Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Dinesh Paliwal, CEO of Harman International Industries, was addressing engineers and the audio press in a crowded conference room at the opening of Harman Luxury Audio's new Engineering Center of Excellence (ECOE), in Shelton, Connecticut. Paliwal singled out as the ECOE's first beneficiary the Mark Levinson brand, with the goal of revitalizing it as Harman's flagship marque. (Other brands in the HII stable include Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, Crown, AKG, Lexicon, and Revel.) To achieve this, he gave the ECOE team access to Harman's R&D budget of $400 million; brought on Todd Eichenbaum, formerly of Krell, to be its Director; and hired 11 more engineers.

I've known Peder Bäckman, international sales director for the German firm Audio Video Manufaktur GmbH (AVM), for many years, ever since he worked with Electrocompaniet. When I told him that I was looking for products to review in the reference system in my new 20' by 16' by 9' music room, he invited me to browse AVM's large catalog and see what tickled my fancy. In consultation with John Atkinson, it became clear that AVM's largest, most powerful monoblock amplifier, the Ovation MA8.2 ($29,990/pair), seemed a good fit.

"I'm a recording engineer, so I value accuracy," said a panelist in a discussion—titled "How to Read Between the Lines of Audio Advertising"—at last October's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. I, too, was on the panel, which was moderated by Brent Butterworth, a writer for the SoundStage! Network of online audio magazines.

"Accuracy is overrated," I interjected from the other end of the dais. "Accurate to what? To your sonic tastes? To what you hear on your preferred loudspeakers? Other than one's personal preferences, I'm not sure the term accuracy has much meaning."

In 1967, in Los Angeles, Morris Kessler, with Ted and Beth Winchester, founded Scientific Audio Electronics (SAE), which enjoyed a successful run of 21 years. In addition to Kessler, Sherwood Electronics cofounder Ed Miller, as well as the legendary James Bongiorno, contributed designs. (If you don't know Bongiorno's résumé, please do a web search.) Some SAE products, particularly their big-metered power amplifiers, became objects of desire for audiophiles on the West Coast and, especially, in Japan.

To those who were into audio in the late 1980s and early '90s, the name Audio Alchemy is a familiar one. I've owned DACs and jitter-reducing devices made by Audio Alchemy and Perpetual Technologies (the first successor to the original AA) and found them to provide excellent performance at modest prices. Indeed, at the time, many in the industry felt that the Audio Alchemy products were underpriced, leaving too little room for profit, and that this led to the company's demise. The new Audio Alchemy—led by its original designer, Peter Madnick, and having on staff other employees from the old AA—is what Madnick describes as a "grown-up" version of the original company, maintaining "the brand's original ethos of superior technology and value." And the prices, while quite reasonable for the performance they seem to offer, appear high enough to allow the new AA to survive.

I'm a jazz lover. To be specific: I'm a lover of jazz on vinyl. I'm referring not to my sexual proclivities but to 33¹/₃rpm LPs from such venerable labels as Blue Note, BYG Actuel, Contemporary, ECM, ESP-Disk, Impulse!, Prestige, and Riverside. Nothing hits the sweet soul spot of this former jazz drummer and devout jazz head harder than Tony Williams's riotous ride-cymbal beat, Hank Mobley's carefree tenor-saxophone shouts, Charles Mingus's gutbucket double-bass maneuvers, or Bill Evans's haunting piano explorations. Jazz and vinyl both may constitute narrow slivers of music sales, but millions of us around the globe are on a constant hunt for exceedingly rare, grail-like jazz LPs, which we spin on our turntables with an equally holy reverence for the musicians' achievements.

I first saw Benchmark's AHB2 stereo power amplifier at the 2013 Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, in New York City. On silent display in Benchmark's booth on the convention floor, its compact size and comprehensive features made the amp immediately attractive, and the design was described as a departure from traditional analog and digital amplifiers. It was also explained to me that the AHB2 was based on designs by Benchmark's founder, Allen H. Burdick (whose initials it bears). By the time of Burdick's retirement, in 2006, Benchmark didn't yet offer a power amplifier, but the company used a prototype based on his work to evaluate their new digital products, and that amp was soon developed as a commercial product; Burdick died just weeks before the AHB2, now named in his honor, was shown at the 2013 AES convention.