Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Best known for its omnidirectional loudspeakers, the German manufacturer mbl also produces three complete lines of high-performance electronics that, despite being large and built to jewel-like perfection, are sometimes lost in the shadow cast by the dramatic-looking—and -sounding—Radialstrahler 101E, which I reviewed in October 2004.

When most of us think about the folks who populate the high-end audio industry, we tend to conjure up the designers—the names above the titles, as it were. Or, in many cases, the names that are the titles: Richard">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/688vandersteen">Richard Vandersteen, Jim">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/221">Jim Thiel, Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson, Mike Creek, to name just a few.

Man, you've got to watch out for those preconceived notions—they'll kill you every time. For the last several years I've seen Plinius amplifiers at hi-fi shows and—even though I didn't know the first thing about the company or its products—figured that I knew what they were all about. Spotting their brawny façades festooned with feathery heatsinks, I smugly assured myself that they were some kind of antipodean pretender to the muscle-amp throne—Krell or Threshold wannabes.

Where does one start with the Moscode 401HR? With its design, which marries a tube driver stage to a MOSFET power output? Or perhaps with its designer, George Kaye, who refined Julius Futterman's OTL amplifier circuits before creating New York Audio Labs' original hybrid amplifier, the Moscode 300, in 1984?

Nowadays, when most people think of New Zealand, the first things that probably come to mind are the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, its director, Peter Jackson, or sheep. Certainly, LOTR was a great achievement in film history and, as its auteur, Jackson reaped no small fame for his efforts, as well as multiple Academy Awards and several krillion dollars. The country is also well known as a place where sheep outnumber humans by something like 12 to 1. However, New Zealand is also the source of some very fine audio equipment; both Perreaux and Plinius are proudly headquartered in beautiful, serene, friendly Kiwiland.

The W-8 ($10,200) is the first of Simaudio's Moon series to incorporate the new Evolution cosmetics and new circuitry. I loved its predecessor, the Moon">http://www.stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/167">Moon W-5, which was one of the first power amplifiers I reviewed for Stereophile (March 1999, Vol.22 No.3). I also loved the "new and improved" W-5 when I wrote about in the May 2001 issue. In the September 2005 issue, Brian Damkroger praised Simaudio's monstrous Moon">http://www.stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/905sim">Moon Rock monoblock, a contemporary of the Moon Evolution W-8 stereo amp.

Lord Acton said, famously, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If there ever were an amplifier to test that maxim's applicability to audiophiles, it is surely the Chord SPM 14000 Ultimate Monoblock. Priced no less than $75,000/pair, the SPM 14000 is rated to produce power as do very few other amplifiers on the planet: it is very conservatively rated at 1kW into an 8 ohm load, 2kW into 4 ohms, and "will easily exceed" 2800W (give or take a few watts) into 2 ohms.