Integrated Amp Reviews

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Integrated Amp Reviews
Sonic Frontiers Anthem Integrated 1 integrated amplifier
Robert Harley  |  Oct 15, 2021  |  First Published: Dec 01, 1996  |  0 comments
When the person on the street hears the term "high-end audio," they usually think of fancy, feature-laden systems that cost more than most houses. The unfortunate phrase evokes images of a lavish lifestyle replete with expansive Manhattan apartments and rolling country estates.
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Integrated Amp ReviewsMedia Server Reviews
Cambridge Audio EVO 150 streaming integrated amplifier
Robert Schryer  |  Sep 21, 2021  |  52 comments
In 1968, I was a 2-year-old toddler living in Paris, France—my birthplace—on the 14th floor of a diplomat-occupied apartment complex overlooking the Seine. My dad, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was stationed in Paris, working security at the Canadian embassy. My mom and I were there with him.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Boulder 866 integrated amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Aug 20, 2021  |  13 comments
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "boulder"? I think of a rugged, mountainous landscape with jagged snow-capped peaks. I see images of the last time I drove up from sunny Boulder, Colorado, to Rocky Mountain National Park and discovered so much snow coming down that if we had dared walk too far in, our trail would have been covered with snow and we'd never have been able to find our way out. But how magical it was!
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Vincent SV-737 integrated amplifier
Ken Micallef  |  Jul 01, 2021  |  9 comments
Founded in 1995 by Uwe Bartel, Vincent Audio is owned by Sintron Distribution GmbH. Vincent launched its LS-1 preamplifier and D-150 hybrid stereo power amplifier the year the company was founded.

Vincent "offers two 'electrical concepts,'" states the Vincent website. "One side is solid state transistor products. The other is a hybrid technology featuring vacuum tubes on the input stages combined with solid state transistors in the output stage."

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Integrated Amp Reviews
Line Magnetic LM-845IA integrated amplifier
Alex Halberstadt  |  Jun 18, 2021  |  11 comments
If you've ever paused in front of a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, you may have noticed that the canvas seems to glow. Everything in Rubens's paintings celebrates abundance. A golden light bathes his landscapes, and his figures are epitomes of radiant health—the women ample and voluptuous (a body type sometimes called "Rubenesque"), the men vigorous and athletic. Invariably, these expanses of rosy European flesh appear to be in motion, an effect Rubens mastered more thoroughly than arguably any artist of his age.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
AVM Ovation A 6.2 ME integrated amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  May 28, 2021  |  22 comments
During my 100 years on earth, I've owned mostly separate amps and preamps, but only because that is where I started—or I should say, that is where my audio-savvy friends directed me when I began asking for guidance. Nevertheless, the audio system I've used the longest (unchanged for almost 10 years) consisted of 1984 Rogers LS3/5a loudspeakers (15 ohms, with factory wall mounts) powered by a proletarian-looking Creek 4330 integrated amp sourced by an Oppo CD player.
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Integrated Amp ReviewsStand Loudspeaker Reviews
Two Recent FollowUp Reviews
John Atkinson  |  Apr 19, 2021  |  First Published: May 01, 2021  |  27 comments
Stereophile has reviewed two somewhat controversial products in recent issues. The Italian Grandinote Shinai integrated amplifier, which Robert Schryer wrote about in November 2020 is a solid-state design but with an output stage that resembles that of a typical push-pull tube amplifier. Falcon's "Gold Badge" edition of the BBC-designed LS3/5a minimonitor, which Herb Reichert reviewed in April 2021, is a re-engineered version of a design that will soon be celebrating its 50th birthday.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
T+A PA3100 HV integrated amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Apr 02, 2021  |  12 comments
"I want to redo that painting," the spouse declared. "It's too dark."

"What's wrong with dark?" I responded. "Rembrandt's portraits are often dark. So are the paintings of Courbet and Hobbema. Your color palette represents how you were feeling at the moment. If it's true to you and speaks strongly, why change it?"

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Integrated Amp Reviews
VAC Sigma 170i IQ integrated amplifier
Julie Mullins  |  Mar 25, 2021  |  20 comments
All my earliest hi-fi memories involve tube amplification: as a young girl, staring at the tubes' glowing filaments and listening to music with my audiophile father. I was mesmerized by the glow of those tubes, too hot to touch, but even more so by the music, which often was classical or opera. How those tubes worked was a mystery to me, but I knew they played a big part in the magic coming from the speakers.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Moonriver 404 Reference integrated amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Jan 28, 2021  |  16 comments
Joy. It's all about the joy.

Joy manifests during those moments when the critical mind suspends, the lens clears, and only union between you and your experience exists. When joy arises, time stands still, all sense of separation vanishes, and only wonder remains.

Many of us live for those moments. Moments of understanding that transcend verbiage and mental chatter and affirm what is real and eternal about the human condition.

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FM Tuner ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
McIntosh MAC7200 stereo receiver
Larry Greenhill  |  Dec 30, 2020  |  39 comments
Recently, I received an email from Editor Jim Austin. "Larry, do you still use your Day Sequerra FM Reference tuner1 to listen to FM radio?" he asked.

"Jim, yes, I still listen to FM classical music in the Bay area. Why?"

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Integrated Amp Reviews
Cambridge Audio CXA81 integrated amplifier
Ken Micallef  |  Dec 24, 2020  |  20 comments
During my tenure as a Stereophile writer, I've reviewed a lot of integrated amplifiers. The mostly moderately priced integrated machines I've reviewed have included the Heed Audio Elixir ($1195), Luxman SQ-N150 ($2795) and L-509X ($9495), NAD C 328 Hybrid Digital ($549), Octave Audio V 80 SE ($10,500), Rega Brio ($995), and Schiit Ragnarok 2 ($1799 as equipped). Regardless of price, all these integrated amplifiers engaged my senses and made engaging, dynamic, colorful music from LP grooves and ones and zeros.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Marantz Model 30 integrated amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Dec 18, 2020  |  14 comments
DeKalb, Illinois, 1971: When I was in college, my anthropology professor would invite me and a few of his other favored students to his house for fondue parties. We sat on shag carpet around a glass-topped coffee table, drank wine, and dipped vegetables in molten cheese. The stated purpose of this rite was to discuss Margaret Mead or Franz Boas, but that was obviously a ruse. The gathering was really about excessive pot smoking accompanied by coughing fits and the telling of ridiculous stories, all while playing LPs on his top-of-the-line Dual turntable/record-changer.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
E.A.T. E-Glo I integrated amplifier
Ken Micallef  |  Dec 02, 2020  |  28 comments
The story behind European Audio Team (E.A.T.) is that of one woman, company owner and CEO Jozefína Lichtenegger.

While studying for her MBA at the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia, Lichtenegger (née Krahulkova) sold vacuum tubes for her brother-in-law, Alesa Vaic, then owner of Czech Republic–based tube brand VAIC. After VAIC shuttered in 2003, Lichtenegger founded her own retail business and engaged 100-year-old tube manufacturer Tesla Vršovice to supply 300B and KT88 tubes made to her specifications. When the owner of Tesla retired, she bought the company. She christened her new endeavor E.A.T. (The original Tesla continues as TESLA ElectronTubes, s.r.o.)

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Integrated Amp Reviews
Grandinote Shinai integrated amplifier
Robert Schryer  |  Oct 16, 2020  |  16 comments
I was doing my press beat for Stereophile in the hallway of Montreal's 2019 Audiofest when I glimpsed something that stopped me in my tracks. It was a marketing slogan, across the room on importer/exhibitor Goerner Audio's floorstanding banner: "Tubes or semiconductors? Magneto-solid technology amplifies emotions."
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