Finally, John gave me a chance to demo the latest iteration of The Nines.

The system we used to demo the prototype Nines was made of a Solen Solo integrated amp and a California Audio Labs Delta and Alpha combination CD player.

The Solo, John told me, "immediately became the Ensemble B-50 Tiger integrated amp when Solen of Canada objected to sharing its name. Only a few were made under the old name, and I'm fairly sure nothing was changed beyond the name. As the Ensemble Tiger it gathered a great reputation and helped launch Ensemble in the US. It's a little 50 watt hybrid using tubes in the preamp section and transistors in the power amp section."