Solid State Power Amp Reviews

On the bench, the Muse monoblock clipped at 153.1W (21.84dBW) into 8 ohms, and 256.5W into 4 ohms (21dBW)—excellent voltage-source behavior. Full power output into 2 ohms blew the 5 amp line fuse, but when the input signal was switched on briefly, the Muse put out 389W (19.9dBW) into 2 ohms at clipping. This performance is quite impressive. In addition, the Muse monoblock was extremely cool-running, both during music reproduction and at full power output on the bench.

The frequency-response graph showed a ruler-flat high end, but with an LF rolloff below about 50Hz. The response was down nearly 1dB at 30Hz, and 1.8dB at 20Hz. During the auditioning, however, I never had the impression of extreme LF leanness. When driving a capacitive load (2.2µF in parallel with the load resistor), the Muse monoblock exhibited a typical HF rise of 0.9dB at 20kHz.

Output impedance was 0.67 ohm across the band. This figure is high for a solid-state amplifier, and in disagreement with Muse Electronics' published spec of 0.06 ohm. Again, the listening impressions of tight, well-controlled bass did not correlate to the measured output impedance.—Robert Harley