Boulder 2050 monoblock amplifier Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

I auditioned the 2050 in balanced mode using Boulder's 2010 Isolated Balanced preamplifier and B.A.T.'s more affordable VK-5i. Single-ended preamps were the Nagra PL-P and the YBA Signature 6 Chassis.

CDs were spun by the Forsell Air Bearing CD transport, the signal fed into Boulder's 2020 Advance D/A converter, dCS's Elgar, and Ensemble's Dichrono DAC, with occasional blasts on the dCS 972 sample-rate converter between transport and the D/As. I also tried the dCS 972/Elgar combo straight into the 2050s.

Analog signals were provided by the Forsell Air Force One turntable and the La Luce 'table from the Netherlands, with Koetsu, van den Hul, and Clearaudio cartridges. Balanced and single-ended interconnects included Synergistic Research Designer's Reference, TARA Labs The One, and Ensemble MasterFlux. Digital datalinks were almost exclusively XLO Limited Edition with RCA and BNC terminations. Speaker cables on the JMlab Utopias were Designer's Reference, TARA The One, and XLO Limited Edition.

And we're now blessed with all PolyCrystal racks—a big improvement to our system—about which I'll tell you more sometime soon.—Jonathan Scull

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