lonnie Vaughn (Emotiva’s Chief Technical Officer) with the support of their engineering team. Mr. Dan Laufman is responsible for the concept. About the preamplifier’s design goals, Dan says, “We wanted to design a modern, high performance preamplifier that delivered excellent analog performance and solid phono performance and also featured modern digital connectivity. And to add to the challenge, we wanted to do this at an extremely affordable price while maintaining excellent build quality. Old school and new age in the same package!”

Dan is quite proud of the preamp, saying that he feels it sets new standards for value, features and performance. To simplify navigating some of the nested menus, Dan says that they could have put some additional buttons on the front, but that most customers seem to like it as is.

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Well, I think that this is intended to be Emotiva’s “Welcome to the Audiophile Club” offering. Lots of folks are beginning to appreciate the virtues of better sound (moving on up from that iPhone or car stereo), but are put off by the cost. This preamp offers most everything a new audiophile could want at an amazing price.

The preamp sports its own DAC, meaning you can hook it up to your computer via USB, or with an optional AptX Bluetooth dongle. It’s available on Emotiva’s Accessories web-page. It’s called the BTM-1, priced at $49.99. With the dongle, you can wirelessly stream from most anything Bluetooth.

As to the DAC, let me be honest; I’ve heard standalone DACs that cost more than the PT-100 but that didn’t sound nearly as good. Think about that for a minute – the DAC in this puppy is as good as many that I can’t even afford!

The preamp also sports a phono section with inputs for both moving magnet (high output) and moving coil (low output) cartridges – selectable by a rear-panel gain switch. Into vinyl? The PT-100 has you covered!

The preamp even offers an FM tuner with 50 station presets. Yeah, I know – FM is lame… But if you live in an area where there are any good stations (I don’t) it’s still an OK feature to have.

Like headphones? The PT-100 has your back there too. The front panel jack (1/8”) has the juice to run all but the most demanding cans.

Got speakers that need LOTS of power? Add ANY power amp you want – The PT-100’ll drive it!

Think you might like a subwoofer for your next party? The PT-100 has a pair of (full-range, but volume-controlled) subwoofer outputs. Use the crossover controls on your subwoofer to dial in the match with the main speakers.

Don’t have a subwoofer? No problem – the PT-100 ALSO has tone controls! So many preamplifiers and integrated amplifiers of audiophile pretentions omit them. But if your main speakers just aren’t putting out quite enough bass, the tone controls can step right up.

But the tone controls have another side too. Many (most?) of the bookshelf speakers sold these days have (to put it politely) a bright treble. A bit hard on your ears? You can use the PT-100’s treble control to take the edge off. The point is, the tone controls give you LOTS of flexibility that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

And here’s another useful feature – the PT-100 has a balance control. I can hear you thinking, “Why would I need that?” Well, unless your listening room is perfectly symmetrical, left-to-right (and whose is?), you’re going to find that one speaker will be slightly louder than the other. This happens especially when one speaker is in a corner and the other isn’t. Sound like your room? The balance control (adjustable from the remote) can put that center image RIGHT in the center. So don’t diss the inclusion of this feature – a little bit of fiddling will reward you with LOTS better sound.

Additional equipment used for this review included:

• Vacuum Tube Audio ST-120 tube power amplifier
• jRiver Music server 22 for Mac
• WAV files ripped from CDs
• Some SACD high resolution audio discs
• Oppo BDP-105 connected via DLNA and (sometimes) used as a DAC
• Apple Airport Express as a listening room WiFi source
• iPad mini running jRemote as a system controller
• Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC
• Emotiva BASX PT-100 preamplifier (sometimes) used as a DAC
• Tekton Pendragon speakers
• BlueJeans Cable and other interconnects and speaker wires
• Emotiva power conditioner
• Room treatments by ATS acoustics

The PT-100 doesn’t look outrageous, doesn’t run up the power bill, doesn’t take up too much space and doesn’t break the bank. But all this is academic if it doesn’t sound good. So does it?

First let me say that preamplifiers are hard to do. I’ve never met one that don’t change the sound in some way or another. So if you’re expecting a preamp to sound EXACTLY like the DAC output plugged directly into a power amp, you’ve got some pain coming.

But in spite of that, having a preamp in the system allows you to do stuff you just can’t do without one – like listen to more than one source component (including a turntable). It also allows you, in this case, to tailor the sound to the room with adjustments to bass, treble and balance.

So how MUCH does the PT-100, specifically, color the sound? To my ears, not too much. I’ve owned some hot-rod preamplifiers (many at prices of up to and exceeding $3K), and not a single one was completely neutral. But I must say that the PT-100 runs with the big boys for transparency (not even taking into account its price). Is it audible? Yes – it is. Is it intrusive? No – it isn’t.

If you need a preamp (and most of us do), then the slight (and I do mean slight) loss of transparency that comes with having ANY more active electronics in the signal path is a small price to pay for what you get in return. Yes, you could (maybe) live without a preamp but only if:

• You have one, and only one, source
• The source you’re using has a world-class analog (not digital) volume control
• The source you’re using has a strong output buffer-amp compatible with your power amp’s input impedance
• You’re not using long interconnects

And even if your equipment meets all those criteria, I’d bet that in 99% of the cases, with a blindfold on, you STILL couldn’t tell the difference between having the PT-100 in the system or not.

So is there anything NOT to like? Well, I’d wish it had a bigger display. I can’t read it from across the room. The remote’s volume control has a funny feel – a brief press on the up or down buttons doesn’t do much, but if you hold them down, the volume changes too much, too fast. I’d also prefer a silver faceplate to the black one, but that’s just me. And that’s it. Piddling gripes compared to the major goodness this thing brings!

And don’t forget that for an extra $100, you can get the Emotiva TA-100 (an integrated amp with 50 WPC AND the PT-100 preamp built in).

So ultimately, the PT-100 provides a basketload of virtues for only the slightest veiling of the sound. And within a few days, your ears will have adjusted, and you won’t even know the preamp’s there.

OK – So I went bit outside my comfort zone for this review – Some of the music isn’t what I normally listen to, but it’s definitely what the target customer of the Emotiva PT-100 is likely to have in their media collection. So without any excuses:

The piano on One Dance sounds in the room with you, and the occasional flanging on Drake’s voice is startling. The “echo voices” sound as if they’re coming from a mile away and add quite a bit of depth to the recording. The PT-100 captures it all.

The guitar intro on Mike Posner’s I Took A Pill In Ibiza sounds like it’s directly in front of you. The preamp also does a great job of making Mike’s voice sound clear and sad just like it should.

The percussive synth that opens Sia’s Cheap Thrills is startling in its presence. The chanted background vocals are not only clear but also forceful in their power. The nuances are well preserved by the PT-100 preamp.

In This Is What You Came For by Calvin Harris & Rihanna, the synth-vocals really stand out in both clarity and presence. The female vocal range is clean and clear through the PT-100.

The low-pitched voice of Zara Larsson on Lush Life is preserved perfectly through this preamp. Some electronics have trouble reproducing the lower-female to high-male voice range, making it sound as if the singer is farther back in the soundstage than the rest of the music. The PT-100 avoids this and makes Zara sound more real than just about any other preamp I’ve heard.

The drums opening Mala in Cuba’s Tribal have some great cymbals too. It all sounds organic through this preamp.

Beer 30 by Horton Heat is a full-tilt blast! From the bass and drums to the cymbals plus the ambient sounds of the bar, this is a cut that should sound live and RAW. The PT-100 delivers the music in all its glory.

Dash Rip Rock’s P-Whipped is a song for the ages. It’s meant to be played LOUDLY, and even at high volume shouldn’t sound harsh or compressed. The PT-100 preamp avoids both potential pitfalls and presents a sound so real you’ll forget about being in your living room and feel like you’re at the Clearview Club, hearing Dash live. Who could ask for more?

Since I have no electronic test equipment other than a multi-meter, I could not measure or verify the PT-100’s specifications. Suffice it to say that Emotiva’s specs have traditionally been verified by Secrets’ reviews that DO include measurements.

With the 3-year warranty, AND a 30-day, money-back return period (you pay return shipping), Emotiva gear is a no-worry purchase.

THE EMOTIVA BASX PT-100 PREAMP/DAC/TUNER is Sweeter Than Running Into an Old Girlfriend at a Party. You Just Don’t Find This Much Awesomeness For Such A Reasonable Price. What, Me Worry?

So, I hear you say, “I can buy an entire AV RECEIVER for the $299 you want me to spend on this preamp. And the receiver’ll have power amps, surround sound and even room correction built in. WHY should I pony up the scratch for this preamp instead of buying the receiver?”

I’ll answer in a single word – SOUND! That $299 receiver (regardless of brand) will ALWAYS sound like a $299 receiver. Someday (and maybe sooner than you think), you’re going to want better sound. If you bought the receiver, then it’s a throw-away. No part of it can be used with a better system. But if you bought the Emotiva BASX PT-100, it’ll hang with any future power amp or source you want to add for a long, long time. That investment in sonic-futureproofing alone justifies the PT-100’s cost.

There’s just no such thing as the perfect preamplifier. Once you realize that, you can focus on what’s important to you. Every preamp, even those selling at stratospheric prices, changes the sound to some extent. What’s important is finding a preamp that does the least damage to the music while providing the features you need. Before buying my PT-100, I considered (and listened to) at least a half-dozen other preamps. I eventually ended up with the PT-100. My reasons will be different from yours (since my system is also different), but don’t ignore the Emotiva BASX PT-100 just because of its (awesomely low) price. This one plays with the big dogs!

-Glenn Young-

The post Emotiva BASX PT-100 Stereo Preamp/DAC/Tuner Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

One even claimed that Audio Research tube power amplifiers in particular, sounded “hard, brittle, and solid-state.” Now mind you, this acquaintance probably hasn’t heard anything that Audio Research has made in the past two decades, but his opinion was absolute. And I’m here to tell you, that “audiophile” was dead wrong.

The VT80 is the polar opposite of those adjectives. No, I’m not going to waste my time trying to change that guy’s opinion; many have the attitude “Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind’s made up!”

So how, exactly DOES the Audio Research VT80 tube amp sound? Read on…

Allow me the luxury of some hyperbole…

There are two types of audiophiles. My audio amigo, Walter, is one type. When he buys an audio component, he evaluates his needs, does extensive market research on which components fill those needs, takes time to go and listen to the candidates, and then purchases his (carefully-considered) choice. After that, Walt keeps his equipment until it becomes hopelessly obsolete, or until, after years or even decades of service, it is no longer cost efficient to repair.

I, at the other extreme, would be happy to win the lottery and have a new component to play with each and every week!

Of course, most listeners fit somewhere in the continuum between those two extremes. But various manufacturers target different parts of the spectrum. The bottom-of-the-barrel AVR manufacturers, for example, build to a consistent (and consistently low) price point, knowing that their products will become obsolete long before the wear-out phase. Other manufacturers, like Audio Research (you were wondering when I’d get around to them, weren’t you) build components that one can anticipate handing down as heirlooms to their grandchildren while still meeting their original factory specs.

Audio Research was founded in 1970 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by William Zane Johnson, who began designing custom audio electronics as far back as the 1950’s. The company has grown steadily over the last 47 years, with a network of specialist retailers in North America and distributors in Europe, Asia, and South America. The company occupies a 48,000 square-foot production plant and administrative headquarters in Plymouth, Minnesota where about 50 technical, assembly, and support staff are employed.

Audio Research (and McIntosh, currently owned by the same parent company) are “carriage trade” manufacturers who spare no expense in engineering or manufacturing. This would matter little if their products didn’t sound commensurately good. Fortunately for us, they do…

LINKS TO OTHER POWER AMPLIFIER REVIEWS ON THE SECRETS SITE:

• Vacuum Tube Audio ST-120
• PrimaLuna DiaLogue Seven Tube Monoblock Power Amplifier

The chassis size and shape of the Audio Research VT80 meet my ideas of what a tube amp should be. The power switch and pilot light are on the front panel, the tubes are spaced sufficiently far apart from one another and from the transformers to avoid heat build-up, and the rear panel is clearly labeled with terminals sufficiently spaced that even the largest speaker wires can be safely and easily installed.

If the VT80 were a house, I’d say that it had a full complement of amenities. Those include:

The amplifier uses a solid-state rectifier for its power supply rather than the more common rectifier tube. In addition to being more efficient with lower impedance, the solid-state rectifier won’t age as a rectifier tube would, and is much more reliable. When the VT80 is powered-up there is a 30 second auto-mute cycle to allow the circuitry to stabilize properly, and there is a low-line-voltage sensor that automatically mutes the amplifier should the supply voltage drop below 95V.

The VT80 is the first Audio Research amplifier with a new auto-bias circuit that monitors all of the output tubes. Their electrical characteristics change over time and the bias may become out of kilter. This seriously degrades the sound of the amplifier because the positive and negative sides of the audio waveform are being amplified at different rates of gain. Audio Research’s auto-bias automatically monitors the tubes and adjusts the bias of each to ensure that no sound degradation occurs. Most tube amps must be manually re-biased on a periodic basis. If you happen to be sufficiently tech-savvy in the use of a multimeter and screwdriver, this is not a challenge. But for the average audiophile, the results are what count, and the VT80 delivers the music without any need to futz with the equipment.

The microprocessor is also available to automatically shut off the amplifier after a period of time. That way, if you leave for work, forgetting to turn off the amp, it shuts itself off, saving both electricity and tube life. Don’t want the auto-shutoff? It’s defeatable via a back-panel toggle switch.

The chassis, in addition to being generously sized, has ventilation holes around the periphery of each and every tube. This ensures even and effective cooling for the tubes and lengthens their service life.

If you prefer, you can use the 12-volt trigger from your preamplifier or processor to turn your VT80 on and off. Most tube amps lack this concession to the 21st century.

The ability to use either unbalanced (RCA) or balanced (XLR) inputs is also a convenience, ensuring that the VT80 will work with any other equipment you may choose.

And, should something go wrong with the amplifier despite the internal controls, each tube has its own individual fuse. This means that if one of them fails (either from internal fault or because you dropped something on it and it broke), the resulting voltage surge won’t damage any other tubes. This is such a fundamentally great idea that I fail to understand why other tube manufacturers don’t do it. It’s SO much cheaper to replace a fuse than a tube…

Yet another neat amenity is the “HOURS” display on the rear panel that shows you how long your tubes have been in service. This does away with the question, “Is it time to replace my tubes yet?” The rear panel also has an RS-232 port that can be used with an automated control system, such as Crestron.

Audio Research ships the amplifier with Russian KT120 tubes, but tube-rollers may opt to use any of the following instead: 6550, KT88, KT90, or KT150. And while we’re on the subject of tubes, the KT120 has a reputation for having strong bass and slightly less treble than the more common 6550. I haven’t heard any KT88 amps in a long time, so I couldn’t comment on that. I’ve also yet to hear the KT150, since it’s a relatively new (and expensive) tube. Suffice it to say, though, that if the VT80 amplifier sounds too strong in the bass for your speakers or your room, a simple change to the (less expensive) 6550 tubes should balance the sound for you.

This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with the stock tubes – In fact, I think I prefer the lovely KT120 tubes when running any of my speakers sans subwoofers. The KT120’s bass heft makes even modest speakers sound stronger and lower in their bass ranges. And just because the KT120 tubes don’t give a sparkly treble, don’t think that their treble is weak either. In short, I think the KT120s were a great choice for this VT80 amplifier!

Audio Research’s “out of the box” experience begins with the VT80’s packaging. Care was taken to ensure that it was effective in preventing shipping damage. The tubes arrive in a small box with custom-cut foam surrounds. The driver tubes arrive with anti-vibration rings.

Just plug in the tubes; they’re individually labeled to indicate which socket they belong in and are also keyed to go in only one way, so you can’t mess it up. There is no bias to set since the amplifier’s auto-bias circuit handles that chore. Hook up the speakers and inputs, turn it on – and the amp is functional.

All tube amplifiers produce generous amounts of heat; therefore, ventilation is important. This amp should not be set directly on carpet, for example, because the carpet will block the airflow through the chassis. Place the amplifier on a hard surface with plenty of vertical clearance above it.

Additional equipment used for this review included

• jRiver Music server 22 for Mac
• WAV files ripped from CDs
• Some SACD high resolution audio discs
• Oppo BDP-105 connected via DLNA and (sometimes) used as a DAC / Preamp
• Apple Airport Express as a listening room WiFi source
• iPad mini running jRemote as a system controller
• Emotiva BASX PT-100 preamplifier with DAC
• Vacuum Tube Audio ST-120 tube power amplifier
• Crown PSA-2 solid-state power amplifier
• Heathkit hybrid 12-watt monoblock tube amplifiers
• Tekton Pendragon tower speakers (8 ohms)
• Axiom M100 tower speakers (4 ohms)
• KEF LS-50 stand-mounted speakers (8 ohms)
• BlueJeans Cable interconnects and speaker wires
• Nordost Flatline speaker wires
• Audioquest interconnects and speaker wires
• Emotiva power conditioner
• Room treatments by ATS acoustics
• NOTE: No subwoofers were used in any part of this review

This is an opportune time to mention equipment-matching; specifically, the amplifier-speaker interface. A ludicrous contention has grown in some audiophile circles that “there’s no such thing as too much amplifier power.” This misconception arises from the claim that transients require significantly more power than the averaged program material. The fact of the matter is that virtually everyone listens to their stereo at one watt or (usually) less amplifier output. The Audio Research VT80’s 75 watts per channel is more than sufficient for normal listening in normal sized rooms. It wouldn’t be the ideal amplifier to power a football stadium, but some feel that more power is (always) better power. That’s absolutely wrong.

The “never enough power” philosophy leads to absurdities such as 1,000 watt monoblocks driving highly sensitive speakers. You can do this, but it isn’t the right tool for the job.

The VT80 is suitable for any modern speaker. Modern speakers, by my definition, have sensitivities of nearly 90 dB (1 watt/1 meter) or higher and impedances of 6 ohms (nominal) or higher. If you have a speaker of significantly less than 4 ohms impedance, or one that is in the low 80s in sensitivity, you may want a different amp.

The VT80 revealed some ground loop issues in my system that I’d not been aware of before. This isn’t a bad reflection on the amp, but rather on the fact that my system had issues I was only intermittently aware of until the VT80 showed them to me. Once the AC grounding was sorted, the issue disappeared.

Immediately out of the box, I was struck by how dynamic and dimensional the amplifier sounded. The amp exhibited a very deep and wide soundstage. The manufacturer describes it as “holographic,” and although I wouldn’t go that far, I will say that I’ve only ever heard one amplifier pair that did better.

And since someone’s bound to ask, that “better” amplifier was a pair of 12-watt Heathkit monophonic integrated amps that I completely rebuilt into monoblock power amplifiers. But my Heathkits, despite very slightly bettering the VT80 in dynamics and soundstage, are wildly uneven in frequency response.

The VT80 gives all but a smidgen of the Heathkits’ dynamics and soundstage while providing literally an order of magnitude smoother frequency response. And, the VT80 provides 75 watts per channel to the Heathkits’ 12.

The VT80 IS the best amplifier in the bass range that I’ve heard in my room. Is it because my speakers like the transformer output? It may be, but with three different sets of speakers, the VT80 came out the consistent winner for bass depth, drive, and articulation (with one exception mentioned below). I have several other tube amps with output transformers that can’t do bass like the VT80.

Are the VT80’s compliment of Russian KT120 vacuum tubes the source of the amplifier’s wonderful bass? They may well be a big factor. One of my other tube amps uses 6550 output tubes, but it lacks the bass of the VT80. Would my other tube amp “bass up” if I used KT120 tubes in it? Maybe…

I also have a ginormous Crown PSA-2 solid-state power amp in the house with 375 watts/channel AND a damping factor of >700 from DC to 20kHz. If the spec-meisters are to be believed, the Crown should make the woofers sit up and beg. But it doesn’t! The PSA-2 sounds slightly mushy in the bass while the VT80 rocks the house. So much for specs – and so much for those who believe that specifications are the sole measure of how a component will sound. It just isn’t so.

An interesting thing happened when I hooked up the VT80 (using its 4-ohm output taps) to the 4-ohm Axiom M100 speakers. The generous bass that I heard with the Tekton Pendragons was still there, but the bass articulation was now somewhat reduced. The VT80 and the Axioms just didn’t sound as crisp and articulate in the bass as the same amp had with the Pendragons. Now I know that the Axioms CAN do highly articulate bass, and have heard it with other amplifiers, but with the VT80, not so much. I wouldn’t necessarily blame the amp for this one though – amplifier/speaker matching is as much an art as a science.

What I did hear with the M100s and the VT80 that I hadn’t previously heard from the Pendragons was a midrange to die for. The imaging depth and width had been excellent with the Pendragons – I didn’t think there was any farther the music could go. Wrong. With the VT80 and the Axioms, Paul Simon’s voice was IN THE ROOM and the array of backup singers, percussion effects, and support singers was spread over a wide, clearly divided, and highly articulate sound stage of amazing width and depth.

Now I wasn’t there when Mr. Simon’s music was recorded, so I can’t say how true to the original recording this aural display was, but the soundstage was startling. That’s the best word to describe it – startling.

Just for fun, I put on Madonna’s “Vogue” from her “Immaculate Collection” CD. Regardless of what one might think of the music, the Q-sound recording is an amazing tour-de-force of what’s possible in audio recording. And although I’ve heard the track sound “wall-to-wall” wide with previous setups, the Axioms and the VT80 gave this track the most spacious presentation that I’ve ever heard. Stunning.

I’ve mentioned the dynamics of the VT80 and one of the albums that showed the dynamics best is the Smetana/Dvorák CD by the Guarneri Quartet (Phillips label). The instruments are vivid and jump out from the stage, as they do in a real (small venue) performance. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing live chamber music in my home and in the homes of others, and this seems to be as close it gets (in a recorded version) to what I hear live. But not all systems can make even a good recording sound “live.” My system (in any previous iteration) hasn’t awakened this music as did the VT80.

Now this brings up several associated comments. My acquaintance who dismissed the Audio Research amplifiers as sounding cold and solid-state hasn’t heard this amplifier. The VT80 isn’t as generous with “tube glow” as are the classic amplifiers from Dynaco, etc. If you want that level of romance, buy a classic tube amp and be done with it. But the VT80 seems to have the very slightest tube bloom in the vocal range (incidentally where most of the orchestral instruments live, as well). This “presence bloom” gives solidity and weight to vocals and instruments without being noticeable unless you’re specifically looking for it. If the amp were measured into a resistive load, I’m sure it would measure ruler-flat, but what I hear is certainly there. Is it an artifact of the amplifier-speaker interface? I think not since I played the amplifier through three different speakers and heard the “midrange bloom” in each. But it’s subtle enough that there’s no noticeable coloration to the sound – it just sounds both right and present.

If you’re used to solid state amplifiers, you’ll probably notice no frequency issues with the VT80, but you will (and immediately) notice the expanded sound stage with its additional width and depth. My comment to a friend was that this amplifier makes digital recordings sound analog. And that was meant as a compliment. This was even more so with the lovely KEF LS50 speakers. Being point-source radiators, they took the VT80’s imaging (already excellent) to yet another level.

The treble of the VT80 is just fine – not bright, not shy. But that isn’t what many so-called “audiophiles” want. They want sparkle – they want “air” – in other words, they want treble like nothing ever heard in real life. If you’re one of those folks, the VT80 probably isn’t for you. The best description I can give of the VT80’s treble is “natural.” And, most important to me, the VT80 gets the balance right on cymbals. Maybe my ear is just sensitive to that frequency range, but I find that many recordings (and many speakers) give insufficient weight to the brass sound of cymbals while emphasizing the overtones. To my ears, the VT80 gets it right.

So bass, treble, midrange, and dynamics – the VT80 has it all. But with the very best speakers, the VT80 does something else that very few other amplifiers can swing, it makes the music sound like an organic whole from the top to the bottom of the frequency range. This elusive “cut from the same cloth” effect is the difference between listening to a recording that sounds like real music and the artificial reproduction of same.

I’ve written before about how the human ear can intuitively decide (and instantaneously) whether music is live or reproduced. The example I use is of walking down the street and hearing music from one or two blocks over. Despite the traffic and street noise, the brain knows, and within milliseconds, whether that music is live or recorded.

Music reproduction equipment can’t yet pull off that illusion, but the best equipment (including, specifically, the Audio Research VT80) is getting closer. My wife, whose opinion of audio gear is “it all sounds the same,” would frequently migrate into the living room when the VT80 was playing to listen with me. That’s a telling metric of how natural the VT80 makes music sound.

Since I have no electronic test equipment but a multi-meter, I could not measure or verify Audio Research’s specifications.

However, I did run some frequency sweeps to see how the speakers were behaving. Suffice it to say that the VT80 supplied a flat, in-room frequency response equal to what I’ve heard from any other amplifier; which is to say that the room (as always) has a greater effect on the sound than the speakers OR the amplifier.

With the high-quality parts in the VT80, and with its thoughtful tube fuses and microprocessor control, I’d expect amazing reliability. Nothing in the design or construction leads me to believe otherwise.

THE AUDIO RESEARCH’S VT80 TUBE AMP is among the best in class and a top pick at $8000, or any price for that matter.

This is a frustrating component for me to review. The Audio Research VT80 is, in most ways, the very best power amplifier I’ve ever heard. I’ve previously owned Audio Research tubed amplifiers (D40), McIntosh tubed amplifiers (MC240), and McIntosh transformer-coupled, solid-state amplifiers (MC352), and although all sounded excellent, none matched the bass extension/control or soundstaging of the VT80.

And it needs to (again) be explicitly stated (although it should be intuitively obvious), that above a certain price point, audible improvements are not only incrementally smaller but also exponentially costlier. If you’re expecting the VT80 to be four times as good as the best $2,000 amplifier, you’re doomed to disappointment. But the fact is indisputable that (to my ears) the VT80 is audibly and immediately superior to any $2,000 amp I’ve ever heard. So is the VT80 worth its $8,000 price? That is a decision you’ll need to make.

If you’re like my friend, Walter, who buys quality, and then keeps it virtually forever, the amortized “per year” cost of the VT80 becomes insignificant. However, it bears saying that the majority of us won’t ever be in the market for an $8,000 amplifier however good it might be. But before you make that decision, and if the price is even remotely affordable to you, find an Audio Research dealer and listen to this amplifier. Given its extremely high-quality construction, amazing sound, and consistently high resale value, you might just change your mind. Before you spend any fraction approaching 50% of the price of this amplifier, you owe it to yourself to at least hear the Audio Research VT80 tube amp. It’s that good.

The post Audio Research VT80 Tube Power Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Not only are many enthusiasts storing vast libraries of downloaded music on their computers, there are those who simply want to listen to the radio or connect to a service like Spotify for easy access to thousands of songs. The NAD M32 Direct Digital Amplifier can do all of those things while delivering the fantastic sound the Masters Series is revered for.

The NAD M32 Direct Digital Amplifier is a true bridge product. On one hand, it’s a high-end two-channel integrated amplifier that employs some impressive technology from the Masters Series. But when you plug in the optional BluOS module, it becomes a fully-capable streaming player that can pull in content from your network’s library, the Internet, or anything with Bluetooth capability.

Linkbacks:

• NAD M17 & M27 Separates
• NAD D3020 Hybrid Digital Amplifier

If you’ve followed NAD’s history even a little, then you know it’s focused on sound quality above all. The Masters Series is the pinnacle of that mantra and as such, employs the most advanced technologies. I covered the M17 & M27 surround separates in 2014 and found they delivered some of the cleanest sound I’d yet heard from a multi-channel setup. By keeping the signal in the digital domain right up to the speaker outputs, the M32 puts out phenomenal sound with no perceptible distortion and a damping factor that simply defies description.

To that, the M32 adds Modular Design Construction (MDC) in the form of four card cages that accept different input modules. My sample shipped with traditional digital inputs along with a BluOS streaming module that supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This is a box that can easily grace a high-end rack or a living room that simply thirsts for great sound delivered conveniently. It looks to be the ultimate bridge product. Let’s take a look.

The M32 Direct Digital Amplifier is part of NAD’s Masters Series of audiophile components. As such, it’s packed with their most advanced amplifier technology that keeps all signals in the digital domain right up to speaker outputs. I first saw this approach in the M27 multi-channel amp reviewed back in 2014. The M32 uses the latest Direct Digital Feedback Amplifier components which NAD builds under license from Cambridge Silicon Radio. While technically a Class D amp, it’s more akin to a DAC that can drive speakers. Many companies call their Class D products “digital amps” but they are not. In those cases, Class D refers to the switching method. The signal itself remains in analog form from input (or DAC section), through processing (volume & tone control), to speaker output.

The M32 is a true digital amplifier. The signal comes in the coax, optical, USB, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi inputs and is processed without conversion until it reaches the speaker outputs. By eliminating multiple cascading stages of analog amplification, noise and distortion are almost non-existent. The signal path has extremely low impedance and is very short which contributes to a super-high damping factor. To say this amp is responsive would be an exercise in understatement.

All the functions of the preamp, namely volume and tone control, are performed by software algorithms. This makes the grain introduced by analog potentiometers a thing of the past. And tone control is handled without any change in phase or distortion. The software filters also enable a built-in crossover which can be used for a separate subwoofer.

Physically, the M32 Direct Digital Amplifier is minimalistic box with a lovely alloy faceplate that features an all-glass touchscreen at the center. To the right is a large volume knob with a high-end feel and no detents. Resolution is .5dB. There is no power switch in the traditional sense but a small touchpad at the top-center wakes the unit from standby, which only draws half-a-watt. Power status is indicated by the NAD logo at left, white for on and orange for off. Additionally, you can cut all the juice with a toggle switch around back.

Up top are generous vents though you won’t find too much heat coming from them. If you place a component on top of the M32, make sure it has sufficient clearance. Speaking of feet, NAD has included large pucks that install magnetically on the bottom. The pucks have generous rubber pads which won’t mar delicate surfaces. If you choose not to use them, the installed feet are cone-shaped with gently-rounded tips.

Around back is where things get interesting. There is a traditional set of analog inputs; three RCAs (one is for the moving-magnet phono stage), and an RCA output. Digital inputs include one USB upstream, plus two more downstream ports on the BluOS module. That MDC card also includes a Bluetooth antenna and a Wi-Fi dongle that plugs into one of the USB ports. Traditional digital inputs come on the second included MDC card and offer two each of coax and optical along with an AES/EBU port. There are two unoccupied card slots for which there is currently only an HDMI board available.

The remote is one of the heaviest and beefiest handsets I’ve ever seen. It’s made from a single piece of extruded aluminum with a plastic faceplate. It weighs more than some DVD players I’ve seen, nearly a pound. It’s designed to control other components besides the M32 and has mode switching buttons at the top for that purpose. It’s also fully backlit which makes it great for home theater environments. My only complaint is the aluminum has a few sharp edges which could mar furniture.

One can use the M32 as a traditional two-channel integrated amp by simply connecting sources like a turntable, optical disc player, or tuner. And if you buy it without the BluOS module, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. You can also connect a computer to the USB upstream port. For this review, I hooked my Oppo BDP-93 up via coax to engage in a bit of two-channel CD listening.

But this limits one to their physical media library although you could hook up a steaming box with a coax or optical output to the M32. The best way to enjoy streamed content though, is to add in the BluOS module ($399) my sample shipped with. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It offers Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth input and is fully-controlled by a smartphone or tablet app. It should appeal to audiophiles with its 24-bit/192kHz capability plus it can play MQA formats from the premium Tidal music service. The possibilities become almost limitless when you use the M32 this way. And lest you wonder why one would stream compressed content to a $4000 amplifier, you won’t wonder after you’ve had a listen.

Setting up BluOS first requires that you install said app on your smartphone or tablet. I used an iPhone 7 Plus for this. The interface is a bit clunky but I was able to figure it out after a couple of listening sessions. The first order of business is to get the M32 on the network. That simply required me to go the Wi-Fi settings on the iPhone and select it. Returning to the BluOS app, it initiated a software update which took about 10 minutes to complete. You can monitor its progress on the front panel. By the way, the touchscreen? It’s cool for sure but I found I could get things done faster with the remote’s navigation keys.

Once the player is on the network, you can select from multiple content sources. All the major online providers are there or you can stream via Bluetooth from your preferred device. I was able to send music right from my phone to the M32. The real fun begins when you sign up for a service like iHeartRadio. Let the music surfing begin! I spent several afternoons checking out radio stations from all over the world, and a few local ones too.

To evaluate the M32, I connected my reference Axiom LFR1100s to the main set of speaker terminals. The binding posts are some of the nicest I’ve ever seen and can easily accommodate any type of cable termination, or bare wire if you’re so inclined. Since the Axioms normally require four channels of amplification, I listened to just the front driver arrays. This effectively turns them into a pair of M100s. I’ve used this approach before and it still provides a full-range speaker with a super-wide soundstage.

When I evaluate audio components, I ask myself two questions, can I place the instruments in a 3D virtual space? And, can I imagine the performance space in my mind? The second question comes from my background as a performer. I’ve played in venues ranging from baseball stadiums (no joke, we played near third base with the audience in the stands before us) to Carnegie Hall. Orchestral recordings are nearly always created in empty concert halls though newer releases are taken from live concerts with an audience in attendance. I want to be able to tell the difference between a great hall or a studio. I want to know if there’s an audience there or not. I also want the instruments to surround me rather be up on a stage beyond reach.

I always start with a few old London Digital CDs of the Chicago Symphony playing Beethoven and Brahms symphonies. These performances are very musical and organic but the mix is very string forward. It’s as if the microphones were placed only at the front of the stage. I always feel as though I’m sitting in the first row, close enough to identify the kinds of shoes worn by the first violins. The M32 captured that essence just as many components have before it, but this time, the soundstage was much wider. While brass and woodwind instruments still came from a distance, I could clearly hear the details of individual tone colors and even familiar players. It was easy for instance, to differentiate between principal bassoon Willard Elliot’s sound versus the second desk player, John Raitt.

I decided to try a newer recording of Anne-Sophie Mutter playing Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. This is a very complex work with lots of interaction between the soloist and different sections of the orchestra. Though the mix keeps the violin front and center, you can clearly hear individual instruments and sections weave their parts around the solo in a fair and equal manner. To me, this is a far better test of detail than the classical guitar or piano works used in many audio reviews. The M32 really shined with this material. Transparency was better than I’ve ever heard and the ambient cues of Chicago’s Orchestra Hall were crystal clear. Much of this work is a chamber piece, right down to the Bach choral played by the clarinets near the end of the second movement. The M32’s complete lack of audible distortion, invisible noise floor, and terrific response breathed new life into an already reference-level CD.

I also tried a more pared-down performance with bassoonist Judith LeClair’s New York Legends recital disc. Her sound is quite distinctive and embodies tremendous depth with a huge array of partials and colors. The performance came alive in front of me right down to the clicking of her keys and the pianist’s feet working the pedals. I was inspired to listen to the entire disc and it was over before I even realized the time.

To check out the M32’s rock chops, I went for some more honest analog-based material. That usually means oldies or Foo Fighters so I started with the Led Zeppelin re-masters. The vintage warmth was there, which is to say the recordings are slightly veiled. But reverb and other effects have a much more realistic feel than today’s computer-generated stuff. Robert Plant and friends made me feel as if they were playing in Madison Square Garden and I was the only member of the audience. It was a private arena rock concert right in my listening room.

The latest Foo Fighters disc, Sonic Highways, delivers more of a club feel but still has all the tactility and honesty of much older material. Dave Grohl stays true to tradition by doing much of his recording through analog consoles and mastering on reel-to-reel tape. Again, the M32 provided its signature wide soundstage and excellent ambient detail. There are few components that draw me in like this amplifier. Even though I’m familiar with NAD’s approach to sound, the Direct Digital amp takes that experience to a new level.

THE NAD’S M32 DIRECT DIGITAL AMPLIFIER delivers high-end audio quality at a relatively modest price. It also excels as a lifestyle component with its BluOS module.

I’ve heard enough high-end audio components to know that it takes something special to really excite me. The NAD M32 Direct Digital Amplifier is one such component. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time with NAD gear in the past, and even experienced similar technology in the M17/M27 separates, the M32 takes everything good about those products to even greater heights. With its novel approach to signal processing, NAD has redefined my perception of clarity and soundstage in a major way.

My mantra with both audio and video gear is to seek out the most neutral parts I can find. My choice comes down to whatever reproduces the original material with the least amount of processing and alteration. The M32 is a supremely neutral component. But it manages to improve poor-fidelity recordings at the same time, which is something I didn’t believe was possible. But evidently its perfect signal-handling results in a wider soundstage. While that sounds simplistic, it’s the quality that most won me over. Obviously my most-familiar recordings still had something to offer that I hadn’t heard before from other components.

And before I get too carried away with my comments on sound quality, I should conclude with a final mention about the sheer coolness of the BluOS module. With the addition of this card, the M32 remains an audiophile piece but gains a level of convenience that makes it the equal of any lifestyle component at any price. It’s not always ideal to shuffle CDs or even to create playlists on your connected laptop. BluOS makes it easy to just tune in a bit of Internet radio or your favorite streaming service when you just want some background music to liven the party or soothe your evening.

Either way, the M32 Direct Digital Amplifier is a winning design that’s been perfectly executed. It receives my highest recommendation.

The post NAD M32 Direct Digital Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Using innovative design like class D amplification, Anthem Room Correction, and DTS Play-Fi and Apple AirPlay wireless technology make the Forte an impressive package. Compact and lightweight, the Forte amp possesses musical prowess. Easy to set up and use, the Forte amp should find its way into music lovers homes.

MartinLogan is a respected manufacturer of High End speakers. I fondly remember seeing and hearing the large MartinLogan electrostatics at various Consumer Electronics shows over the years. When I found out that the company was introducing an amplifier with wireless technology called the Forte, I was excited to see what they were offering. To my surprise, the MartinLogan Forte amp is not a super high-priced item, it is rather affordable. Looking at the specifications and features, I was intrigued as to how this Forte amp would perform and sound at home. I hoped that maybe this MartinLogan Forte amp might be something of a surprise, perhaps a sleeper overachiever?

The MartinLogan Forte amp is one of growing number of products that use DTS Play-Fi as the streaming platform. DTS Play-Fi is a premium whole home wireless audio solution that is embraced by high end audio manufactures because of the lossless audio transmission of the system. Support for high resolution audio up to 24bit/192khz and seamless interoperable performance with all DTS Play-Fi products makes multi-room, multi-zone easy to use through the Play-Fi app.

The small, light-weight Forte is deceptive if you equate size with performance. MartinLogan has designed the Forte amp with Class-D operation. Class D amp designs are attractive because of their efficiency. They offer low electrical power consumption during use, and because they can take the power they need efficiently from the electrical line there is no need for the large capacitors or transformers normally associated with most amplifiers. For a more in-depth explanation of Class D amps you can read about them on The Secrets Primer site.

The MartinLogan Forte amp has inputs on the rear panel for left/right analog RCA’s, as well as Ethernet 10/100. Wireless inputs include Apple AirPlay and DTS Play-Fi. Outputs include left/right 5-way binding posts for speakers and a subwoofer out via a single analog RCA. The Forte amp’s wireless connectivity can be 2.4Ghz or 5.0Ghz. The front panel has a set of buttons running left to right for input selection, mute, volume down, volume up, and power on/off.

Anthem Room Correction will help insure the end user will get the best sound regardless of room acoustics and or the speaker placement. If you would like to learn more about Anthem Room Correction the Secrets website has an article that gives a much more in depth look at the system.

To operate the MartinLogan Forte, the user must first download the free DTS Play-Fi app. I use an i-phone and if you have an Android device the following set-up is similar, but with a few differences. I think it is rather easy either way.

Following MartinLogan’s Quick Start Guide’s advice, I took the Forte amp to the area where I have my router located to pair the amp with my home wi-fi. Once connected to power I turned the unit on by pushing the on/off button on the front of the Forte amp. Then I pushed the Wi-Fi button on the back of the amp for a few seconds until I heard 2 separate tones from the Amp. The LED Wi-Fi indicator began to pulse slowly at which time I opened the Settings app on my phone and found, SET UP NEW AIRPLAY SPEAKER on my phone. I selected the Forte Play-Fi amp and then the LED Wi-Fi indicator changed from blinking to solid, indicating that the Forte amp was connected to my home Wi-Fi.

I opened the DTS Play-Fi app which I had downloaded to my i-phone, I found the Forte and connected in one step. In the process of checking that everything was operational I found Deezer, the music streaming service and opened my account and music played through the speakers. Pretty easy set-up, I thought. Now, I did some preliminary listening and my impressions you can read in the listening section.

Next I downloaded the ARC software onto my computer so I could use the room correction on my review pair of MartinLogan 40 loudspeakers. Although the owner’s manual suggests that the owner should go to the Anthem website, I found the software on the MartinLogan website. The ARC downloads only took a few minutes. Once I had it running, the computer located the Forte amp. At that point, I could connect the supplied microphone to my computer to begin calibration. The calibration software guided me thru the steps. Not too complicated at all, you just move the microphone to the suggested locations. If you have a tripod, I would recommend using it to support the microphone. I held the microphone away from my body as recommended by MartinLogan. Once the test tone sweep is done, the calculations are made and then stored into the Forte amp program. I’ll have to admit that I was impressed by the sophistication and ease of it all. I thought it was pretty cool!

A note to those of you that have not done a calibration: if you have other family members, please let them know what you are about to do. First, the room or the area must be as quiet as possible. Secondly, the calibration test tone sweeps will sound like a UFO or aliens from outer space are landing. I let my wife know, and then politely closed the door to the master bedroom where she was watching TV. When I was finished, I peeked in on her. “Well that was interesting, “she said. “Is that what you and Matt do when you are together?” she said teasingly referring to my RCA audio buddy. “No, we also listen to music!” I retorted. I love my wife because she accepts my audio hobby insanity.

The first thing that I noticed was a deep extended bass, and clear articulate highs. The Class D amps I have listened to in the past were clean in the midrange, soft in the highs, and they tended to be light weight in the bass and mid-bass. The preliminary listen was very promising. The Forte amp also seemed like it had great reserves of power, enough to play the MartinLogan 40’s with authority in my listening room.

Now I decided to try the ARC calibration. I am a little skeptical when it comes to electronic equalization. That is because in the past when I have tried such devices (ones that offered an electronic solution for eliminating room effects) it came with compromises in sonic clarity. The MartinLogan Forte amp and the Anthem Room Correction utilize the latest in digital and computer software technology. It is touted as a much more sophisticated tool for optimizing the speakers in a room. My hopes were high that the ARC system would offer improvement for the sound in my room.

Once I finished the ARC calibration, I sat back down for a listen. I restarted the track I had been listening to. The result: Ahmad Jamal’s Marseille was transformed. The soundstage opened – up, it was huge. The piano was more 3-dimensional, as was the tapping drum kit. Notes from the piano rang out in space. The sound was noticeably cleaner. Stunning is the word I would use to describe the difference. Bravo MartinLogan and Anthem for making this technology available at such an affordable price!

A huge wall of sound was produced by the speakers and amp. The Forte and Motion 40’s presented a deep, growling bass that seemed to come from the earth’s core. The whole effect was like a sonic rollercoaster. When it was done you wanted to ride again.

I am very familiar with this record and I can tell you that the MartinLogan Motion 40’s and the Forte amp did a very good job. Joni was placed solidly between the speakers. The guitars and the small percussion instruments were delicately presented. I detected a neutral, clean presentation to the music. The MartinLogan combo resolved the voices particularly well. I was pleasantly surprised with the sound from this sub $600 wireless amp.

Before one of my early morning listening sessions, my wife was working in the kitchen. We have an open floor plan, so the listening room/den opens to the kitchen area. She pulled up her Pandora on her phone to listen to her Disney soundtracks. Beauty and the Beast came on. Wanting to make her experience richer I pulled up the station on the DTS Play-Fi app. “Here you go sweetheart!” I said. She walked into the room, paused and said, “It’s just amazing how music through good speakers can sound compared to tin-can speakers!” Tin-can speakers in this case are the i-phone speakers and or her small Bluetooth speakers. This is a sentiment that I hope all, especially younger folks, could experience as a pathway to high-end sound.

The soundtrack to Beauty and the Beast was produced with a huge sound engulfing the room. The MartinLogan Forte and Motion 40 loudspeakers did a superb job on the voices. The vocalists (Ariana Grande & John Legend) were life-sized and located precisely in the space between the speakers. The sound is just beautiful from this combo of MartinLogan Forte amp and Motion 40 speakers.

THE MARTINLOGAN FORTE AMP has packaged a powerful wireless streaming amp with advanced ARC room correction in a small affordable unit that is almost too good to be true.

The MartinLogan Forte amp is quite a package. I was impressed by this unassuming little box of an amp. The Forte is created for those seeking the best in wireless playback at an affordable price. For a pittance, you get a powerful class D amp that utilizes DTS Play-Fi to deliver high end sound. Add the Anthem Room Correction technology and what you get is a genuine bargain. I hope this amp gets exposure to as many folks as possible. The MartinLogan Forte in combination with the MartinLogan Motion 40 speakers will deliver sonic bliss. At less than $2600 for the system, that is a super deal.

The post MartinLogan Forte Amp Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Besides being incredibly simple to set up, the McIntosh D1100 proved capable of reproducing digital files of all types with incredible clarity and realism.

McIntosh is one of the few brands instantly recognized by any audiophile. Generally excellent performance, a consistent design aesthetic, and their trademark glowing blue analog meters have made McIntosh products a staple of the audiophile marketplace for nearly 70 years. I’ve had the opportunity to listen to many McIntosh products and have always been impressed with their design and sound quality. Sadly though, I had never had the chance to hear one in my own home – until now.

While I have typically been more a home theater/multi-channel audio kind of guy, I have been slowly delving into the realm of high-resolution stereo. Spanning from my appreciation for the sound quality offered by high resolution disc formats like SACD and DVD-Audio, file-based high-resolution music is a natural progression for me. As such, when the opportunity to review McIntosh’s latest preamplifier/DAC combo presented itself, I jumped at the chance.

The D1100 2-Channel Digital Preamplifier is something of a split from the traditional for McIntosh. Eschewing any analog inputs, the back panel contains nothing but digital connections. While there has been a recent resurgence in vinyl playback, it seems that many audiophiles are gravitating towards file-based playback and the D1100 is targeted squarely at those customers. McIntosh took things one step further by imbedding a high-quality DAC right inside. As someone who listens to nothing but digital files, I figured I’d be a good test for the D1100. Can the McIntosh D1100 2-Channel Digital Preamplifier be the centerpiece of your digital music system? Let’s hook it up and find out.

If you’ve been following the high-end audio scene at any point in the last 50 years or so, you know exactly what a McIntosh product looks like. The chassis is constructed of stainless steel in a mix of hairline-brushed “Black Titanium” and polished steel finishes. The front panel is black glass with brushed aluminum end caps.

The top of the chassis sports a neat schematic of the components and signal paths that each input & output follows along with the file types supported by each input. Not only useful, it is also a very creative design touch. A generously-sized display screen is centered on the front panel and is flanked by the trademark McIntosh blue output meters, which glow when the unit is powered on. You can disable the meter lighting if you desire. There is a knob to select the input source and a second knob to control the volume. There is also a ¼” headphone jack and dedicated buttons for Outputs 1 and 2, Standby, and Mute. Overall, it is a very clean and classy look and will match beautifully with any other McIntosh components in your equipment rack. The design is clean enough to blend well with non-McIntosh gear as well.

The back panel sports a whopping nine digital inputs: three Coaxial Digital, three Optical Digital, one MCT (a proprietary McIntosh format), one AES/EBU, and one USB Type B to connect to a computer. The USB jack can also be used to update the firmware if needed. On the output side of things are two pairs of fixed-level analog outputs (one Balanced XLR and one Unbalanced RCA), plus two additional sets of variable analog outputs (one Balanced XLR, one Unbalanced RCA) for both Output 1 and Output 2. With the buttons on the front panel and the remote to enable/disable these outputs, you could easily use the D1100 to control a multi-zone audio system. Rounding out the back panel are IR and RS232 inputs, four trigger outputs, four data ports (digital control outputs used with other McIntosh components), and a special connection to mate the D1100 with McIntosh’s C1100 analog preamplifier. There are only a few things missing from the D1100 in my opinion. First would be a network connection of some type (either Wi-Fi or LAN) to play files directly from a network share or NAS drive. While I’d like the ability to directly play networked files included on a future version of the product, the purist in me wonders if McIntosh was wise to leave this feature out. Given that any device you’d connect via the USB input could also access those files, perhaps this would be unnecessary redundancy. Second is a way to hear DSD streams from a non-McIntosh disc player. Since SACD’s copy protection prohibits the raw DSD signal from being bit-streamed over digital coaxial or optical, most users will be out of luck. However, if you’ve got one of McIntosh’s newer disc spinners with SACD capability, you can use the proprietary MCT connection to send DSD64 to the D1100. The last thing I’d like to see is a home theater bypass of some type. Since the D1100 is strictly 2-channel, it will prove difficult to integrate in a dual-purpose (multi-channel and stereo) room such as mine.

Internally, McIntosh has gone to great lengths to make the D1100 a reference-quality component for digital sources. The D1100 was designed as a Dual-Mono device, which means that the left and right audio channels as well as the power supplies are electrically isolated from one another. This is done to improve stereo separation and keep the disparate left and right signals as pure as possible. The DAC chip inside is only identified as an 8-channel, 32-bit design. No specific chip model is cited. Check the specifications section above for the formats that can be decoded by the DAC (which vary based upon the input used). MQA and DSD512 are the only two formats of note that the internal DAC cannot support. Unfortunately, the design of the D1100 was too far along before MQA or DSD512 were really mainstream (DSD512 is still pretty much unheard of) so they were left out. The DAC is run in Quad-Balanced mode, which dedicates four of the DAC channels each to the left and right signal paths. The D1100 is assembled in McIntosh’s Binghamton, New York factory by a team of dedicated employees. Given the superb level of fit and finish on my review sample, those folks clearly take pride in their work.

The D1100 arrived at my home packed securely in a thick cardboard box. Upon opening it, I was surprised to see yet another carton inside. Not only was the D1100 double-boxed, but the containers were isolated from one another by four thick foam caps. The inner one even had a handhold on each side to make it easier to remove – brilliant! The D1100 was protected by additional custom-fit foam within the inner box as well. Shy of running a fork lift’s prongs through the box or dropping it from a substantial height, I can’t imagine anyone’s D1100 arriving damaged.

With the preamp unpacked, I slid it onto an open rack in my equipment cabinet and got down to hooking everything up. I connected a OPPO UHD-205 Ultra HD Blu-ray Player to digital coaxial input 1 on the D1100 via a Kimber Illuminations D-60 cable, and ran a Belkin USB Type-A to Type-B cable to the USB input from my computer. The source of the computer-based files was a Lenovo Carbon X1 laptop with a solid-state drive (SSD) running Windows 10. The D1100 was then connected to my Wyred 4 Sound amplifier (1000w into 4 ohms) via its Output 1 jacks with a Blue Jeans Cable RCA run. The amp was in turn connected to my Sonus faber Olympica III speakers via bi-wired Kimber 4VS cabling.

If you wish, you can rename inputs on the D1100 to be more indicative of your source component (i.e. change the USB input to “Computer” for example). You can configure the D1100 to skip unused inputs too, which is a handy feature. All changes are made from the front panel volume and source buttons with turns and pushes of the two dials. While it is a bit tedious to navigate this way, you’ll only need to do it once. As someone who runs a dual-purpose audio/theater room, the only thing I missed was some form of home theater bypass connection. This would have made it much easier to switch between the D1100 and my Marantz AV8801 A/V preamp. Considering many of McIntosh’s other preamps sport a pass-through feature, this is a surprising omission. Fortunately, my Wyred 4 Sound amp has both XLR and RCA inputs for each channel so I was able to switch between preamps by simply switching the input source on my left and right amp channels. The D1100 includes a slim, stylish remote control as well. It’s very functional, though buttons for direct input source selection are absent. You’ll have to use the source up/down buttons to scroll through all available inputs to find the one you want. This is a good reason to program the D1100 to skip any unused ones. On the whole, the D1100 was incredibly simple to setup and use. I don’t think it took me more than ten minutes to get everything connected and ready to play.

Since I use a Windows 10 PC as my media player/server, I’ll take a moment to explain how to get a Windows box working with the D1100. First, download the “McIntosh USB Audio Windows Driver D v1.0” from the support section of the McIntosh website. Install it using all the defaults and you should be all set. This driver install also installs the McIntosh-HD USB Audio Control Panel software, which allows you to make changes to how the D1100 receives the signal over USB (buffer depth, etc). The defaults worked perfectly in my setup. Where I did run into some issues was with my choice of media players. I initially started off using Foobar2000, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a pure DSD signal over to the D1100. After nearly two hours of trying different drivers, plug-ins, etc., I threw in the towel. While this was a giant failure for me as an IT professional, I figured a different approach was in order. I downloaded a copy of JRiver Media Center (v23) and within about 4 minutes had it installed and working perfectly. All I had to do was go into JRiver’s setup options and select the “McIntosh-HD” device from the drop-down menu of available playback devices. Now every PCM and DSD format showed on the D1100’s display. Of course, Mac users don’t need any special drivers and would just need to select the D1100 as the playback device via their media player.

I was completed shocked at how much better this disc sounded through the McIntosh D1100 than my current Marantz preamp. The first thing that hit me was the amazing stand-up bass. It was rich, deep, and incredibly full-sounding without seeming bloated or overripe. I did a double-take, wondering if my subs were somehow getting a signal. They weren’t. It sounded like my Olympicas magically picked up an extra 5-10Hz of low end output. Barber’s voice was crystal clear, with razor-sharp definition of each syllable and inflection. I could distinctly hear the layer of added reverb they put on her vocal track but it combined with the original vocal to give a rich, full presentation. Cymbals shimmered with incredible air and the trumpets were appropriately “brassy”, forward but not harsh. There was a smoothness to the overall presentation that belied its humble 44.1kHz/16-bit roots. I’ve used this track to demo tons of equipment and this is possibly the best I’d ever heard this song sound.

This album is a return to her jazzy roots, with the excellent recording quality typical of Krall’s work. While every track on this album sounds great, “Sway” really showed off the D1100’s merits. The acoustic guitar that starts off the song had the perfect balance of detail and richness. The subtle plucking of each string was perfectly rendered and I could feel the body of the instrument with each note. Krall is very closely mic’d on this track and you could hear the sound of her lips moving against her teeth and gums, or when her tongue wet her lips. While slightly distracting (some might say gross?), it is also an exceptional display of the detail captured during this recording. Krall’s excellent phrasing was on prominent display, though the close mic did present a slight emphasis on sibilance. Shy of that one minor issue, her vocals sounded beautiful. As with the Barber disc, bass was very strong, with the natural bass lines being incredibly clear and deep. I could actually feel the notes vibrating through the couch – nice! Imaging was also exceptional, with the vocal being centered but slightly higher on the soundstage than the instruments. The instruments themselves were presented clearly across the soundstage, which combined with the very smooth nature of the overall sound to make me feel like I was listening to a live performance in a very intimate club setting.

Marianne Thorsen with the Trondheim Solistene’s performance of Mozart’s “Violin Concerto in D major: Allegro” (2016 MQA Remix, 352.8kHz/24-bit recorded in DXD), could quite possibly be the best sounding classical piece I’ve ever heard. While I have a number of 2L recordings (mostly Blu-ray audio discs), all I can really say about this track is – Wow! The 352.8kHz DXD version has incredible dynamics and exceptional clarity. The violins have just a touch of bite when the bows initially hit the strings (as they should) but that initial edge gives way to a wonderfully delicate, sweet tone as each note continues. It was so easy to follow the fast violin notes that pervade through this recording. Through the D1100 everything just sounded so realistic and “analog.” This is a great performance and was perfectly captured. I also ran this same file through my OPPO player, with the its DAC doing the decoding and then feeding an analog XLR signal to my Marantz preamp in Pure Direct mode with no DSP or subwoofer engagement. While the file still sounded very good, it was clearly not up to the level of what I heard through the D1100. The OPPO’s DAC is no slouch, so I have to chalk the discrepancy in sound up to the preamp capabilities of the D1100. While I didn’t expect a mid-range A/V preamp to equal a high-end stereo preamp’s sound quality, I certainly didn’t expect such a tremendous difference. Through the D1100, I was sitting in the best seat in the concert hall. Through my Marantz, I was clearly listening to a recording of a live event. The richness and feeling of space were greatly diminished, bass was less impactful, and imaging and sound staging collapsed. I wish I could have tried comparing DACs directly, but since the D1100 doesn’t have a single analog input I couldn’t pass the converted signal from the UDP-205 directly to the D1100 to compare any DAC-derived differences.

Playing the DSD64 version through the D1100 brought back some very fond memories, but with some nice new additions. While I let the entire album play through, “Billie Jean” is the stand-out to me. The bass that the D1100 can deliver really ratcheted up my enjoyment of this song, filling the room with sound. Michael Jackson’s voice had a clarity that I’ve never heard from any of his recordings before. I also never heard the subtle finger-snaps that accompany some of MJ’s vocals. I guess he was getting into the groove while in the recording booth. I was feeling it too, and found myself shamelessly bopping around the room. The funk guitar breakdown in the latter half of the song had the right amount of punch in the mix and had me playing air-guitar right along. I would have to break out my original vinyl (and hook up a turntable) for a refresher, but this DSD version sounded a touch brighter in the treble and midrange to my ears. However, the added detail this brought was revelatory and helped further my appreciation for how great this album is.

As with previous tracks, the first thing that hit me was the much more potent bass delivered by the D1100. Punchy and dynamic, yet nuanced, the bassline seemed to growl along, laying down the groove for the rest of the instruments. Drums were powerful, but sounded very tight. Vocals were spot-on, with Vaughn’s voice cutting nicely through the mix. What impressed me most though was how realistic SRV’s Strat sounded. Through the D1100, it sounded like I was sitting with my own Stratocaster right in front of my old Fender tube amp, the tone was eerily accurate.

If you go to the website, you’ll find a two-minute sample of the first cut from this album, “A Fool for You,” available for free so you can determine which format and resolution sounds best on your equipment. This album was originally recorded in DXD 352.8kHz but is available in PCM, FLAC, DSD, and DXD at multiple resolutions. While they all sounded great, there were audible differences that I could detect when feeding the files through the D1100. The PCM and FLAC files were all pretty similar, though the 352kHz FLAC file was a bit better. Things started getting interesting with the DSD files. DSD64 and DSD128 both sounded good, but stepping up to the DSD256 encoded version offered up a noticeably better sense of realism and acoustical space. The sound finally transcended the realm of digital and started sounding live. Then I tried the 352.8kHz DXD (the original recording format for this album). While not a tremendous step up from the DSD256 file, the final pieces of the sound snapped into focus. The DXD file removed the thinnest of veils from the sound and brought me right into the recording space. The overall sound was smoother, but had additional clarity and depth to it. It wasn’t a huge difference, but repeated back-to-back playing of the DSD256 versus the DXD file led me to the same conclusion. Since the music was not only impressively recorded, but also just plain excellent I purchased the full album in DXD. Listening to “Losing Hand” through the D1100 convinced me that this could be one of the best recordings I’ve ever had the joy of listening too. Gomes’ voice is both beautiful and haunting, a perfect combination for soulful blues. In possibly the best example of capturing the recording space I’ve ever heard, Gomes’ voice stayed just slightly right of center, but seemed to sit about two feet higher on the soundstage compared to the instruments. The acoustic bass was once again a standout, showing how controlled the D1100 could keep things in the low end. The guitar and drums sounded like they in the room with me. If you get a chance, check this recording out. It really is that good. I developed a new appreciation for my speakers with this album. I knew that they sounded good, but I finally got a chance to hear what they could really do.

While I love the music on this album I was left a little disappointed with the sound quality on the CD. Even though Hardwired was mixed infinitely better than the abysmal “Death Magnetic” I still found the overall sound slightly compressed and with a slight emphasis on the upper midrange and lower treble registers. This made the whole album a bit bright sounding to me. Happily, the 96/24 mix completely fixed those issues. Gone were the occasional harsh transients and hard-sounding guitar notes. “Halo On Fire” made it incredibly easy to pinpoint the improvements of this higher-quality mix. The sound was much more dynamic than the CD, with less obvious compression. Bass was absolutely pummeling, recreating Metallica’s trademark machine gun-staccato sound with aplomb. The guitar tracks were forward without being harsh and the bass line remained audible at all times. What really impressed me the most was the fact that I could actually distinguish the different layers of this song on the high-res FLAC version. The CD made everything sound very flat (even through the D1100 – I double-checked), but with the FLAC version there was now real depth to the mix. Playing this version through the McIntosh just made me love this album even more.

At $7000, THE MCINTOSH D1100 2-CHANNEL DIGITAL PREAMPLIFIER isn’t cheap, but it delivers stellar performance worthy of its price point and McIntosh Labs’ rich heritage.

$7,000 for an audio component is certainly not cheap. However, when you weigh the total cost of a separate reference-quality preamplifier and a cutting-edge DAC (plus the cabling required to connect them), the McIntosh D1100’s price seems very fair to me. Integrating the two components makes for an ease of use that separate boxes will always struggle to match. You also get fantastic build quality, iconic styling, great ease of use, and those really cool glowing output meters. As a cherry on top, the sound quality of the McIntosh 2-Channel D1100 Digital Preamplifier is absolutely fantastic. If your system is entirely digital, the D1100 delivers stellar performance worthy of its price point and McIntosh Labs’ rich heritage.

I realize that the more I wrote about the music I listened to, the less I talked about the McIntosh D1100 2-Channel Digital Preamplifier. That is really the highest praise I can give to an audio component. Listening to quality music through the D1100 brought me a level of involvement and joy that I have not experienced in a long time. I wasn’t thinking about the playback gear, I was simply getting lost in the sound. I had forgotten just how good two-channel music can be when played through a top-notch piece of gear and the D1100 did nothing to pull me out of my sonic dreamland. From a sound quality perspective, the McIntosh D1100 delivered everything I could possibly want; amazing bass, a beautiful midrange, detailed and airy treble, stunning imaging, and an expansive soundstage. It brought out the best qualities of my speakers and made them sound better than I had ever heard them before. Most impressive though was how high-quality sources through the D1100 made me feel like I was sitting in the recording space, not listening to a recreation of an event. When fed the right media, the McIntosh D1100 didn’t sound like a digital component, it sounded like reality. It handled every digital format I threw at it without a hiccup and was a breeze to set up and operate. Yes, there are a few things that I wish could have been included (MQA support and a home theater passthrough are my top two), but the D1100’s flaws are minor sins of omission and won’t concern every potential buyer. Of greater importance are the capabilities of the D1100. With its excellent build quality, classic design, and incredible overall performance, the McIntosh D1100 2-Channel Digital Preamplifier could easily be all you need to run your purely digital music system.

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Frank Van Alstine has been designing, developing, and manufacturing high fidelity components for over fifty years, and his consumer-direct business model allows him to offer high performance, no-frills products at affordable prices. With 850 watts of power output in a hybrid tube/transistor design, the DVA 850 Mono-Blocks offer up a tremendous amount of performance for the money.

Those who have been in and around the high-fidelity audio world for a while know exactly who Frank Van Alstine is. He has been designing and producing audiophile-grade equipment for over 50 years now. With Audio by Van Alstine (AVA) products, you won’t get flashy components, billet aluminum faceplates, or high-dollar advertising. The company and its products represent simplicity with high performance, all wrapped up in affordable price tags.

AVA has also represented a consumer-direct business model for a couple of reasons. For one, it allows him to offer great products at relatively low prices. Secondly, it gives the company an opportunity to work directly with the customer. This personal approach has worked quite well for AVA over the years. Some may see this as a negative since you can’t go into a brick and mortar store and audition their products, however their generous 30-day satisfaction guarantee and 3-year warranty on their equipment make up for this.

One area that really separates AVA from other manufacturers is that they generally do not disclose specifications of their equipment, other than power output. To quote Frank Van Alstine: “Unfortunately there is no predictability between good IHF static specifications and good music. It takes a much more serious in-depth mathematical and bench analysis to find links between good design and good sound, and there are no standards for providing this information to you. The best we can do is incorporate good design principals into our equipment and be confident that outstanding and thorough design will yield obviously musical audio reproduction.”

While some may wish to argue this, I personally embrace the philosophy and applaud Frank for his approach. You simply cannot determine sound quality from specifications. Granted, you can gain some basic insight, but its presentation and emotion can only be determined by listening. To me it’s no different than cars. You can look at horsepower and torque specs, what size and type of brakes it has, and the design elements of the suspension to get a general idea of it. But it won’t tell you how it feels to drive! Two cars with the same basic specs can drive and feel completely differently from one another, just like two pieces of audio equipment can have similar specs and sound completely different. Music reproduction for me is very similar to the artist’s intent… it’s about feeling, and the emotional experience that comes with the sound.

The DVA 850 Mono Block amplifiers are a hybrid design, meaning that they utilize 12AT7 tubes on the input stage, with solid-state circuitry for the output stage. This hybrid design provides an extremely accurate reproduction, with virtually none of the coloration sometimes found in all-tube or all solid state designs.

Like most AVA amps, the DVA 850 utilizes a fully regulated power supply with huge power reserves. In fact, each individual audio stage of the DVA 850 is powered by its own regulated power supply. This allows the amp to be completely stable, and will not drop or degrade when pushed hard.

And speaking of pushing the DVA 850 amp, AVA clearly warns people in their (well-written) manual to be careful of pushing too hard and destroying your drivers! These amplifiers are capable of very high output levels, but those levels are designed for on-call dynamic swings as opposed to setting SPL records.

On the outside of the DVA 850, it is business as usual within the AVA product line. You have a very simple design with a power button and a light. If you’re a big fan of high-level industrial design, billet knobs, or glowing meters, then you may want to look elsewhere. If you are simply looking for high quality componentry and sound inside the box, and don’t care nearly as much about the appearance of the product, then you’re in business with the DVA 850.

Out back you have convenient switchable RCA and XLR inputs, with double gold-plated speaker jacks for those who wish to bi-wire.

Also of important note is that the DVA 850 amplifiers are only 36lbs each, which is a big departure from many of the truck-like mono block amplifiers on the market. My FedEx delivery driver and I were both happy to see boxes arrive with modest weight!

For the majority of my evaluation time with the Audio by Van Alstine DVA 850 Mono Block Amplifiers, I had them configured into my 2.1-channel system as listed below, and changed it up a few ways in order to truly get a feel for how they performed. Since I combine a 2-channel system with a full Dolby Atmos system, I utilize a JL Audio CR-1 crossover that splits the signal for my mains and my JL Audio F113 subwoofer. For part of the evaluation I ran it through the CR-1, and at other times I went straight into the Revel F208s in a full-range setup.

Pre-amplifier: Pass Labs XP-20
CD / SACD: OPPO UDP-205
Turntables: Shinola Runwell, Pro-Ject Perspex 6 w/Sumiko Blackbird cartridge
Phono pre-amp: Sutherland Engineering 20/20
Speakers: Revel F208
Crossover: JL Audio CR-1
Subwoofer: JL Audio F113
Cables: Clarus Crimson
Power Conditioner: Audioquest Niagara 1000

I also installed the DVA 850’s into my 5.1.4 Dolby Atmos system and had them power the F208 mains.

Before I get into some of the specifics of the DVA 850’s, let me tell you a bit about my style of listening because it directly relates to how my evaluations go. Listening is in large part subjective, and it’s about feeling, emotion, and personal preferences. Your listening habits may be different than mine, as is your equipment, room, etc. So given this, what I may find in my system and likes may differ from yours. Please keep that in mind when reading my reviews and from others as well.

Granted, I have heard a lot of tremendous music and systems over the years, and my ears have been trained to know the difference between good, better, and best according to what I like. I played percussion in the school band when I grew up, which most likely attributed to my fondness of dynamics, slam, and fun-factor. I had loud (and great sounding) car stereos, and while I ate mostly mac & cheese in college, I had a system that would rock the entire apartment building (priorities!!). The first concert I attended back in the early eighties was Judas Priest, then followed by a steady diet of shows by the likes of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, AC-DC, etc. Are you starting to get a feel for how I like my music?!

These days I really appreciate great sounding music, and will take sound quality over sound quantity any day. But having said that, the emotion, the impact, dynamics, and fun-factor are still the tops of my list. Just like when the artist wrote and recorded the music, I am all about the feeling and the emotion that the music brings. And also like the artist, I don’t concern myself with mathematics, electrical theory, charts, or graphs. As a psychiatrist may say: “how does it make you feel”?

Now having said all of that, you can appreciate the fact that I pay a lot of attention to dynamics and fun-factor when reviewing gear. And with the DVA 850’s, dynamics is where they excel. I found this to be their strongpoint, regardless of the music choice or source. From top to bottom, these mono-blocks possessed a tremendous amount of fun-factor.

If you’re like me and really enjoy authoritative bass capabilities, then you’ll love what the DVA 850 can do to bring out the full potential of your speakers. Driving the Revel F208’s directly (without going through the crossover to my subwoofer), the Van Alstine’s did a tremendous job of showcasing just how much low-end these speakers are capable of.

With huge power reserves and dynamics, the DVA 850 showed that it performs best with the likes of instrumental jazz, big band, and orchestral recordings. Also, guitar, piano, and percussion were well represented. Just a quick listen on Keith Don’t Go by Nils Lofgren (guitar) or Daraijin by Kodo (percussion) and you’ll immediately know that these amps get it right in those areas of evaluation.

When connected to my Dolby Atmos system, the huge power reserves and dynamics make the DVA 850’s shine. All action was taken to a new level. I can imagine what a home theater would be like with five of these. The power and realism would be downright scary.

On recordings where vocals sit center-stage however, I found the presentation to be a bit forward for my liking. In many instances where the singer is usually centered equally between the speakers, the 850’s presented them to be twice as close to the listening position. This didn’t present itself so much at more moderate listening levels, so if you don’t like to crank it to 11, or if your musical preference is instrumental jazz or classical, this would never be an issue.

Now let’s take a look at some specific music notes:

Recorded in 1992 in Q-Sound (3D sound processing algorithm), the album presents itself in an enveloping soundstage, with effects that seem to go beyond the boundaries of the walls in your listening room. Keeping true to the original recording, the DVA 850’s produced the music’s three-dimensional sound as it was intended. At times I found myself looking over my shoulders because the music seemed like it was coming out of my surround speakers.

The drawback however came when Roger was singing, as his voice was too forward, and it took away from the playback a bit. At lower volumes this wasn’t an issue, but who plays Roger Waters at low volumes?

On this album, Patricia and her band treats you with long jam sessions between vocals. It’s within this realm that the album shines as it gives equal time to piano, bass, guitar, and drums. And it’s within this same realm that the DVA 850 shines and brings you to the original recording as if you were there. Instruments are placed where they should be, and both the soft and loud passages are presented as they were intended.

On Ode To Billy Joe, the opening bass was reproduced with stunning clarity and authority. Not only could you clearly hear Michael Arnopol’s fingers slide across the strings, but you could literally feel every pluck as well. But when Patricia sang however, once again I found her placement and voice to be a bit too forward in its presentation.

GoldenEar, Demo Disc

While I was attending the AXPONA show in Chicago this spring, I got to spend some time with Jack Shafton from GoldenEar. I really liked the music he was playing, so I asked for a copy of the playlist. He was kind enough to send me their demo disc, and I have been using it for evaluations ever since. It just has a great mix of music ranging from The Beach Boys, to Dean Martin, to classical. Good stuff GoldenEar!

Since the DVA 850’s had shown such strengths with instrumental music, I decided to play Dave Grusin / Prologue (West Side Story). This recording is big-band jazz with fast, wide dynamic swings. The DVA’s really shine in this environment! They presented well-defined layering from front to back with each section of the band separated from one another.

THE AUDIO BY VAN ALSTINE DVA 850 MONO-BLOCK AMPLIFIERS offer superb dynamics in a hybrid design that won’t break the bank!

In the realm of mono-block power amplifiers, pricing can quickly approach the upper stratosphere, making them purely unobtainable for the masses. While $7,400 for the pair of DVA 850’s isn’t cheap by any means, it’s far more affordable than most, particularly with as much performance as you can get out of them.

For all-out dynamics and fun factor, the DVA 850 mono-blocks excel in spades. So if your listening habits focus around instrumental jazz, big band, or classical, you will have a great time with these amplifiers.

Also, don’t think of these only in terms of two-channel audio reproduction, as that would be selling them short. Given their dynamics and power reserves, they would be a great choice for home theater applications if you had three of them across the front stage, or five in a 5.1 system.

If you prefer vocals to be more laid back in their presentation, you may want to look at other alternatives. If you like a more forward sound, then you’ll love the Audio by Van Alstine DVA 850 Mono-Block Amplifiers.

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Class D hybrid amps deliver clean, accurate sound without a lot of waste heat. Exceptional stability allows them to drive even the most difficult loads without strain. Nearly any speaker can be used. Another area of versatility is its input panel. Not only can you hook up traditional analog sources (including a moving-magnet phono cartridge), there are coax and optical digital inputs along with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for streaming. Chromecast is built in too, so it’s feasible to simply plug the C 338 in, connect two speakers, and enjoy.

NAD has leveraged its hybrid digital amplifier technology into a wide variety of products. With efficient signal paths come low distortion and the honest, neutral sound NAD is famous for. The C 338 Hybrid Digital Integrated Amplifier takes a rugged and reliable two-channel design and adds digital inputs along with Wi-Fi streaming capabilities and built-in Chromecast. Now you can enjoy clean, pure sound from both wired and wireless sources.

There is nearly nothing the C 338 cannot do. Not only can you hook up analog source components, there’s even a moving-magnet phono stage for those participating in the resurgence of vinyl. If you’d rather keep things simple, stream your music over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth from today’s top services like Tidal and Spotify.

Speaker pairing is easy as well with 80 watts-per-channel of continuous, low-distortion power available. Peaks of up to 300 watts are also possible. At the relatively low price of $650, there isn’t much more an audiophile could ask for, unless you’re willing to spend a whole lot more money. The C 338 looks to be a fantastic component, suitable for casual and critical listeners alike.

The NAD C 338 amplifier provides a selection of three stereo analog inputs and four digital inputs (two coaxial, two Toslink). One input can handle a moving-magnet turntable cartridge. The digital inputs can accept PCM up to 24/192. A 3.5mm headphone jack and RCA sub out (mono) finish out the complement of connections. Boxed with the small but fully functional remote, are three antennae; two for Wi-Fi and one for Bluetooth. The NAD C 338 is the first integrated amplifier I’m aware of that has Chromecast built in. This allows you to stream high definition music files directly rather than simply mirroring the signal from a phone or tablet.

The front display contains a volume knob, source selectors, and a bass EQ button to assist in the integration of bookshelf speakers and a sub-woofer. The display is a VFD that turns off after a few seconds once a command is selected. The top of the amp is sealed without the ventilation holes usually found on conventional Class A/B amplifiers. Being Class D, it runs cool even after prolonged usage and can be placed into tight confines without worry of overheating. The assigned labeled inputs are streaming, BT, TV, Phono, Coax 1 & 2 and Opt 1 & 2. When the bass EQ is engaged, an indicator lights up. The volume display is a large and legible white text that turns off a few seconds after an adjustment is made. Selected inputs remain lit, but the tiny wording is virtually unreadable from across the room.

On the backside are the above-mentioned inputs, two three-way binding posts, three antennae attachment posts, and a removable power cord. The color is the ubiquitous dark grey seen on almost all NAD products (though, I seem to recall my first NAD receiver back in the 80’s as being a dark olive green). The unit is slim and light, but feels and looks quite solidly-made.

The Hypex UcD module (analog Class D type) is an NAD-tweaked design that is said to improve current delivery into speakers with low impedance. Distortion is reduced by the module’s output filtering and FETs. Frequency response is largely independent of the speaker load, whether eight, or four ohms. This makes the NAD C 338 well-suited to almost any speaker.

Setting up the NAD C 338 was straightforward. The remote and antennae are in a separate box and the only instructions consist of a double-sided page with pictures that show how to set things up, step by step. Once you download the app, you can adjust inputs and volume with your phone, as well as the remote. The handset is basic, but it fits comfortably in your hand. It is IR, so you’ll have to point it directly at the NAD C 338. Your phone however, will find the NAD C 338 on your network and control it wirelessly.

The app was easy to use and gave me no trouble. Downloading Chromecast on my iOS system was a bit of a challenge, but I connected it to Spotify without too much hassle. I also hooked up my OPPO UDP-103 so I could spin some silver discs. Two of the antennae in the back are for Wi-Fi while the third is dedicated to Bluetooth. They simply screw on and can bend into any plane you choose, but vertical is usually optimal. I had no connection issues once the unit was set up. I imagine you could walk around the house and not lose your signal, but everyone’s domicile is unique.

Listening to some music I’m intimately familiar with gave me the chance to listen for any noticeable difference between my reference system (Emotiva UPA-1 mono-blocks and UMC-200 pre/pro) and the NAD C 338. My digital interconnects are Zu Audio Firemine coaxial while analog signals flow through Kimber PBJs.

After getting my hands on the new limited MoFi upgrade on SACD, I could finally hear what I was missing. The bass line is strong and punchy, the soundstage is wide and deep, the piano sounds like a real piano, and Joel’s voice is clear and resonant. Cranking it up on the NAD C 338, it made my Revel F36s sing out, loud and proud. Small details began to emerge that I could not hear on the old mix, and I know that this is more about the recording than the actual performance of the NAD C 338, but I was impressed that the C 338 reproduced the sound so naturally and with beautiful dynamics. The front-panel display does not show the sample rate, but I know that the OPPO UDP-103 samples SACD at 88 kHz. Seeing the rate on the NAD would have been a bonus for me, but I don’t fret too much about looking at my stuff every time a song comes on. But still…

The brass had that nice “zingy” sound that you hear when it resonates. When played at the proper volume, it almost literally plasters you to your seat (and even more so when played back in multi-channel). Here again, I could discern the naturalness of the brass tone and hear the occasional intake of breath before the player exhaled into the mouthpiece. The NAD C 338 delivered lots of clarity and strong, tight bass thwacks.

After some extended play, I placed my hand on top of the C 338 and felt virtually no heat. If you are looking for an amp with power, but have limited space to install it, the NAD C 338 may be ideal. Very little room is needed for ventilation.

During the quiet sections, you could hear the faint sounds of people in the audience shifting in their seats or coughing quietly. The duo’s later albums started to use more bass, drums, and electric guitars for accompaniment, and the rocking rhythms were foot-tappingly good. In between tracks, I also noticed dead silence from the NAD; no hiss or static. I am finding that that is a hallmark for good Class D design these days.

Spotify – The joy of streaming with this service is that it opens you up to many different genres that you might never listen to otherwise. I will be listening to Sinatra one minute, then Bear’s Den the next. I recently re-discovered Jean-Michel Jarre Essential Collection. It has some massive synthesizer sweeps and some catchy tunes like Oxygene, Pt. 4. The NAD C 338 made exploring new music fun and easy. This amp is just as much at home in a dorm room as a living room. With the convenient app, you could spend a Saturday afternoon just chilling with the NAD C 338 and if you have small bookshelf speakers, just engage the bass EQ to fill in the low-end without distorting the sound and over-driving the speakers.

THE NAD C 338 HYBRID DIGITAL INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER offers great sound, Chromecast, Wi-Fi, and the ability to drive any speaker for a very-reasonable $650.

I still have not fully embraced streaming for music as I am usually too purposeful when I want to listen. My shiny disc collection is not going to disappear anytime soon; however, the ability to stream music over the network is a great way to explore new horizons. The NAD C 338 will provide great sound by any method you choose. Though the remote was fine, I ended up using my iPhone to control the inputs and volume. This hybrid digital amp sports both analog and digital inputs. If you have a turntable, you’re still in luck. With a decent set of bookshelf speakers, the NAD C 338 can provide you with everything you need to widen your musical horizons. And thanks to Chromecast, you’ll have many nights of “pleasant streams”.

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For audiophiles who want the cutting edge of convenience, control, and durability, there are few other components that can match the MA8900.

The McIntosh MA8900 sports a number of features not found on competitive integrated amplifiers including:

I was first introduced to McIntosh equipment when I was in high school. The father of a friend had purchased the “ultimate audio system” – a McIntosh preamplifier with McIntosh tube power amplifier and a pair of the mighty Klipschorns in oiled walnut finish. What was it about that exposure that set me on the path of audiophilia? I had never heard an audio reproduction system that was so clean and clear. The music seemed to flow into the room much as the live music did from the Louisiana State University Symphony Orchestra, which I’d had the opportunity to hear often. The combination of absolute clarity with absolute control was something that I’ve seldom experienced since.

• McIntosh D1100 2-Channel Digital Preamplifier
• NAD C 338 Hybrid Digital Integrated Amplifier Preview
• Audio Research VT80 Tube Power Amplifier
• Lyngdorf Audio moves boldly into multi-channel with unveiling of the MP-50 Surround Sound Processor

It took quite a while before I began to understand just how exceptional that McIntosh/Klipschorn system actually was. I heard many other audio reproduction systems in the following decades, but none had the clarity and power that I remembered from that original experience.

And we’re now in the 21st century. Does McIntosh still have it when it comes to clarity and power? I believe that they DO, and that the McIntosh MA8900 integrated amplifier is a prime example. This amplifier still has the legendary “McIntosh sound,” and is a worthy successor to that ultimate system.

The McIntosh MA8900 Integrated Amplifier weighs a TON! A giant power transformer and dual output autoformers dominate the center of the amplifier while massive heat sinks for the output transistors line both sides of the amp. McIntosh’s signature glass faceplate and chrome trim (with big, blue power output meters) are up front. This is an amplifier that won’t EVER be mistaken for another brand. For some, its looks and prestige alone will be sufficient to trigger a purchase, but even if you’re a hardcore audiophile, this brand has more than you might suspect to recommend it.

The MA8900 has the traditional “McIntosh sound,” characterized by a slight warmth in the midrange, and a tight, generous bass range. But unlike what many might think, this amp also has amazing detail throughout its entire frequency range. The treble is NOT recessed, the midrange does NOT lack detail, and the damping factor in the bass does NOT reduce its tightness.

The McIntosh MA8900 Integrated Amplifier sports lots of “gee-whiz” technology. But unlike many manufacturers, who use the latest and the greatest just to be different, McIntosh chooses their technology to meet their specific design goals – sound quality and durability.

I’ll take the liberty of paraphrasing from the McIntosh technical paper on reed-switching as an example:

“McIntosh uses electromagnetic switching for audio signal routing. The switches use a magnetically activated reed pair. When current is applied to the activation coil, the two reeds inside a sealed glass enclosure are forced together. The sealed enclosure is filled with nitrogen gas to avoid corrosion.

When the coil is activated with a direct current (DC) voltage, the two reeds come together quickly and have a total resistance of less than 0.15 ohms, creating a laboratory grade contact for the audio signal. The wires are plated with Ruthenium (atomic number 44 on the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements) to heighten conductivity.

Why do we use it? Utilizing electromagnetic switching provides ultra-low contact resistance, which results in less distortion, consistent operation over decades of use, zero crosstalk of the signal between sources and zero crosstalk between channels.”

In addition to magnetic reed-switching, McIntosh also does away with the traditional wiper-pot controls. Used on most competitive equipment, they can become dirty over time, leading to a “scratchy” sound, and eventually to failure. The MA8900 avoids this by using a laser-trimmed resistor ladder that is electronically-switched. This technology does away with any susceptibility to airborne contamination (smoke, pet dander, etc.) or galvanic corrosion. It also allows far better channel-to-channel balance and separation.

And the McIntosh autoformer system must also be considered. To my knowledge, this technology is unique to McIntosh and offers multiple advantages. In a typical amplifier, the output transistors are directly-coupled to the speaker load. This forces them to directly compensate for variations in resistance, capacitance, and inductance of the speakers and the speaker wires. The McIntosh autoformer, by comparison, keeps the output transistors in their most linear operating envelope while delivering power to just about any speaker impedance.

The McIntosh MA8900 arrived on a pallet via freight. The shipping weight (including pallet) topped 140 pounds. I’d strongly recommend that anyone making this purchase employ friends or paid assistants to remove the bulky 75-pound amplifier from its shipping cartons.

The front of the amplifier shows a clean and sparse faceplate. The five tone-control dials are located centrally, and the left and right dials are dual use. In Normal mode, the leftmost dial selects the desired input, and the right one controls volume. But by pushing in on the left dial, a menu system appears, offering a wide variety of adjustments. Two that I opted to use were the temporary disabling of the auto-off function (to speed the burn-in period) and the disabling of the power meter lights (too bright at night).

The rear of the amp includes the usual inputs and outputs, plus the DAC which is upgradeable. This small feature is, again, indicative of McIntosh’s commitment to ensuring utility over time. No other manufacturer that I can think of offhand, does so much to future-proof their equipment.

For this review, the following associated components were used:

• MacBook Pro using an external USB HDD and jRiver Media Center 22
• Optical TOSLINK connection to the McIntosh MA8900 integrated amplifier
• Thiel 1.6 floor-standing loudspeakers
• Tekton Pendragon floor-standing loudspeakers
• PowerSound Audio S3601 dual-18-inch subwoofer (driven from the preamp outputs of the McIntosh MA8900 and used only with the Thiel 1.6 speakers)

NOTE: Since I don’t have a vinyl collection – the phono inputs were not tested. Since I don’t have a multi-channel home theater source, the HT bypass was not employed. Inputs used for this review included digital optical Toslink, digital USB input, and the analog unbalanced line level.

Some amplifiers seem to blur the voice and the string instruments. But with the McIntosh, the soloist was clearly separate. The soprano range of the female voice is also where amplifiers can sound nasal if the tonality isn’t spot on. The MA8900 avoided that flaw and delivered the singer in all her glory.

The string tones are amazing and the imaging should be both deep and wide. The McIntosh’s DAC handles the higher bitrates and delivers stunning sound.

THE MCINTOSH MA8900 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER is everything an audiophile might desire, both sonically and in durability. It isn’t cheap, but it truly delivers what you’re paying for.

The McIntosh MA8900 is a state-of-the-art component in every way. Many “audiophiles” deliberately ignore the brand, thinking that the multitude of features (including, specifically, the defeatable five band tone control) imply that McIntosh products are somehow “mid-fi.” This is an unfortunate attitude espoused by many who have never even heard a McIntosh product. What a shame.

Sonically, I find the McIntosh sound to be everything I remembered from my first exposure to the brand. The sound is dynamic without being harsh, controlled without being lifeless, detailed without becoming shrill, and absolutely realistic. The MA8900 won’t hide the sound of your recordings or your speakers – if they have shortcomings, you’ll know it quickly. But the amplifier can help you make the best of your music, your speakers, and your room if you’re willing to experiment with the balance and tone controls.

Audio purists will immediately blanch at the idea of modifying the source signal in any way. But if a recording is substandard, sometimes a touch of equalization (“five-band tone control” in McIntosh-speak) can improve it significantly, allowing you to listen to a favorite performance despite its poor recording quality. If your room is asymmetrical, sometimes a touch on the balance control can restore the desired imaging. And if your speakers happen to be less than totally linear (this applies to almost EVERY speaker on the market, including YOURS), then you can flatten the response, again with a minor touch-up from the equalizer.

Even if you don’t need the audio controls on the McIntosh, there’s no need to fret about them. When not in use, they’re completely isolated from the active circuitry and won’t affect the sound at all.

About the McIntosh MA8900’s power rating of “only” 200 watts per channel – keep in mind that most home listening is done at power levels of one watt or less. The McIntosh MA8900 integrated amplifier’s true 200 watts per channel is more (far more) than most listeners will ever need or use. With the autoformer output coupling, those 200 watts are available to 8, 4, or 2-ohm loads. I suspect that if you wanted to, you could almost weld with this amplifier (but for the onboard sensing-circuitry that would protect the amp from dead-shorts).

Add to that the painstakingly excellent construction and the unique technology, and the McIntosh more than meets the needs of the average listener. Further, its durability exceeds that of any other amplifier that I know of in the consumer market.

The post McIntosh MA8900 Stereo Integrated Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

These options make the amplifiers virtual audio chameleons that you can tweak to fit your system.

• Audio Van Alstine DVA-850 mono block hybrid power amplifier
• Audio Research VT-80 tube integrated amplifier
• Vacuum Tube Audio ST-120 stereo tube amplifier

That said, there’s no free lunch. What do you give up in order to have such economical sonic goodness? The Audio Research products, despite using vacuum tubes to generate output watts, are most definitely twenty-first century products. They sport enhancements such as automatic tube matching, a timer to keep track of tube life, protection against cascade failures should a tube blow, and other features that ensure reliability and consistent performance. The VTA products lack these advanced features, nor do they have thick aluminum face-plates or balanced XLR inputs.

In fact, the VTA M-125 mono-tube power amplifiers lack even the simplest of customer conveniences – There are no labels on anything, and the manual can be daunting. You’ll need additional items too, specifically a volt-ohm meter, and the ability to use it just to get the amplifier biased and running. It isn’t hyperbole when I say that there can be challenges, particularly if you’re not technically adept.

The VTA M-125 mono-tube power amplifiers demand a bit of involvement from the user. Unlike most consumer audio products that are designed to be “idiot-proof,” the sheer flexibility of these amplifiers complicates the new-user experience.

Obviously, if you’ve opted to purchase the kit version of the VTA M-125s, then you are tech-savvy enough to understand the technology. But if you’re just a consumer looking for high end sound at a bargain price, then the user’s manual is compulsory.

But if you’re willing and able to invest the time required to read (and understand) the instructions, then you’ll get one of the best values in audio.

Now that said, there are no labels on the chassis – None – Nada – Zilch. If you want to know what a specific switch or socket does, or where to socket the two output tubes instead of four, then you’re going to have to refer to the manual. I can understand not having expensive silk-screening on the chassis to keep the construction cost down. But I’d have hoped that VTA would at least have offered a set of decals that the user could buy and install. I’d have paid extra for that. Of course, you could take a fine-tip Sharpie marker and label them yourself, but should you really have to do that with a two or three-thousand-dollar product? Really?

So, the user WILL need to access the owner’s manual to comprehend the amplifier’s workings. But again, the six single-sided pages of Xerox are NOT user-friendly. Why?

• There are no photographs or diagrams identifying the output jacks by their intended impedance
• There are no photographs or diagrams identifying the mode switch and its functions
• There are no photographs or diagrams of the bias pots or their functions (does turning the pot clockwise increase or decrease the bias? Which pot is associated with which test-probe port? What size screwdriver is appropriate for the bias pots? Don’t touch the tube with the screwdriver handle – the heat will melt your screwdriver. Etcetera.)
• Beyond the initial startup instructions, it is hard to find specific information in the manual. For example, a step-by-step procedure for testing and adjusting bias would have been helpful. Instead, the user must read until finding the information needed.

Now all the information mentioned above is actually in the owner’s manual, but it just isn’t easily accessible, indexed, or in step-by-step format.

As I’ve mentioned before, both the power and output transformers are generously-sized and utterly silent. I took the liberty of adding some after-market tube dampers on the driver tubes of my amplifiers, but the amps were absolutely silent even without them.

I’d also like to mention the rectifier options. When alternating current (AC – supplied by your wall socket) is to be used for audio amplification, it must normally be converted to low-ripple direct current (DC).

The VTA M-125 offers two options for this conversion. One is a classic “rectifier tube” that rectifies the AC to DC. Some audiophiles love the sound of tube rectifiers and claim that only tube rectification provides the sound that they seek (think of this as a BBQ chef preferring charcoal to propane for their cooking).

But for higher power output, the solid-state rectifier option is preferred. The solid-state rectifier for the M-125 is the Weber WZ68 (no relation to the BBQ-grill company). This rectifier not only uses the same socket as the rectifier tube, but also slightly delays the application of high voltage to the tubes until their heaters have had time to function. This preserves tube life. The more power you want from the M-125, the more highly the solid-state rectifier is recommended.

It is also fair to mention the parts quality of the VTA-M125, which is unusual (and likely unique) at this price point. The amp sports:

• High-wattage, close-tolerance resistors. This ensures side-to-side consistency for the mono block pair.
• High-quality, low-electrostatic-resistance, Japanese-made Nichicon power caps.
• Nichicon capacitors in the bias system.
• High-quality bias pots made by Spectrol of England.
• Jantzen Audio MKP film capacitors made in Denmark on the driver boards.
• Ceramic driver-tube sockets that use two "clam-shell" holders for each tube pin. These can be individually re-tensioned, if needed, with a small jeweler’s screwdriver.
• High-quality Cornell Dubilier silver mica capacitors for negative feedback.
• All capacitors in the M-125 are much better quality than the far more common and much cheaper ceramic caps. Consequentially, their capacitance values are much less likely to drift with age.

Describing the sound of the VTA M-125 mono-tube power amps is seriously difficult. Why? Because there are so many possible variations. The amplifiers can be run:

• With two or four output tubes
• In pentode or triode modes
• With at least five different types of output tubes
• With different driver tubes
• Using either the four or eight-ohm speaker-output taps

This provides for a LOT of possible configurations! And they can all sound different.

So, for the review configuration – I got a pre-wired amplifier with 5963 driver tubes and four 6550 Sovtek output tubes. I’m mostly running in pentode mode, using the 8-ohm taps for my 8-ohm Tekton Pendragon speakers or the 4-ohm taps for my 4-ohm Thiel 1.6 speakers.

Associated Equipment used:

• Audirvana 3 Plus software (for MQA sources)
• jRiver Media Center 22 for Mac (for non-MQA sources)
• jRemote on iPad (as controller for jRiver)
• AudioQuest Dragonfly Red USB DAC with MQA upgrade
• OPPO UDP-205 disc player with latest Sabre DACs
• Emotiva XDA-1 DAC
• Meridian Explorer2 DAC with full MQA decoding and rendering
• Rega DAC
• Emotiva Stealth DC-1 DAC (used as preamp and DAC)
• Emotiva USP-1 preamplifier
• Crown VFX2A crossover
• Emotiva UPA-1 mono solid-state amplifiers (for comparison)
• Tekton Pendragon ported speakers (run full-range)
• Thiel 1.6 ported speakers (run both full-range and with subwoofer)
• PowerSound Audio S3601 subwoofer

And how does this actually sound?

It also bears stating that with both the speaker pairs I tried, the triode mode of the amps exacerbated the bass control problem. If you like a traditional tube sound, then triode mode is the way to go. I enjoyed the triode sound when using a subwoofer below 100Hz, but when running the speakers full-range, I consistently preferred the better bass control of pentode mode.

As with almost all vacuum tube amplifiers, there is a slight bit of warmth or “tube bloom” in the midrange, but this isn’t at all overdone. Compared to a Heathkit or Dynaco from the 1960s, the VTA M-125 sounds relatively neutral and almost solid-state (at least in pentode mode). If you want the classic tube sound, then a simple flip of the mode switch into triode mode gives you a more generous dose of tube goodness.

Some have argued that stereo amplifier separation is “good enough,” and that the differences between a stereo amp and mono amplifiers are inaudible. I’d slightly disagree. Could I pick out the differences in a double-blind test? Probably not – they are small. However, in long-term listening the mono amplifiers seem better at preserving out-of-phase information.

The treble, like the bass, is somewhat output-tube-dependent with the VTA M-125 mono-tube power amplifiers. The 6550 tubes that I have in my pair of amps provide (in my opinion) the best-sounding treble that I’ve heard with VTA products. My friend’s amp with the KT-120s does have “better bass,” but I still prefer the sound of the 6550 tubes in the treble range.

The “Lights of Louisianne” track (again, from Jennifer Warnes’ “The Hunter” disc) has a plethora of birds, bugs, and delicate treble percussion instruments in the mix. If your amplifier(s) can’t naturally produce treble, these either disappear or become artificial sounding. The M-125 amplifiers (with 6550 tubes) present the sounds so cleanly and naturally that you feel that you’re outdoors!

I consider the treble of the VTA M-125 mono-tube power amplifiers to be one of their greatest strengths. With both my Tekton Pendragon speakers and my Thiel 1.6s, the treble separation, imaging, and above all, naturalness is unrivaled by any other amplifier I’ve yet heard.

The bias must be set with the mode switch set to “pentode” mode (switch closest to the transformer behind it). The bias must also be set with a speaker load connected to the output terminals, but with the input jack (ideally) shorted. I bought an inexpensive shorting plug to do my bias setting, but in my opinion, the 50-cent shorting-plug should have been included with the amplifier.

The amplifiers can be run with 8-ohm speakers connected to the 4-ohm output taps or with 4-ohm speakers connected to the 8-ohm taps. But I found that I got the best sound by using the correct tap for each speaker’s impedance. Your mileage may vary…

THE VACUUM TUBE AUDIO M-125 MONO-TUBE POWER AMPLIFIERS provide sound rivalling the most expensive amplifiers I’ve heard, at a far lower price. Highly Recommended!

Despite its minimal hand-holding for the user, the VTA M-125 Mono-Tube Power Amplifier delivers superb sound and does so for a fraction of what competitively-sounding amplifiers would cost. I consider the amps a bargain, and if you’re technically astute, you can buy these as kits and save even more money. Construction looks straightforward, and the step-by-step assembly manual is clear and concise.

Speaker selection is likely to be more critical for bass optimization, but this is true of any transformer-coupled audio amplifier. Don’t consider this a strike against the VTA M-125, but rather a fact of life that must be accepted and dealt with.

The post Vacuum Tube Audio M-125 Mono-Tube Power Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Andrew Jones heads the engineering side at ELAC’s North American office. Jones is best known among audiophiles for jaw-droppingly excellent speakers such as the Pioneer S-2EX and TAD Labs CE1. Jones designed well-regarded entry-level speakers at Pioneer and ELAC, and the step-up Uni-Fi speaker line that Carlo Lo Raso called "killer value in terms of sound and style.". He also designed ELAC’s EA-Series EA101EQ-G integrated DAC and amplifier. The ELAC EA-Series EA101EQ-G brings a speaker designer’s sensibility to the highly competitive compact integrated DAC amplifier category.

Compact integrated amplifiers are a hot product category today, for two good reasons: "normal" people appreciate good sound from stylish and compact plug-and-play packages, and audiophiles have high standards for their secondary systems. “Compact" and "good sounding" were mutually exclusive goals until recently. However, modern “system-on-a-chip” analog circuits and cost-effective energy-efficient amplifiers now allow companies to make genuinely great sounding compact integrated amps.

SECRETS has covered many intriguing compact integrated DAC amps in the past two years: Martin Logan Forte, AURALiC POLARIS, Bluesound PowerNode 2, and Monitor Audio Airstream A100. Compact integrated performance has improved immensely in this decade. I believe compact integrates are the future of 2-channel listening for many audiophiles.

ELAC embraced their German heritage in the EA101EQ-G’s industrial design. The swept brushed metal endcaps and exposed black hex bolts give the EA101EQ-G a decidedly “Silberpfeil" vibe.

The EA101EQ-G’s black metal chassis “floats” between the swept endcaps, with an air gap under the chassis for cooling. The rubber top panel is embossed with a hexagonal pattern, and conceals the Bluetooth antenna.

ELAC equipped the EA101EQ-G with more inputs than the typical compact integrated: four wired digital inputs that can accept 192kHz/24-bit signals from compatible sources (asynchronous USB, coax, two optical), two analog (RCA) inputs, and one lossy streaming input (Bluetooth, with aptX on devices that support it). The EA101EQ-G even decodes Dolby Digital, for use with TVs or set top boxes. The only notable omissions are a 12V trigger output (rare in the category) and AirPlay lossless streaming. The speaker terminals are binding posts, and ELAC helpfully includes banana plugs. The power cord socket is “Mickey Mouse” style, as found on older iMacs.

ELAC offers three ways to control the EA101EQ-G: front panel with two capacitive buttons and a dark mirrored volume knob, IR remote control, and iOS/Android app. The app connects to the EA101EQ-G over Bluetooth Low Energy. ELAC put considerable thought into their remote app. It has two rare but useful features: input/output level meters and a volume offset control.

If you hear something amiss, the level meters will show if the input signal is too hot or if the EA101EQ-G’s outputs are clipping. The volume offset is used to attenuate hot inputs and balance volume differences between sources. When I first explored the app’s setup options, I thought of a speaker designer frustrated by inflexible electronics unduly limiting his speakers in real rooms. I especially appreciated the balance control, an unfortunate rarity in compact integrateds. The app also provides easy access to tone controls, subwoofer level, and the Auto Blend & Calibration system. My only real quibble with the app is its name: iOS won’t find it if you type “ELAC” into the search bar or tell Siri to "launch ELAC."

All the control in the world is unhelpful without power behind it. ELAC equipped the EA101EQ-G with a “BASH" amplifier. A BASH amplifier employs a sophisticated switching power supply that tracks the incoming signal to drive a Class AB output stage. The BASH tracking trickery also endows the compact amp with the current capability to drive modern lower impedance speakers, such as ELAC’s own Uni-Fi lines.

ELAC claims the EA101EQ-G delivers 40W into 8 Ohms and 80W into 4 Ohms, with both channels driven, albeit measured only at 1kHz rather than from 20-20k Hz. Such power ratings are a common plague in the compact integrated class, unfortunately. ELAC also specifies burst output of 170W into 2 Ohms, albeit using the burst signal from the CEA-2010 subwoofer measurement standard. Still, most compact integrateds will shut down into a 2 Ohm load! The EA101EQ-G also includes a headphone amp with a full-sized (1/4”) jack.

ELAC also equipped the EA101EQ-G with an important feature inexplicably absent from most integrated DAC-amps: a useful subwoofer output. Most compact integrated DAC-amps are functionally 2.0 channel. If they provide a subwoofer output, it is an afterthought with no filtering for speakers or sub. By contrast, ELAC’s proprietary and ingenious Auto Blend and Calibrate (ABC) shows they thought deeply about how to address bass issues in home audio systems.

ABC combines bass management, speaker-subwoofer blending, and room correction in an intuitive applet within the control app. ABC leverages the microphone in your iOS or Android device, and takes 3-4 minutes start to finish. Andrew Jones demonstrates Auto Blend & Calibrate in this video:

One distinction without a difference between ABC as demonstrated and the current iPhone version: ABC no longer asks you to name your speakers. ABC only corrects up to about 200Hz. That is a feature, not a bug: the limited bandwidth makes ABC true room correction, rather than speaker tampering.

The core assumption behind ABC is, you should hear your speakers and subs as their designers intended them to sound. ABC first asks you to select a crossover frequency, with 60-80-100 Hz “small-medium-large” suggestions and an “Advanced” panel that offers 1Hz steps. Then, ABC “self-calibrates” by measuring one of your speakers in the nearfield, followed by the subwoofer. ABC thus works with what your device’s microphone "hears" the speakers outputting in the nearfield, not their "true" response. ABC can even calibrate multiple subwoofers, as long as they are the same model and their controls are set identically. It is a really thoughtful approach to subwoofer integration.

Next, the ABC applet directs you to place the phone at the listening position. The first time I hit “Go,” I chuckled. What was funny? Auto Blend was doing exactly what a thorough manual calibrator would do, except much faster. Anyone who’s used Velodyne’s SMS-1 or otherwise manually altered subwoofer phase or delay while running sweeps has done the manual equivalent. I consider ELAC’s Auto Blend approach a step up from calibration systems that measure speakers and subs separately

Note that room correction for a single subwoofer only optimizes bass at one listening location. It can make other locations sound worse. That is not a limitation of ABC, but a fact of small room acoustics. Good bass in a larger area requires multiple subwoofers. If you don’t like the room correction, you can turn Auto EQ off and keep Auto Blend on.

I used the ELAC EA-Series EA101EQ-G in two 2.1-channel setups: a casual listening office desktop system with Mirage OMD-5 speakers and a Tannoy TS10 subwoofer, and a small room installation with DIY speakers and two Velodyne SC-10 subwoofers powered by a Dayton amp in the front corners. All observations below come from the second system. Source material was either losslessly stored on our media server or streamed over Tidal HiFi. I also tried the EA101EQ-G’s headphone output with three headphones: HiFiMAN HE400S, Audeze iSine 10, and Sennheiser HD580. The headphone jack provided sufficient oomph for the HE400S and iSine 10, but the high impedance Sennheisers needed more voltage swing to sound their best.

Driving two speakers with Auto Blend & Calibrate (ABC) off, ELAC’s EA-Series EA-101EQ simply sounded transparent to me. I heard a slight audible hiss when I put an ear against the tweeter of a ~90dB/W/m speaker. It vanished when I moved my head about a foot away. The EA101EQ-G’s BASH tracking amplifier let the character of each speaker shine through. It delivered enough power to cleanly reach any SPL I asked of it, even though my DIY speakers dip below 4 Ohms at about 150Hz. The EQ101EQ-G enters standby with an audible pop. Interestingly, I found that an “0” on the volume control is not mute. There was still audible sound. I checked with ELAC’s Chris Walker, and he told me this was a design choice; you can mute the EA101EQ-G completely by pressing the Play/Pause button on the remote.

"Videotape" is built around a keyboard riff of four clandestinely syncopated quarter notes. ELAC’s ABC system helped the small room system keep the left hand bass line even and impactful. The EA101EQ-G’s taut, focused bass also made the song sound huge, and increased the impact of the drums. Likewise, “Up on the Ladder” and “Down is the New Up” were propelled forward by the EA101EQ-G’s tight, controlled bass. “Reckoner” emerged from the speakers with excellent articulation from top to bottom, and the volume knob was not close to maxed out when my ears told me to save them for future listening sessions.

The ELAC EA101EQ-G’s ABC technology helped this concerto sound even and balanced, starting with the waves of low strings that open both the first movement, “Paz Sulfurica,” and the fourth movement, “Yrushalem.” They just wash over you. The decay in the tails of the notes in bass heartbeat that closes out “Azul’s” second movement, “Silencio,” enhanced the dark, foreboding mood of the section. During Yo-Yo Ma’s cello solo in the middle of third movement, “Transit,” the EA101EQ-G’s tight speaker-sub integration made the room sound larger than it is. Played through the EA101EQ-G, the bass never stuck out. It was coherent and whole.

“The Sweetest Taboo” is nominally a Sade cover, but so thoroughly dispenses with Sade’s low-key groove that it took me a while to make the connection. The Hot 8 Brass Band punch it up for almost seven minutes. They transform the bassline from chill to bouncy, and substitute intense trombones and trumpets for her subdued contralto vocals. The EA101EQ-G’s BASH amplifier provided enough reserve power to convey every nuance of brassy splat and blatt. ABC worked subtly to keep the bassline and toms sounding fleet and agile, rather than bloated and boomy. “Working Together” is also a good test for modal decay. In a small room, the sousaphone notes can blur together. Through the EA101EQ-G, each note had a distinct beginning, middle, and end.

I measured the results of ELAC’s Auto Blend & Calibration bass management and room correction software in both of the systems described above with FuzzMeasure v. 4.1.1 running in macOS. I used a miniDSP UMIK-1 USB microphone calibrated by Cross Spectrum Labs for acoustic measurements, and an ART USB Dual Pre for electrical measurements.

The first set of measurements, from my office system, tell a cautionary tale. Here’s what ELAC’s ABC software showed after calibration. The “Reference” curve (sum of nearfield measurements) is yellow, the pre-correction curve is magenta, and the corrected response is green.

Did you catch the problem? The crossover frequency is a little too high for the down-firing subwoofer. But any higher would be an issue for 5" midwoofers in small closed boxes! That leads to a response hole. This is a speaker setup issue. While the ELAC EA101EQ-G does what it can, it can only work with the speakers and sub provided. This is a strictly background music (and podcasts, NPR shows, etc.) system. Even in a flawed system, ELAC’s ABC report correlates well with my confirmatory measurement, in green to match ELAC’s corrected response curve.

Note that my measurement is 1/24th octave smoothed. ELAC’s graph are high resolution: 1/24th octave smoothing matches their display better than the 1/12th octave smoothing I typically use.

In the small room, ABC took out quite a bit of bass bloat. The main divergence between ABC’s graphs and my calibrated measurements is that ABC shows some roll-off from 30-40Hz while my measurements show a plateau.

The next graph shows the frequency response of the ELAC EA-Series EA101EQ-G’s subwoofer output after correction, taken directly from the sub out with no smoothing. This is the EQ curve ELAC’s ABC technology applied to these subwoofers in this room.

Let’s start with the easy bits before moving on to the really interesting stuff. This measurement shows ELAC’s low-frequency correction seems to stop at 25Hz, a sensible frequency given the subwoofers typically used with compact integrated amps. Still, deep bass fanatics will be happy to see that the electrical response only falls about 1dB from 20Hz to 10Hz. Assuming the flat line below roughly 25Hz is the baseline sub level, it appears the ABC system is limited to 6dB boosts and 12dB cuts. That is typical and responsible for an automated room correction system.

Now for the really interesting part: the crossover targets. As SECRETS Technical Editor Dr. David Rich notes, "The standard bass management system provides only a second-order filter for the main speaker which [with a fourth-order subwoofer filter] will not even sum to flat even in an anechoic chamber." Here, the measured lowpass was 5th order (30dB/oct.). At first, I assumed this steep rolloff was a quirk of my system. However, ELAC’s Chris Walker told me that ELAC in fact targets 5th-order slopes for both speaker and subwoofer.

Why 5th order? ELAC argues that the premise of 4th-order (24dB/oct.) Linkwitz-Riley ("LR4") crossovers between speakers and subwoofers is basically flawed. LR4 crossovers were developed to give provide symmetrical vertical radiation when the sound waves are very small compared to room dimensions. At 2kHz, a typical midrange/tweeter crossover point, the sound wave is under 7 inches long. However, an 80Hz sound wave is more than 14 feet long! Sound waves behave differently when they approach room dimensions, than when they are tiny compared to room dimensions. See Chapter 6.1 of Dr. Floyd Toole’s "Sound Reproduction," 3rd ed., for a fuller explanation.
While LR4 crossovers sum flat on axis, they do not provide constant power response. ELAC argues it is important to have a constant amplitude and power response when blending a speaker to a subwoofer at 50-100Hz, because of how these long sound waves propagate in rooms. That implies the speakers and subwoofers should be in phase quadrature rather than in phase. This phase quadrature relationship requires an odd-order crossover. ELAC arrived at their 5th order target experimentally, by calculating the effects on phase response at the crossover point of the inherent rolloffs in typical subwoofers and speakers. They found that 5th order was the least sensitive to the inherent rolloffs in subs and speakers. While I’ve never before seen speaker-subwoofer integration handled this way, in listening the ELAC EA101EQ-G consistently impressed me with how seamlessly it integrated subwoofers. It impressed me enough that I plan to experiment with steep odd-order crossovers between the speakers and the multiple subwoofer system in my reference system when I find the time.

Lastly, I found some variation in ABC calibration runs, likely based on microphone placement, noise or external factors. Here are three calibration runs I did on the small room system. The lesson here is, it’s OK to play with your technique and try again if you want. ELAC’s ABC applet accurately represents the listening position response.

The bottom line here is that, if the frequency response of your speakers and subwoofers overlap enough, ELAC’s ABC technology as deployed in the EA101EQ-G can achieve an excellent speaker-subwoofer blend in minutes.

THE ELAC EA-SERIES EA101EQ-G COMPACT INTEGRATED DAC-AMPLIFIER is the complete package: great-sounding, stylish, powerful, flexible, intuitive to use, and reasonably priced.

ELAC just seems to get the audio zeitgeist. Every single one of their American-market products I have heard has been right on target, with great sound at reasonable prices. The EA-Series EA101EQ-G is no exception. This stylish compact integrated amp has enough inputs to support a fairly complicated audio system, one of the most intuitive and useful control apps I’ve used – except for its name! – and a powerful amplifier. ELAC also priced it very well for such a versatile and stylish compact integrated DAC amp.

Those virtues alone would make the ELAC EA101EQ-G a solid competitor in the compact integrated DAC amp market. But ELAC’s Auto Blend & Calibrate applet steals the show. ABC is subwoofer-speaker blending and room correction from a speaker designer’s perspective. ABC automates and speeds up the normally tedious speaker-subwoofer blending process. It accepts your speaker designers’ voicing rather than imposing its own will. Its room correction subtly addresses modal issues so you can hear your speakers and subs as their designers intended them to sound.

ELAC’s EA-Series EA101EQ-G is a fantastic nerve center for any 2.0 or 2.1 channel system, thanks to ABC, plenty of power and current drive to stay relevant through speaker upgrades, an excellent control app, and enough inputs for a fairly complex A/V system. The EA101EQ-G looks elegant but not too flashy, allowing it to fit into any number of home or office systems. I can think of a good use case for every single EA101EQ-G ELAC will make. ELAC’s first compact integrated DAC amp is a winner.

The post ELAC EA-Series EA101EQ-G Integrated Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

The Pass Labs INT-250 is based on their acclaimed .8 series amplifiers. This integrated is essentially a Pass X-250.8 stereo amplifier with a custom preamp added in. That preamp is relatively simple in its feature set, but still delivers every bit of the sound quality one would expect from Pass Labs. The amp is beautifully built down to every last detail, incredibly massive and solid, and offers sound quality most audiophiles can only dream of.

You have to possess quite a bit of self-confidence to buy a high end integrated amplifier. Audiophiles love to change their mind and they love to have buyer’s remorse. Nothing ever seems to be good enough, and the promise of that next upgrade that will lead to nirvana is always nagging. Until one day, you decide you’ve had enough. You finally decide you want to buy one set of gear, preferably simple and of superb quality, and just stop worrying. If this sounds like you, then Pass Labs has designed and built the INT-250 just for you. Most integrated amps are some sort of compromise. The INT-250 is not. It’s one of the most overbuilt, over-engineered integrated amplifiers there is. I guarantee that if your goal is to build a simple, 2 channel audio system that offers world class sound so you can just stop worrying and enjoy listening, the INT-250 is pretty hard to beat. It is the best sounding preamp/amplifier I’ve had in my listening room thus far.

You don’t even need to unpack the box to know the INT-250 is a very serious piece of audio gear. The crate weighs 125 lbs. I managed to wrestle it into the house and get the amp out of the box by myself, but I do not recommend this. Of course, if you drop over twelve thousand clams on an amplifier, I expect the dealer will deliver it and put it into your rack for you. Luckily, the amp has two big handles on the back, and big, sturdy rubber feet that will help you heave it into place. The big INT-250 barely fit into my rack, with only a couple of mm to spare on each side of the big, sharp heat sinks. Once in place the amp looks the part.

It has the signature Pass current meter bathed in blue LED light in the center of the front panel, with a big, nicely weighted volume knob driving a digital potentiometer with 63 dB of range adjusted in 1 dB steps. There’s a power switch and 4 selectors for the 4 line level inputs, and a blue LED display for the volume setting. This is all set into a beautifully machined aluminum faceplate. If any amp looks like it’s worth the price, this is one. The rear panel contains both single ended and balanced inputs for two of the four inputs, with single ended only for the other two. The INT-250 is fully balanced all the way through, so you really get all the benefit from the balanced inputs.

The single ended inputs are cloned and inverted, and then sent through the amp balanced. The speaker level outputs are differential, so do not ground either of them! Both single ended and balanced preamp outputs are provided to drive a subwoofer amp or a second amp for bi-amping. There’s a ground lug and a IEC power socket with a power switch. Finally, Pass’ very nice binding posts with tightening clutches on the easy to grab wingnuts are present.

When powering up, the amp starts with the preamp volume at zero and the inputs muted. The amp automatically unmutes after a couple of seconds. There is no provision for a home theater passthrough, which for me was a bit annoying. I used input 1 for this purpose, with the volume set to maximum. While the amp remembers the last input, the fact that it starts at zero dB on the volume every time for safety means I had to ramp up the volume manually each time. I guess I could have left the amp on all the time, but that leads to another issue.

This amp gets HOT. It’s biased to leave class A operation at 15W output. In fact, many manufacturers would probably call this a class A amp, not class AB as Pass Labs does. The result of this biasing is fantastic class A sound that reminded me of the XA-30.8. The downside is that it works like a 450W space heater. If you live somewhere cool, that won’t be a problem. But I live in Arizona. When I got the amp in the fall (it can still get close to 100F outside in Phoenix in October), it wasn’t so great. A very nice machined aluminum remote is included, but some buttons on it do not work. The remote is a standard Pass Labs product, not specific to the INT-250. The power, volume, mute and source selector buttons work, but there is no provision for balance control or home theater passthrough.

This album has an amazingly large, 3D soundstage and images with the right equipment. The INT-250 did not disappoint. A great test of subtle timbre is the track Giorgio by Moroder. This track is recorded with a selection of vintage microphones spanning the career of Giorgio Moroder, one of the pioneers of electronic music. Only the best systems can clearly reveal the tonal differences between these microphones. Usually, it’s easiest to hear with headphones. But the INT-250 did a fantastic job here. With my normal Rogue preamp and NewClear amp, the tonal differences are there and audible, but with the INT-250 they’re even more clear. That’s always the sign of a good piece of equipment. You get to hear things in familiar recordings you have never heard before.

In writing this article, I was alarmed to read this album came out in 1997. I guess I’m getting old. This track has some serious, low, powerful bass. At high volume levels you can see standing waves in surfaces of drinks in the listening room. Stuff vibrates. The INT-250 was able to reproduce High Roller without giving up one bit of power, extension or slam.

The tracks Nothing Brings Me Down and Sunny Road are about as simple as it gets. A female voice and an acoustic guitar. No drums, no other instruments, and little to no “production.” With the right system, Torrini’s voice is genuinely haunting. The INT-250 delivered the most realistic reproduction of this singer’s voice in my listening room I have heard to date.

The image had something that is typically not easy to reproduce: a realistically large image, located in space in a plausible way. Most systems give you a “scale model” of reality, almost always smaller than reality. Not here. It’s about as good as it gets. The other test is the detail and timbre presented. If it’s good, you get chills when the music starts because it really tricks you into thinking that it could be live music, if only for a few seconds.

Measurements were made with my M-Audio ProFire 610 firewire audio interface and Spectra Plus FFT software. I drove the INT-250 with a 24 bit, 192 kHz bandwith test signal from the analog outputs of the ProFire 610. The signal was 0 dBFS. I adjusted the preamp setting of the INT-250 to give the maximum RMS voltage level at the 8 ohm test resistor that I could deal with. This is 5V rms or a bit over 3W. This level signal is the maximum I can feed into the ProFire 610 as-is without overloading the input. It turns out this test is not so unrealistic.

The volume setting on the preamp was significantly louder than when I normally listen to music (44 out of 63 on the digital volume control of the INT-250). I have a voltage divider box I built to allow higher power levels, but this setup does not work with a balanced amplifier where you can’t ground the negative amp terminal. I’ll have to build another one for balanced amps, but I didn’t have time for this test. So instead, I grounded the negative terminal of the ProFire 610 to the ground lug on the INT-250 case and measured the positive leg of the INT-250. Since this test method negates some of the advantages of the all-balanced INT-250 the measurements should be considered worst-case.

Distortion spectrum results are excellent, with very low absolute levels of harmonic distortion, with the exception of the 10 kHz measurement. The 0.18% there is more typical from a power amplifier. Even more important is something overlooked by most. The 2nd harmonic is 20 dB higher than the 3rd harmonic, which is again close to 10 dB more than higher harmonics. This is a super important result. Distortion concentrated in the 2nd and 3rd harmonics is what you want to see. Distortion in these harmonics tends to sound good to the human ear. Higher orders do not sound good.

The intermodulation distortion results are also very good, with mixing products about 70 dB down from the fundamental and total IMD measured at 0.04%. This is again an excellent result for an amplifier.

Frequency response is flat as a pancake to the limit of the sound interface. The gentle rise towards 48 kHz is an artifact of the measurement.

The THD+N measurement shows excellent performance as well. I’m not sure what’s causing the rise in THD+N at high frequencies. The absolute numbers are still low, but both the 10 kHz spectrum and the THD+N plot does show an increase at high frequencies.

THE PASS LABS INT-250 is expensive, without a doubt. But it is also the best integrated amp I’ve ever heard. Actually it’s the best amp and preamp I’ve ever heard in my own listening room. In my opinion, it’s worth the money as long as it gets used in the way it was designed: as the core of a world class music-only soundsystem.

The Pass Labs INT-250 is a fantastic amplifier. If you want to build a world class music only system, it’s hard to argue that you need anything more than this amplifier. For my more complicated system that does double duty as a home theater system, two small drawbacks of the INT-250 matter: the lack of a home theater passthrough, and the very high power dissipation that heats up the listening room. But I don’t actually knock the INT-250 because of these. The INT-250 was not designed to be part of a complicated system. It was designed to be the heart of a simple one. If I had the means to 1) have a dedicated music only system and 2) afford the INT-250, I would very seriously consider it. If you tried to build something from separates, I don’t think you could do it for the $12,500 cost of the Pass amp and equal or beat the sound quality you get with the INT-250. In that sense, the INT-250 is actually a great value. I strongly recommend you listen to this amp if you get a chance. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

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The C 328 Hybrid Digital DAC Amplifier is the ideal anchor for a high-performance two-channel system. It supports today’s digital sources with an advanced dual-differential DAC section and accommodates analog boxes too with two RCA stereo inputs plus a moving-magnet phono section. And you can stream via Bluetooth from a phone, tablet, or computer. A subwoofer output insures a well-supported low end, and there’s even a bass eq switch that boosts output around the 80Hz crossover point. At a $549 MSRP, it offers a lot of bang for the buck.

With the C 328 Hybrid Digital DAC Amplifier, NAD continues its long-standing tradition of providing the best possible sound at the lowest possible price. By no means do I imply that NAD is a bargain brand. But this incredibly capable box offers tremendous performance for only $549. If it were simply a good two-channel amp, the price would still be attractive. But by adding an advanced DAC and a phono stage, NAD has set a high bar for value.

• NAD M32 Direct Digital Amplifier Review
• NAD Masters Series M50.2 Digital Music Player Review
• NAD C 338 Hybrid Digital Integrated Amplifier Review

While the broader market focuses on features and new technologies like Dolby Atmos and Ultra HD, NAD remains a strong advocate of quality over quantity. Rather than adding a laundry list of features, the C 328 is simply a logical update to its venerable predecessor, the C 326BEE. That was a traditional analog two-channel integrated amp with a Class AB output stage. The C 328 is pretty much a clean-sheet design that adds moving-magnet phono support and an eight-channel DAC with a dual-differential design that ensures the near-elimination of noise and distortion. The output stage is a custom version of the tried-and-true Hypex UcD Class D design. What we have here is something NAD calls “entry level high-end”. The sound quality easily matches more expensive boxes but keeps costs down with smart and efficient design and engineering. Let’s take a look.

When unpacking the C 328, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the 3020 integrated amp I owned back in the mid-eighties. I was at school in Boston and just itching to buy a decent piece of stereo gear to make my Technics turntable and tape deck sound better. A Kenwood receiver had sufficed through high school but my conservatory studies demanded a more critical listening rig. I found a small shop that sold NAD and was immediately drawn to the 3020 with its beautiful neutral sound and distinct brown faceplate. Needless to say, I plunked down the cash. That single component introduced me to quality audio and I’ve never forgotten that experience. In today’s age of huge feature lists and barrage of technology, it’s components like the C 328 that remind us why we got into this hobby in the first place.

Like all integrated amplifiers, the C 328 includes multiple components, or sections, in a single box. The pre-amp supports two analog inputs, labeled TV and Streaming. A third set of RCA jacks feeds the moving-magnet phono stage. Digital sources can be connected to any of two coax or two optical inputs. The DAC is an eight-channel design which is summed into a dual-differential configuration. Basically, what NAD has done is to use a cost-effective chip in a way that lowers noise beyond a vanishing point and increases dynamic range. Rather than employing an expensive solution, they’ve found a better way to use a mainstream part.

The C 328 also supports Bluetooth-enabled devices like phones, tablets, and computers. While the interface compresses the signal, the advanced DAC treats that information much better than other systems delivering superior sound in the process. While I would not personally turn to Bluetooth as my main listening source, it provides a level of convenience that will be attractive to many users, and manages to sound pretty good too.

The volume controller is very precise and modulates amplitude in .5dB increments. It has a 120dB range and is entirely governed by software. It promises less distortion than its predecessor from the C 326BEE.

The power stage employs an active power supply. As explained to me by NAD’s Director of Technology and Product Planning, Greg Stidsen, it is essentially a power amp that produces pure DC voltage. This is far more stable and controllable than a traditional linear power supply. It can handle variations in AC power more easily and is coupled with a Load Invariant output stage. This design is a NAD’s take on the Hypex UcD self-oscillating Class D amplifier. It uses eight active discrete devices that almost completely eliminate distortion and crossover artifacts.

On the outside, the C 328’s simple appearance belies the high-end tech going on within. The front panel is broken only by a small display and buttons for power, source, and bass eq. A step-less volume knob adorns the right side and a quarter-inch headphone jack is included too. NAD takes can-fans seriously with a separate headphone amp section boasting less than .005% distortion at 1V output. Low output impedance means it can drive anything one cares to plug in.

Also on the packed back panel is a connector for the included Bluetooth antenna and large five-way speaker binding posts. A ground terminal is included for turntable users and control can be accomplished through an RS-232 port. The detachable power cord is grounded as well and you can turn the power off completely with a toggle switch. Those who wish to add a subwoofer can connect it to the included output. Or, if your bookshelves need an extra shot of low-end goodness, engage the bass eq switch on the front. It boosts frequencies around 80Hz by 8dB with a smooth roll-off.

A tiny remote is included that controls all the C 328’s functions to include discrete power buttons, volume, source, bass eq, and display dimmer. There are also a set of transport keys that work for Bluetooth sources once it’s paired with a phone, tablet, or computer. A neat learning feature allows non-NAD remotes to control the C 328. After engaging the learn mode with a button combo, the amp can learn, say, a volume up/down command from your TV’s remote. Then it can control the unit instead of the included handset. This is great for users who want to run their display’s sound through their two-channel system rather than its built-in speakers.

The setup of the C 328 can literally be described thusly: hook up speakers, hook up source, plug into AC, enjoy. It is truly that simple. There are no menus to explore or settings to experiment with. Literally the only two things that affect sound are the volume knob and the bass eq. For my review, I used an OPPO BDP-93 as a digital transport through one of the coax inputs. The I connected a pair of Axiom LFR1100 tower speakers. Those of you familiar with them will now be saying, “but they require two channels of amplification each.” Since the front and rear driver arrays are electronically separated, one can simply cable the front array and run them like a pair of M100s, which is exactly what I did. Cables were Bluejeans and media was good ‘ole Redbook CD.

To pair a Bluetooth source, attach the included antenna, turn the C 328 on and watch it appear in your phone, tablet, or computer’s list of discovered devices. Select pair and you’re done. There isn’t much more to say here so on to the listening.

I began with a very familiar recording of Brahms Symphony No. 2, performed by the Chicago Symphony under Sir Georg Solti. This London Digital CD is a classic in every sense but its quality pales in comparison to modern releases. It takes a solid system to flesh out the details. Many amps and processors I’ve listened to make the strings sound like mush and all the instruments seem as if they’re at the same distance from the listener. The C 328 on the other hand, had little trouble placing the violins and cellos at the front, the woodwinds mid-stage, and the brass at the back. In fact, I haven’t heard it sound this good since I had the M32 Masters Series amp in my system. All the dynamic range in the recording (and there isn’t much) was present as was its full detail. I could hear the creak of chairs, musicians’ breathing, and the rustling of sheet music. That’s what I love about these CDs, they’re unfailingly honest.

I experimented with the bass eq toggle and found it added a little depth to the sound without causing any bass bloat. Even when off, lower frequencies weren’t always well-controlled, but I blame the material for that, not the C328.

Next up was Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe, Suite No. 2, again with the Chicago Symphony, this time conducted by Daniel Barenboim. This pressing by Erato is cleaner than the Brahms performance and sports a bit more dynamic range, and far more transparency. All of that was on display thanks to the C 328’s deft and precise handling.

I took this opportunity to make an A/B comparison of CD versus Bluetooth by queueing up the same selection on my phone. It’s ripped in Apple Lossless format so the original material is of the same quality. I was pleased to hear that no level adjustment was necessary if I had my iPhone’s output volume maxed. Going back and forth between CD and Bluetooth revealed far less difference than one would expect. Dynamics were a bit compressed on the streamed version, and there was some distortion present in the louder passages, especially in the high registers of the strings and brass. Of course, I preferred the CD but only by a small margin.

I couldn’t leave the classical realm without some first-rate bassooning, so I grabbed Klaus Thunemann’s Romantic Bassoon Rarities. This collection of obscure concertos is delightful and his sound and approach to the music is amazing. I really enjoy the European bassoon tone with its dark woodiness, which contrasts with the brighter and buzzier American sound. Thunemann was right at the front of the stage, never in danger of being drowned out by the orchestra. He managed to bloom in the middle register a few times which tells me he might have been a bit too close to the microphone. But the musicality and emotion were fully there.

Moving on to more popular forms, I dropped Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light into the player. This is one of my favorite rock recordings not only for the music but for its audio quality. Mixed through the legendary Neve console, it has an honesty and warmth that just doesn’t exist in many other discs. I loved hearing the clear separation of instruments with the lead guitar placed firmly in the left channel. The bass eq stayed on as it provided nice depth without too much over-slam. Some listeners may prefer to leave it off when using full-range speakers like mine, but I’m a bit of a bass-head. It depends largely on your own room’s acoustics and it’s easy to toggle the eq with the remote.

While Dave Grohl was screaming away, I went to the rack and touched the C 328’s case near the speaker terminals. It was barely above room temperature, even after an hour of high-volume listening. To call this amp efficient is an understatement. Remember, the LFR1100s are 4 ohm speakers. 50W per channel may not sound impressive on a spec sheet, but it’s more than enough to make my big towers sing without breaking a sweat.

Going to the other end of the fidelity spectrum, I tried a few tracks from Metallica’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct. This is the CD to play when you want to demonstrate what compression sounds like. Dynamic range is exactly zero. Everything is the same volume and the recording is completely uninteresting. But I like the music, and it sounds good in the car. The C 328 did a good job of rendering detail, what there was of it. But no component will be able to make this CD sound any better than a MIDI file. That confirms to me that this amp is completely neutral in tone. It won’t make bad recordings sound good. But it will make good ones sound great.

THE NAD C 328 HYBRID DIGITAL DAC AMPLIFIER delivers high-fi sound quality at a mid-fi price. It comes shockingly close in quality to more expensive components.

I literally agonized over that Would Like To See comment for a half hour. The NAD C 328 Hybrid Digital DAC Amplifier has no flaws that I can determine. It does exactly what it’s designed to do and it does it extremely well. It required all of 10 minutes to install and played whatever I threw at it with a deft and practiced hand. From classical to rock, the C 328 can do it all. It made my LFR1100s sing with or without the bass eq, which adds a nice depth, and it never lost control of the lower frequencies. The remote? Yeah, it’s not fancy but it works. Perhaps I’m a bit spoiled by the heavy metal wonders that come with Masters Series components. But I doubt many users will complain.

With the option to connect digital, analog, or Bluetooth sources, one can enjoy excellent sound and convenience in a single, slim package. The C 328 blends right in to modern décor with its minimalist styling and unobtrusive size. Its depth is even shallow enough to fit in a bookcase with room for cables in back. You want to stack something on top? No problem. It runs so cool that ventilation is unnecessary.

My favorite audio reviews are of simple components like these. They take me back to a time before surround sound and format wars and high-res and standards that change more often than Kim Kardashian’s clothes. For those who just want a solid and reliable two-channel system for a surprisingly small sum, the NAD C 328 Hybrid Digital DAC Amplifier has few equals.

The post NAD C 328 Hybrid Digital DAC Integrated Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

In the case of hifi, you are more and more likely to find solidly built, high quality products, for less money, than when I was a kid (inflation adjusted of course). For instance, the MOON by Simaudio 240i is an integrated amp at the low end of a long list of integrated amps that this Canadian hifi company makes but it seems to have little to no shortcomings sonically or otherwise.

Of course, when I was a kid, electricity had just been invented so some progress is expected.

The 240i is a nicely sized box, at just about 17 inches wide it will fill the standard sized shelf. As often seems to be the case, it feels heavier than the specified 24 pounds would lead me to expect. Yes, there is an obvious conclusion here, but I already said I’m not a kid anymore, so we’ll leave it at that, ok? The reason for the weight, real or perceived, is the sturdy steel case and inside, a substantial toroidal transformer which is visible through the mostly-vented top of the chassis.

For various reasons, I care most about the ‘amplifier’ part of an integrated amp. The 240i uses Simaudio’s favorite class A/B amplification to create 50W into an 8 Ohm load. In the ‘things are getting better’ department, the frequency response is specified as 10Hz – 80kHz. Unheard of not that long ago. But, is it unheard now? That is, can we hear to 80kHz? No, but another way to look at that spec is that the amp will have a very high slew rate, the ability to quickly change what it is telling the speakers – a very desirable characteristic for an amp. That’s what it’s supposed to do after all.

Perhaps it’s sign of the times that there are only two analog input pairs on the back panel, next to five digital input options (2 SPDIF, 2 Optical and one USB). The digital inputs are capable of handling very high sampling rates. Starting from the top, the USB input will process a PCM signal as high as 384kHz, the SPDIF’s: 192kHz and the optical inputs: 96kHz. DSD is also supported, MQA is not but Simaudio does plan to implement that format in their streaming products starting next year.

I wondered if the DAC in the 240i was the same as in the rest of Simaudio’s digital offerings (which mostly use ESS Tech) so I asked Costa Koulisakis (Vice-President Customer Experience): “Not all our DACs use the same chipsets. We generally stick with the ESS Tech chipsets, because of their high quality and intimate understanding on how to best implement them. However, with chipsets, implementation is just as important as what chipset is chosen. This is why for certain products, others were chosen (for example, our 260D player uses Burr-Brown). The chipset used in the 240i is indeed ESS Tech.”

He went on to mention that the 240i is essentially a Bluetooth-and-streaming-free version of Simaudio’s all-in-one player ACE. Otherwise they are identical. Given the cost savings (acquiring an ACE will cost you $800 more) and the ability to add an external streaming device – supporting format-du jour – in the future, the 240i might be the better route. I have yet to hear MQA (I have a turntable) and I’m sure it raises both 1’s and 0’s to an entirely new level but I notice that there is another format supported by this DAC (and any other these days), DSD. But no one seems to care very much. Just sayin’.

Speaking of turntables, the 240i supports that, but in a starter-turntable kind of way. The owner’s manual makes it clear that only a Moving Magnet cartridge is supported: “…for use with turntables equipped with a MM cartridge ONLY.” Well, I’m here to make it a little less clear, a high-output moving coil is fine as well. I could see how Simaudio might want to keep things as simple as possible for newbies and themselves, but I would vote for making that extra statement in the manual.
Just a few more bits on the design: The headphone amp, taken straight from the amplifier output and routed to a ¼” headphone jack which is right next to the personal-audio-player (1/8”) input. I thought this was begging for some sort of headphone mishap but actually it is the opposite (I think). If someone had headphones with the smaller plug, they’re standing there holding a 1/8” stereo-mini plug in their hand, having that 1/4” jack right next to the only 1/8” option, might serve to keep people from thinking that the smaller jack is an output rather than the input that it is. Of course, some people will not get that message but there shouldn’t be any dire consequences other than no sound.

The display, an OLED type screen glows a lovely teal and gives away the fact that there is a processor inside. More on this later.

The remote (called CRM-3) is the third generation of Simaudio’s lighter remote and my favorite of the bunch. There is an ornate and overly-heavy remote that ships certain of the Evolution line (higher end) and I have a CRM-2 that came with the 430HA (headphone amp). The CRM-3 feels very solid, has a bit of design to it and is easy to use (i.e., not a brick). Oh, and if you’re not using the remote, the volume knob is hefty. It spins easily but it has a weight to it. The buttons are very solid and when you take the unit out of standby mode, the relays make the sort of sound that makes you feel this thing will last. Likely it will, all Simaudio components have a 10yr warranty.

The owner’s manual is excellent, clearly written with extensive instructions on using the setup menu. I didn’t have to change anything from the defaults however, so I skipped straight to listening. Luckily this review unit had been out to other reviewers and so the recommended 400 hours break-in time had passed and I could get right to it. I started by substituting the 240i in the place of two other components in my home theater system (Arcam 888 pre-pro and Parasound Halo A51 5 channel amp). The Simaudio component didn’t do all that those do (surround, Dolby, DTS) but it does about all I need because even if I’m watching a movie I generally stick to two channels. The two speakers in this setup are Aperion Intimus 5B’s. The turntable is a Denon DP-60L (no, you can’t have it!) with an Audio-Technica AT440ML.

Listening mostly to whatever was on television before starting any serious listening I still was able to note right away a powerful, articulate sound. Voices have a clarity with the 240i. If there was a characteristic to the sound it would be what I call ‘chunky’ – distinct and pleasing edges. It goes especially well with rock and piano music. Anyway, there was a lot more listening to do.

Hooking up the Denon to the phono inputs gave me a clue as to what I was getting into – and it was good. It has been a while since I have reviewed an integrated, but I had expectations of limitations or colorations in the phono area. Those were quickly erased. I like to use Radiohead’s Amnesiac for auditioning, lots of stuff going on at once including scratchy backgrounds that could make all else disappear if not handled right. They were handled right. The 240i had tight control on the two-way Aperions, the bass drum on Packt like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box had both the snap and the depth that the recording delivers while Thom Yorke’s tenor was clean and distinct. The piano on Pyramid Song was absolutely lovely, rich with harmonics. Also, the attack as the hammers hit the strings is something that only the best hifi can pull out. It wasn’t all there with the 240i but it was there.

Ok let’s jump ahead and compare the 240i to the best hifi. The best I have in-house is upstairs: Simaudio’s P8 preamp, 430HA Headphone Amp and two W-6 monoblocks. Speakers are Daedalus 2.1’s. A Parasound CD-1 is the only digital source. All are fed by a Furman IT-Reference 20i power conditioner (designed by Garth Powell before Audioquest stole him away). I can hear you: “It’s ridiculous to compare a $2100 dollar integrated to that mega-pricey stack of stuff!” But here’s the thing, it isn’t. In short, the 240i stacks up (sorry) quite well to my big rig. There is less of the black-background thing and the highs are not quite as high, lows not quite as low but a 240i could keep me happy for a long time.

Now here’s the ridiculous part, the power cords and interconnects I was using upstairs would add up to more than the 240i. But this is my new advice to people wanting to build a system: Get a good integrated (the MOON by Simaudio 240i would be the place to look first), spend as much as you can on good used speakers, and over time, spend the rest on wire. I was using a Shunyata King Cobra power cord which is usually plugged into my P8 preamp. Any notions I had about a characteristic chunkiness to the sound of the 240i, which I favor anyway, was gone. Replaced by the famous Simaudio neutral sound. The bane of audio reviewers, how to describe what is not there? Only after some time and switching back to the big rig could I identify the extra extension and black background that all those other boxes bring, the kind of sound that makes one stare at the speakers. Shelling out for crazy-expensive power cords for the 240i is not required however, the stock cord is no slouch and I also tried the very reasonably priced Pangea AC 9 Mk-II, not as smooth as the Shunyata but very nice.

I used a middle-ground, a Shunyata Venom-HC to improve the headphone sound a bit with the 240i. I was noticing that the hard-to-drive (600 Ohm) Beyerdynamic T1 v2 phones were sounding kind of closed-in unless I cranked the volume past the half-way point. With the hefty Venom-HC, they opened up at any volume. This also helped the soundstage migrate slightly forward and not be stuck in the middle of my brain.

I pushed the 240i hard when listening to music, there was never a hint of any sort of over-taxing the amp, sound did not ‘break up’ or deteriorate with volume levels. In a similar vein the amp did not get overly warm, even in the confined space of my upstairs equipment rack I could still touch the sides easily. Best to not have a confined space though.

Oh, and yes there is a downside to aftermarket power cords, they are so big and heavy that as you might expect, they fall out the component. Happened when I was first trying to get the 240i going in my upstairs system. Took me a while to figure out what happened because there were no godawful pops or bangs through the speakers, the processor in there took care of creating an orderly shutdown. Things are indeed getting better for audiophiles.

The MOON by SIMAUDIO 240I is a ‘starter’ hifi component that will actually serve well into the future both in capabilities and sound.

At the start of my time with the MOON by Simaudio 240i I was thinking of it as a starter component. Since it is at the bottom of the Simaudio offerings I would wager that they are hoping that it is the case, that is, that you think of this as a ‘starter’ and move up as time goes on. At this point though, I’d say that you could do that, or you could just stick with the 240i, building up around it if you felt the need, and just love your music. Highly recommended.

The post MOON by Simaudio 240i Integrated Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

The Liberty DAC and Headphone Amplifier is the latest product from Mytek Digital Corporation. Mr. Michal (pronounced “Mehow”) Jurewicz is the company’s guiding light, and designer of the Mytek Liberty DAC. Jurewicz is married to Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, and they currently live in Brooklyn with their two teenage children.

As to Michal’s background, after earning an Electrical Engineering degree in Warsaw, Poland, he moved to New York City. Jurewicz was the recording engineer at two of the top recording studios there. When he saw the coming digital revolution, he started Mytek Digital in 1991. Originally building analog-to-digital converters for recording studios, Mytek launched its Consumer Division in 2011. Many famous recording artists use Mytek gear, including Stevie Wonder.

• MYTEK LIBERTY shipping announcement
• MQA at Consumer Electronics Show 2018
• MYTEK BROOKLYN announcement at the Munich audio show

The Liberty is a 1/3-rack-unit-sized device that was originally developed for professional studio-recording use. Additional “one function” Liberty line products are anticipated later this year.

The Liberty design concept is to provide a simple, small and robust unit which can do one specific function very well. The Mytek Liberty DAC was intended to be a great-sounding USB DAC, that can play every possible format including full decoding of Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) files. The Liberty DAC is intended to provide a good balance of detailed, transparent, and musical sound while also being a very good headphone amplifier.

The Liberty DAC firmware is updateable via the Mytek Control Panel app. There will be new firmware releases as features are added. The content will be fine-tuned based on customer feedback.

The USB input is asynchronous Class 2. That means the DAC runs on its exceptionally-clean internal master clock and requests data as needed, eliminating any jitter created by the source component. The USB input also accepts high speed formats not available on other digital inputs including signals up to 32-bit/384K in both PCM and DSD256 flavors, and up to DSD128 on a Mac using DOP.

When the non-USB, synchronous digital inputs are used, two methods are operating simultaneously for improved sound. Jitter reduction is accomplished not only by a sophisticated Phase-Locked-Loop (PLL) on the input, but also by the asynchronous architecture of the Sabre 9018 DAC chipset itself. Additionally, a low-jitter master clock is used for the last stage of data conversion.

The Mytek Liberty DAC and headphone amp is the newest of the Mytek Digital products. It uses the Sabre ESS9018K2M DAC chipset – so I’ll start with a confession. Many reviewers as well as many on the internet have claimed that Sabre DACs have a characteristic sound. Some claim that the sound is detailed while others claim that the sound is bright and glare-prone in the lower treble. I’ve owned at least two Sabre-DAC-based products in the past. My first, an OPPO BDP-105 Blu-Ray player I considered quite detailed, but without the notorious “Sabre glare.” But my second Sabre product, the newer Oppo UDP-205 4K player, strikes me as crossing the line into the “bright and glare-prone” category.

So, I must admit that I had negative expectations for the Mytek Liberty DAC, based solely on its Sabre chipset. Now note that all these Sabre-DAC devices, including the both OPPOs and the Mytek Liberty, measure ruler-flat in the frequency domain. But the sounds are distinctly different; due (I’m presuming) to the filters used and the implementation and voicing of the output buffer amplifiers.

And not to keep you in suspense – the Mytek Liberty retains all the expected detail of the Sabre chipset without any of the brightness and glare. How Mr. J. and company managed this, I can’t say, but the results speak for themselves.

Looking inside the Mytek Liberty’s box gives no clue as to its sound either. If you’re looking for audiophile wiring, expensive brand-name resistors, or fancy film capacitors, you won’t fine them here. This is obviously a consumer product with its plethora of (reasonably high quality) polarized and non-polarized electrolytic caps.

My Mytek Liberty DAC was supposed to arrive with some TRS-to-XLR Metropolis (adapter) cables, but as you can see from the photo above, the only cables in the review box were the standard IEC power cord and a USB-2 cable. Fortunately, I had some adapters in my spare parts box, and was able to listen to the outputs via both RCA (unbalanced) and XLR (balanced) options.

After a very simple setup, the DAC is ready to play. The short and to-the-point owner’s manual is adequate and accurate. The front of the DAC includes a single tri-function rotary knob, a ¼” headphone jack, and a selection of very, very bright LED lights. The knob can be used as an on-off switch, an input selector, and a (digital-domain) volume control. Because this device is intended as either a professional rack-mount item or as an enhancement to computer desktop audio, no remote control is included. Now this omission is a bit disappointing in a device priced close to $1,000. But in keeping with the Liberty philosophy of “one use,” it is understandable. The Liberty DAC was never intended to be a preamplifier. So, in its role as DAC and headphone amp, a remote control would have been mostly superfluous. Even so, I can always wish…

The back of the Mytek Liberty DAC is equally straightforward. There are multiple digital inputs, a power socket, and two pairs of analog outputs. There is also a 12-volt input jack and Mytek suggests that using a high-current 12-volt source (such as an auto battery) can provide improvements in performance. I didn’t try this option, but can understand how it could be so, provided that sufficiently heavy-gauge connecting wire was used and that the socket/plug can pass enough current.

I expect that few will avail themselves of the battery option, simply due to the inconvenience. However, if you do opt to try this, be aware that auto batteries contain sulfuric acid, that leaks can be highly corrosive, and that the battery cells can generate free hydrogen. That hydrogen must be vented and dispersed lest flammable mixtures occur. Blowing up your stereo would have a profoundly low spousal-acceptance factor! (I’m picturing snickering firemen too. Ed.) So, remembering that hydrogen gas is lighter than air, be aware that ventilation above the battery is mandatory. (Safety rant concluded…)

So how does the Mytek Liberty DAC and Headphone Amplifier sound? I first evaluated the DAC with the unbalanced outputs driving a power amplifier directly. The sound was clean and detailed with absolutely none of the “Sabre-glare” that I was expecting. This alone makes the Liberty DAC highly unusual in the galaxy of Sabre-DAC devices. My only complaint (the lazy-man’s one) had to do with the lack of a remote and the necessity to get up and cross the room for every volume adjustment.

I then used the XLR adapters to feed a fully-differential, fully-balanced integrated amplifier. With the Liberty DAC’s output set to 100%, I could use the analog and remotely-controlled volume control of the integrated amp. In this mode, I again found the sound far better than average.

I soon noticed, however, that my left channel sound was intermittent. After verifying that the DAC, amplifier, and interconnects were functioning properly, I noticed that my TRS-to-XLR adapters were too wide for the spacing allowed by the Mytek Liberty’s TRS jacks. The shoulders of the adapters were physically pushing each other aside, making for intermittent connection on the stereo ¼” phone plugs. This is not the fault of the DAC, and a slimmer pair of cables (such as Mytek’s Metropolis models) would certainly not have this problem. I mention it only to caution those who might try to employ adapters such as mine.

Finally, I listened to the headphone output using easy-to-drive Koss Porta-Pro headphones. Running these phones was a walk in the park for the Mytek, which is built to run very demanding headphones. But despite the “running at an idle” state of the Mytek, the Koss phones sounded as good as I’ve heard them.

So as a preamplifier, I rate the Mytek Liberty very highly. It is not my choice for a primary preamplifier only because of its missing remote volume control. But since preamplifier use was never the primary purpose of the Liberty, that should not be a deciding factor.

What the Mytek Liberty DAC is primarily intended to be is a very high-quality headphone amplifier. As I’ve said, my selection of headphones is very limited, since I’m not a big cans listener. My choices were Apple ear-buds (that I don’t like anyway and didn’t try) and the lightweight Koss Porta-Pros. The Liberty’s detail from my Porta-Pros was as good as any I’ve heard.

The good news is that my audio amigo has a pair of very hard to drive Sennheiser HD-600 headphones that he’s agreed to use with this Mytek. Once he has a chance to try those phones with the Mytek Liberty, I’ll update this review in the comments section to discuss how well the Liberty’s headphone amp works with really demanding headphones.

• MacBook Pro running jRiver Media Center 22 (Media center was not used with 192/24, MQA, or DSD content)
• Ixos digital interconnect for S/PDIF inputs of the Mytek
• AudioQuest and Blue Jeans interconnects
• Emotiva BasX A-300 power amplifier
• Yamaha A-S2000 integrated, balanced amplifier
• Straight Wire and AudioQuest speaker wires
• Thiel 1.6 speakers with and without subwoofers
• Tekton Pendragon speakers with no subwoofers
• RBH MC-6C sealed bookshelf speakers with subwoofers
• PowerSound Audio S3601 dual 18” subwoofer
• RBH DSA-31 10” subwoofer

A variety of music was used while auditioning the Mytek Liberty as a preamplifier. Included in my notes are:

“One Night In Rio” by Louie Austen – (Hôtel Costes byStéphanie Pompougnac)

Louie’s voice is one that can sound unnatural through many DACs, but the Mytek Liberty nailed his whiney tone perfectly here.

“Barflies at the Beach” by the Royal Crown Revue (New Music from Interscope Records 1997)

The big Royal Crown band should blare without glare. With this DAC, they do.

“Banned in the USA” by The 2 Live Crew (As Nasty As They Want To Be)

There is a great host of sound effects in this song, from news announcers to samples of “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee.” This is an oldie, but a goodie, and the sound effects should be startling in their diversity. The Mytek brings the goods!

“Cast Your Fate To The Wind” by (the late) Allen Toussaint (Allen Toussaint 1971)

This soulful take on an old classic is so much fun, in my opinion, that it should be part of almost every review. Allen’s piano should sound real and present without any portion of its frequency range sounding recessed or excessively forward. The Liberty manages a clean and nuanced presentation.

“Pukara” by Andean Symphony V (Inca Gold, 1998)

The bass wind instrument (I’m not sure of the name) on this recording is difficult to reproduce. Some DACs have disassociated the puff of the breath and the hum of the wooden instrument. But the Mytek makes the combination a whole. Even so, some of my speakers fought the music (being mostly a satellite-subwoofer-crossover artifact, I think). But headphone listening makes clear that the disconnect is not the fault of the Liberty.

“Un Fiesta Anima” by Padu Del Caribe (Cu Amor | Carino)

This is “love it or hate it” music, and I’m obviously in the former camp. I find the juxtaposition of the piano and out-of-time accompaniment to be a musical jolt, but an enjoyable one. Others for whom I’ve played this music absolutely can’t stand it. But what I think makes this a good recording for analyzing a DAC is that deliberately discordant timing makes the listener pay more attention to the sounds of the instruments. If the DAC cannot differentiate between all the things happening in the mix, this song can sound like a disorganized jumble. But if the tonality is right, this music is great, great fun. Again, the Mytek nails it!

“Orleans Stomp” by The Cruel Sea (Honeymoon is Over 1993)

Yes, I’m partial to New Orleans music. And this one reminds me of the Meters in its presentation. Again, a dense mix demands a lot from the DAC, and again, the Mytek seems to come through without any of the dreaded “Sabre glare.” Well done.

“Scarlotti Sonata K. 491” by Vladimir Horowitz (A Reminiscence – 2004)

Solo piano is always one of the toughest tests of a DAC (and the rest of the system, for that matter). Since we’ve all had plenty of experience hearing real pianos in real spaces, our minds are calibrated to the live sound. Some DACs emphasize one part of the frequency spectrum over another, making a pianist sound as if she or he is playing louder and softer (or often closer and farther away) as the music ascends or descends the keyboard. But to my ears, the Mytek provided a unedited frequency response from one end of the instrument to the other.

“Wieniawski Scherzo Tarantelle” by Itzhak Perlman (Itzhak Perelman Encores – 1988)

So, HERE’S where any glare will be evident (if it’s there to be heard in the first place). The fundamentals and overtones of the violin strings and its body sounds span the entire upper midrange to treble region. The finger sounds and bow scrape should be clear and obvious without being dominating. If Mr. Perelman doesn’t seem to be in the room with you, something’s wrong. If the instrument sounds screechy, something’s wrong.

Here’s where I listened most closely for the “Sabre glare”, to my surprise and pleasure, I found none from the Mytek Liberty. If only my OPPO 205 had such poise and neutrality! Ironically, my older 105 Oppo COULD present this music as well as the Mytek does. But rest assured that to my ears, the Mytek is as glare-free as two of the best DACs I’ve yet auditioned, Schiit’s Gungnir Multibit and Rega’s DAC-R.

Why this is so, I won’t even speculate, because the MQA format itself is supposed to minimize playback variability. But the sound spoke for itself, and the Liberty DAC delivered yet again.

Almost all the above music was played via the TOSLINK optical and the S/PDIF coaxial inputs of the Mytek Liberty DAC. To test the USB capabilities, I hooked up my MacBook Pro directly to the USB input of the Mytek, made a few changes in the setup, then tried a variety of 192/24, MQA, and DSD files. All played perfectly, and without trouble. The lights on the front of the Liberty DAC confirm the type of file currently playing. The MQA material (mostly downloaded from the 2L website) was particularly pleasant.

I’ll mention again that my limited trial of the headphone amplifier was done using Koss PortaPro cans, and that I’ll be sure to follow-up this review in the future with at least one, and preferably more, harder-to-drive headsets.

The MYTEK LIBERTY DAC AND HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER offers exceptionally good sound with a smooth and detailed frequency response that avoids glare. Its price is commensurate with its performance.

As a balanced and unbalanced DAC and preamplifier, the Mytek Liberty has superb technical chops. Its ability to handle any and all sources I threw at it (including MQA, DSD, and high-bitrate files) exceeds that of any other device I’ve tested. On the other hand, the lack of a remote-control volume pretty much disqualifies the Liberty (for most potential buyers) as anything but a headphone amplifier. This is in keeping with the Liberty’s stated design goal of “one-function, done very well.”

The sound of the Mytek Liberty is also exceptionally good. Better, in fact, than any other DAC I’ve yet heard that uses the Sabre-brand chipset. Apparently, significant attention was paid to filtering and buffering, and that attention shows in its highly-dynamic sound that (at least in my system) lacks any hint of harshness or glare.

Used within its intended parameters, the Mytek Liberty DAC and Headphone Amplifier seems like a winner to me!

The post Mytek Liberty DAC And Headphone Amplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Founded in 1991, Pass Labs has built a very solid reputation for developing and manufacturing some of the finest audio components available. If you ask anybody in the know within the high end audio industry about Pass Labs, they’ll most likely talk about their trademark industrial design, high level of performance, and dedication to accurate music reproduction.

In keeping with that tradition, they have developed the XP-17 Phono Preamplifier to offer stunning clarity through the use of technologies developed in their ultra-high-end XS product line (XS Phono Preamp sells for $45K!), and put it all together in a relatively affordable package that will suit the needs of most analog-oriented customers. And if you’re the type who owns a variety of cartridges, or like to buy and sell them regularly to find that “perfect” fit, the XP-17 has the ability to handle just about any cartridge you can throw at it.

During my time with the Pass Labs XP-17, I have found that it has the ability to do everything that I want it to do, and then some. Looking for a huge soundstage? Yep, it’ll do that. Want to extract the finest of details? Check on that as well. Like dead quiet backgrounds with massive dynamics? You get that in spades.

As I have previously stated, Pass Labs gear has been a part of my system(s) for a while now. I love the industrial design look to it, and I respect their direction and dedication to the high-end audio market. The brand adopted an early reputation for quality and innovation, and they have stuck to that same formula throughout the years. Those old-world values in a company are oftentimes hard to come by in today’s disposable world.

I had spent some time with Desmond Harrington and Kent English of Pass Labs at the AXPONA show in Chicago last year, and found that who they are in person, matches the company persona that you see and hear about. Professional, no-nonsense, and presentation that is free from overblown hype.

So when I saw that their popular and well-received XP-15 phono preamplifier was being replaced with an upgraded version in the XP-17, I knew that I wanted to have some time with it in my system. Pass Labs doesn’t make changes or upgrades very often, so I was confident that reviewing it would be worthwhile.

For those of you reading this review, you might wonder who the XP-17 is geared for. Given its $4,300 price tag, it’s definitely not intended for the first-time buyer into the vinyl playback market. Chances are, the person looking at this level has already gone through at least a few upgrade paths, and also has a nice turntable to go along with it. It’s not that you couldn’t match this up with a sub-$1,000 turntable; it’s just that you’d be more likely to be buying the XP-17 to go along with a higher-end unit that would work well together with it. A very good turntable and cartridge needs a quality phono preamplifier in order to bring out all of the details in the music. Likewise, if you’re running a high end phono preamp, you’ll want a turntable and cartridge that will compliment it as the two (turntable and phono preamp) are dependent in one another for the best playback and presentation.

As I worked on this review, I stumbled a bit when it came time to write some of the technical features in this Design segment. As I repeatedly read through the material from Pass Labs, I concluded they did a fantastic job of summarizing the design without going into too many technical details. Given that, I’d like to share their information accordingly:

As associated equipment in the audio chain has improved we at Pass Labs found ourselves longing for an improved phono-stage with even lower noise, greater resolution and sonic ease than we had enjoyed with the Pass Labs earlier phono stages. The XP-17 takes what we learned from developing our premier product line and has brought some of those elements to a smaller, less costly package.

The XP-17 has a very accurate RIAA equalization curve. This curve is accurate to better than 1/10 dB across 10 octaves. The accuracy of this curve does not vary with an adjustment change of gain or cartridge loading. The XP-17 features gain adjustable from between 56dB and 76dB; a range sufficient to allow successful operation of not only high output moving magnet cartridges, but also the lowest output moving coil cartridges without the use of an auxiliary step-up transformer.

This extremely low noise / high gain structure of the XP-17 is capable of cleanly and quietly delivering in excess of 0.5V line level signal output with a phono cartridge input of 80 micro-volts. These are some of the best performance figures in the industry, and spectacular for a piece at this price point.

While my system went through some changes during the evaluation period, my final setup included the Pass Labs XP-17 phono preamplifier, PS Audio BHK preamplifier, VPI Industries Prime Signature turntable with Ortofon MC Cadenza Bronze Cartridge, Pass Labs X350.8 amplifier, and GoldenEar Technology Triton Reference Speakers . All components sit on my Massif Audio Designs stands (Ambrosia Maple platforms with Zebrawood legs).

During the review process, I also switched around some components including a Pass Labs XP-20 preamplifier, Sutherland Engineering 20/20 phono preamplifier, and Pro-Ject 6Perspex turntable with Sumiko Blackbird cartridge.

After spending some time with the well-written Pass Labs owner’s manual, I had a very good idea of where I needed to start to get the XP-17 matched up to the Ortofon MC Cadenza Bronze cartridge that was mounted on the VPI Prime Signature Turntable. Starting with the specifications on the cartridge, and referencing the chart provided in the owner’s manual, I was able to get a solid baseline for me to play around with a bit in order to come up with what I felt was the best overall balance.

An excerpt from the manual talks about how cartridge loading is not an exact science, and I thought it would be prudent to add that into my article:

Please understand the loading of a moving coil cartridge is a very inexact science at best, specific recommendations should be taken (and offered) very lightly. I encourage you to think separately from the cartridge manufacturer and choose your resistive loading values accordingly.

In addition to finding what settings would work best for my system, I also did some A and B comparisons between the single-ended and balanced outputs going from the XP-17 to my preamplifier. It didn’t take long at all to conclude that the balanced outputs were going to be my choice, as the additional 6dB of gain they provide created a more dynamic presentation.

So the obvious question would be about how it sounds, right? In a nutshell, my system never sounded so open, realistic, and alive as it did with the combination of the Pass Labs XP-17 phono preamplifier teamed up with the VPI Prime Signature turntable. There’s a definite synergy between the two, and the Pass Lab’s ability to pass through the details that were extracted by the cartridge (without adding coloration) presented vinyl playback at its finest.

While my listening habits usually focus around music with high dynamic range, impact, and (very) loud volume levels, I found the XP-17 to work equally well regardless of the music type. Given its neutrality, it will work well with everything from classical, to jazz to rock.

Now let’s take a look at some specific listening observations!

She’s got a mix of jazz and blues, and the recording quality of everything that I have heard from her has been spectacular. In her title song Use Me, which is a cover from Bill Withers, I found her voice to magically hang in the air between the Triton Reference speakers, with the rest of the instrumentation presenting itself in a wall of sound across the stage. The bass notes were deep and refined, and the background noise was barely audible until I turned it up to ear-splitting volumes. Next up is the classic blues song I love you more than you’ll ever know. One of my favorite versions of this song is from a live performance from Gary Moore, where the focus is on his screaming guitar. In this version, it’s more of a focus on her amazing voice that comes through with absolute clarity on the high notes, without any harshness whatsoever. The guitar work is excellent in this recording, and you could clearly hear fingers sliding across the strings, as if the player was standing right in front of me. I know it’s cliché in audio reviews to say that I completely forgot I was reviewing gear as I got caught up in the music itself, but that’s exactly what the case was on this album.

Blues Deluxe is the rare studio album that I really enjoy. The title track, Blues Deluxe, is my favorite of them all and I have listened to it in many formats, and on a lot of systems. The very first time was at a friend’s house (Chuck Ellisor), who is the Founder of Genesis Audio in Gahanna, Ohio. It was played on his monstrous Sound Lab U1 speakers, being pushed by 2k watts a piece. The sound was huge, dynamic, and felt like a punch in the face. Since that moment, I was hooked.

This song has deep bass guitar notes with a high level of clarity and non-distorted lower reach. Playback also includes screaming, classic Joe guitar riffs without strain even at the highest volumes. Even at high volumes, the quiet passages had very little background noise. At about ¾ the way through the song, Joe goes off on one of his normal solos and just rips through the guitar in such a way that even if you’re hearing him for the first time, you know that you’ve never quite heard guitar like this. This song is just dripping with testosterone, and deserves both very high levels of volume, and a fine whiskey to go along with it.

Through my system, with the Pass Labs XP-17 leading the way, there are so many details extracted from the grooves in the LP; providing a moving listening experience.

Most of the time you’ll hear references to the song Keith Don’t Go because it’s the most popular song on the album. Yes, it’s that good, and it’s the perfect way to introduce people to Nils’ incredible ability if they haven’t heard him before. But the subject here is his less known song Some Must Dream. Granted, the early parts of the song are a little slow, but when Nils breaks into a long solo, it will absolutely take your breath away on the right system and synergy of components. With the combination of the VPI Prime Signature, Pass Labs XP-17, and the mighty GoldenEar Triton Reference, it does much more than just do it justice. The level of detail and brilliance in the mids-to-upper levels in this guitar work are so stunning that if I closed my eyes, I would have thought that I was back at Chuck’s house listening to his mighty Sound Labs. Yes, through the help of the Pass Labs XP-17, my GoldenEar’s transformed into massive electrostatic panels! If there was a weak link in my system, this song and presentation wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive. True reference material indeed.

On side D of the album, it starts out with a bit of an odd track called Magma. It’s not as much of a “song” as it is a collection of sound effects featuring voices and a variety of instruments dancing across the soundstage. This would be a great track for checking phase, testing speaker placement, and simply to wow your friends. The entire width of my listening room (approximately 14’) is a wall of sound during the playback of Magma, with the effects varying in height and depth. And late in the track, you are greeted with some extremely low and powerful bass tracks that when played on the right system, simply make the hairs on your arms stand at attention. Mini-monitors need not apply for this album because you simply won’t get the full realization of how much low end can be engineered into the grooves of a record! Once again through the strengths of my VPI Prime Signature and Pass Labs XP-17 phono preamp, it truly plays the material in the way that the artist and production crew intended. While I’m sure you could extract more detail out of an album like this, you’d have to spend truckloads of money to do so.

THE PASS LABS XP-17 PHONO PREAMPLIFIER is a true reference-class piece that is capable of a very high level of neutral analog playback. And for the price of $4,300, I see it as a true bargain in the realm of high-fidelity equipment.

As I’m sure you can conclude from my article, I really like the performance and features that are packed into the Pass Labs XP-17 Phono Preamplifier. It allows all of the details in the LP to come through, but it doesn’t add any signature of its own. It also provides enough connectivity and adjustability to meet your needs no matter what kind of cartridge you may own (or want to own). And to top all of that off, it has impeccable build quality and great looks as well.

For those who can really appreciate vinyl playback and all that it has to offer, you’ll really enjoy the Pass Labs XP-17 Phono Preamplifier.

Highly recommended!

The post Pass Labs XP-17 Phono Preamplifier Review appeared first on HomeTheaterHifi.com.

Although John Curl is also touted for his Parasound amplifiers, his efforts with the original Halo JC 3 phono preamplifier were extraordinarily well-received and reviewed. In and around 2013, Parasound made some adjustments to the JC 3 with the JC 3+, adding MC cartridge, adjusting the circuit boards and power supply. Secrets crowned his revised Halo Preamp, the Halo JC 3+ Phono Preamplifier with a Best Of award.

Completely aware of the large market for more affordable turntable phono preamplifiers, Parasound developed for half the cost, the JC 3 Jr. Once again with John Curl designing the circuitry, the new compact Jr. may become legendary on its own – I placed it in my setup along with my Halo P5 preamplifier and A21, both mainstays in my reference system for a while now. It looked good, sounded even better!

It would be natural to compare the Halo Jr. to the original JC 3 and more recently the updated Halo JC 3+. The immediate and obvious visual difference is the size, about 2” shorter. This is accomplished by replacing the large gain modules used for each channel, with a single board combining the channels. The board designed by Carl Thompson handles both the left and right channels, unlike the independent boards on the JC 3. The power supply is partitioned between the two, and the combination thereby reducing the chassis size. Gone is also the AC line conditioner. Additionally, the dual-mono power supply was replaced by one with a single shielded toroid power transformer.

That was perhaps the bad news, the good news is what still exists and what the Halo JC3 Jr offers: high quality resistors and capacitors keep the RIAA tracking to within 0.2dB, 24k gold-plated RCA jacks, balanced and unbalanced outputs, variable MC impedance from 50 – 550 ohms, a switch for three gain settings, 40, 50, and 60dB. And like every other Parasound product, they always include 12v trigger turn-on options.

Lastly, the only other button on the face of the unit is a mono switch, for playing older recordings, or re-releases of mono recorded music.

The gear I’m using is probably right in line with the value and affordability of the Halo JC 3 Jr preamplifier: A Marantz Reference TT-15S1 turntable with a Clearaudio Virtuosso wood ebony MM cartridge (47k Ohm loading with an output voltage of 3.6 mV). As such, the settings on the JC 3 Jr are limited to the gain selection only, for me I was happy at 50dB. More settings as I mentioned above are afforded to an MC cartridge. The beauty here with the Halo JC 3 Jr is that you do not have to remove the cover to make the adjustments, typical of other phono preamplifiers.

Having the Parasound Halo P5 preamplifier, I did use the balanced outputs from the JC 3 Jr. After trying both unbalanced and balanced, I found the latter more open, slightly richer sounding.

I had no expectations, owning several Halo pieces including both amplifiers and preamplifiers, I immediately found that the JC 3 Jr sounded solidly neutral, in control. I didn’t hear the JC 3 Jr adding a sonic signature, the essence of getting out of the way is what I did hear. The new Halo Jr had a nice balance across the spectrum – the mid-range especially taut.

I was struck by the very quiet nature of the JC 3 Jr without a record playing, turning up the preamplifier to ungodly volumes is the only way to get any hiss out of the Halo JC 3 Jr, and ultimately my system.

Secondly, I didn’t get an edginess to the music – some might prefer that illusion of detail, I heard it to sound natural. The Halo JC 3 Jr will not cut edges like a figure skater, (Olympics just ending, easy analogy) through the music, around voices and instruments. But it does articulate.

John Coltrane’s Blue Train record is a good example of The Halo JC 3 Jr’s ability to articulate instruments, not only Coltrane’s tenor sax but the brassy and airy trumpet, the full trombone and the warmth of the piano. Although the upright base could have been a bit deeper and punchier, it nonetheless was ample to compliment the trio of horns.

Thirdly, the Halo JC 3 Jr is solid state, I would almost expect besides a lower noise floor, less distortion and more control. Any fear I had that it would sound sterile, or clinical was out the window, evident playing women’s voices, especially.

Diana Krall’s, Quiet Nights is her bossa nova and jazz standards cover album that shows a softness to her voice, or maybe she was just in love with hubby Elvis Costello when she recorded it. Either way, the Halo JC 3 Jr was expressively warm and delicate. Her breathing, her sultriness matched the dreamy character of the instruments as well. The piano in “So Nice” is so sexy and fun, flirty. But just so, I would have expected a tiny bit more sparkle at the top. Yet the timbre for the piano was excellent.

My mother used to say, don’t set your goals compared to underachievers but rather to those that you aspire to. THE HALO JC 3 JR aspires to perform like a phono preamplifier priced much higher. What would I compare it to? Probably the Rogue Audio RP-1 at about $1,800 but you would give up balanced outputs and on-the-fly adjustments for loading.

I’m not sure anymore if a phono preamplifier that sells for just under $1,500 would be considered affordable – are you likely to be using a similarly priced turntable package? What’s my point? If you’re trying to eek every nuance out of your turntable with a modest setup, the Halo JC 3 Jr is perfect for you. In fact, it would take a significant upgrade in equipment to feel that perhaps the Jr is doing your system a disservice. In that case, the JC 3+ now available to you makes more sense. I for one find the Halo JC 3 Jr outstanding for value and performance.

Sure, there are preamplifiers costing just several hundred dollars but not with these features and this pedigree. If you’re even considering spending more, still, give the Jr a try.

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