Integrated Amp Reviews

I remember, around the time I started at Stereophile, telling Art Dudley that I wanted to review "a lot of power amplifiers" because amplifiers are the "blood-pumping heart machines" that "reanimate the artistry" of musicians: Horowitz, Björk, Bill Monroe. Whereupon he looked over his glasses and spied me with bare eyes like a stern parent and said, "Just be sure to not review any amplifiers that weigh more than 65 pounds."

Technics, an arm of the Japanese giant Panasonic Corporation, has long been a major player in the hi-fi world, even if, in some recent decades, it stayed below the radar.

In the 1970s, analog-centric audiophiles particularly praised the Technics SP-10, the world's first direct drive turntable. Created by Matsushita engineer Shuichi Obata in 1969, the SP-10 and its successors became the standard in vinyl playback for American radio stations during that heyday of broadcast radio.

Stereophile often subjects products that have been reviewed to further coverage: sometimes because there was an aspect of performance that needed further investigation; other times because there was a controversial finding. Three recent followups concerned the Ayre Acoustics EX-8 2.0 Integrated Hub amplifier that Ken Micallef reviewed in the November 2021 issue; the Accuphase DG-68 Digital Voicing Equalizer that Jason Victor Serinus reviewed in August 2021; and the Zesto Leto Ultra II line preamplifier that Ken Micallef reviewed in February 2021.

In New York City, everything comes at a premium: Housing, groceries, transportation, walking space, living space, sanity space—consider our cubbyhole apartments and tenement buildings. Even "air rights" are for sale in NYC, including rights to the air over my beloved Katz's Delicatessen in the Lower East Side. The square footage of my downtown apartment is less than a quarter of the space of my North Carolina home. (Brownstones? Only above 72nd Street.) But, as the song says, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." What did Frank Sinatra know, anyway? He was from Hoboken!

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.

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!

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."