Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Gryphon's founder, Flemming E. Rasmussen, endowed the Apex Stereo with a bold industrial design featuring several striking elements: large, smooth (fanned) heatsinks; massive, brushed-aluminum faceplates; robust spiked feet; and, with unabashed frontal prominence, the same triangular touchscreen seen on the Gryphon Commander preamplifier.

The Apex Stereo amplifier will set you back $99,000 (as will each equally massive Apex Mono, the Stereo's monoblock twin—double that for a pair). While not exactly budget-friendly, the Apex Stereo's price is competitive in the rarefied top-end audio market. It comes with a five-year warranty on materials and workmanship.

If you compare the Apex Stereo and Mono specs, you might be surprised to find that although the latter employs twice as many output devices per channel as the former (64 per mono channel), its output is only marginally higher: 225W versus 210W at 8 ohms. That's because Gryphon does not bridge the amp to achieve greater power output. Instead, in the mono configuration, it uses 32 output devices for each phase, resulting in output impedance that's half that of the mono version.

Standing (and sitting) at the Apex
Once I was through the startup light show, satisfied that all was in good order, I warmed up the amplifier with an hour-long Roon stream while reading through some old reviews online. (Gryphon breaks in the amp at the factory before packing and shipping, but an hour's warmup is always a good idea, especially for a solid state amplifier.)

As I waited, I thought about some other amplifiers I've owned and reviewed and read some earlier reviews online: The relatively affordable Rotel Michi M8, which produced gobs of listening pleasure and musical delight, came to mind, as did the large and powerful Musical Fidelity kW750, which, in retrospect, was a little bright and rough around the transient edges despite its effortless power output, but then that was 17 years ago. I described the kW750 as "a big, heavy brute weighing 75 pounds"—ha ha ha—"and that doesn't include the 47-pound outboard power supply."

For my first critical listening session, I chose the double-45rpm 2009 Analogue Productions reissue of Nat "King" Cole's Love is the Thing (APP 824-45). The mastering annotation looked familiar; halfway through reading, I realized I had written it! The stereo recording from December 1956 is a string-drenched classic with a wide soundstage, but the violins have always had a slight, shrill edge. Nat, singing close to the microphone, has a rich, mellow sound, but the voice, too, is slightly edgy on top. Despite those minor flaws, this is a great demo disc.

The Apex Stereo's ease of presentation was immediately obvious: It was tossing off Nat and his orchestra with an almost offhand casualness, almost daring me to not pay attention. But it did the opposite—it fully engaged me. And I found myself drawn in deeper still by a newfound intimacy in Nat's voice. The amp exuded supreme self-confidence. It was like being in the presence of a charismatic person.

An undefinable, unmeasurable quality of the Apex asserted itself every day, in every listening session, imparting a sense of listening comfort. Over time, I concluded that this is due to the amp's overall, top-to-bottom speaker grip. This is more about timing than timbral or spatial presentation (although the Apex performs equally well in those areas, too). Everything in familiar music appeared better organized, timed, and settled, without restricting the musical flow. I've reviewed other solid state amps with a similar ability to grip and control speakers, but this was always at the cost of musical flow and transient subtlety; the result was also a degree of cardboard-cutout imaging, unnatural transient attack, and hyper edge definition. The Apex takes grip and musical flow to a higher level, particularly in the upper bass through the lower midrange, without such compromises.

I've always loved this Nat record, but it always showed its seams during string swells and certain vocal passages. The picture the Apex painted was seamless, complete, and supple. The acoustical envelope and generous sustain around the lower strings, cushioning Cole's voice, produced supple, textural richness that didn't mask transient definition and detail. My skepticism about achieving this with a stack of transistors went out the window.

Next was Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole from the box set Ravel: Complete Orchestral Works (LP, Electric Recording Company ERC 061/UK Columbia SAX 2477) with André Cluytens conducting the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, first released in 1963. Although notably transparent, this recording sounded somewhat bright and distant. The Apex presentation was wide and stable, the soundstage well back from the speakers, not adding warmth to the cool, bright, transient-rich sound.

Side 2 of this record concludes with Ravel's famous La valse, which goes from melodic, delicate, soaring strings to cacophonous, off-kilter explosiveness. It's filled with complex percussive transients, brass, woodwinds, rumbling timpani, and delicate harp glissandi—a treacherous environment for a grainy or etchy amplifier, equally so for one that blunts or softens transients. The Apex delivered this piece better than I've ever heard it, with a lifelike sense of depth. Harp glissandi were precise, rich, and not too sharply drawn. Brass and woodwinds had body and definition and were imaged precisely to mirror the physical stage. The timpani at the back of the stage were well-defined rhythmically and spot-on timbrally. Their occasional exclamatory smack demonstrated the amp's ability to oblige abrupt sonic demands with alacrity and authority. But beyond that, the presentation proved that the Apex can sizzle cleanly and quickly when called upon and deliver even complex musical strands without the etch and grain that often accompany highly responsive solid state amps. Fast, precise attack; generous, lingering sustain; clean, smooth decay—these, for me, are the hallmarks of a great amplifier, and the Gryphon excelled at all three.

Moving on to streaming, Neil Young's Royce Hall 1971, from his Bootleg Series (192/24 FLAC, Reprise/Qobuz), demonstrated the amp's transient precision, speed, transparency, and that special lower-midrange grip. Young's voice and guitar hovered palpably between the speakers, the hall acoustic trailing subtly behind, adding warmth and a strong sense of dimensionality.

Next, I played Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," from their album Random Access Memories (24/44.1 MQA, Columbia/Tidal). The Apex Stereo's attack speed, taut midbass, and clean transients were demonstrated amply. The vinyl version of this album (Columbia 88883716861) produced a far greater sense of three-dimensionality, no less midbass, and uncanny imaging; you could all but see the singers. Cranking it way up on "Beyond" bathed the room in Daft Punk 3D luxury. You can crank up this amp, and it won't let you down—not timbrally, rhythmically, nor spatially. It just gets bigger and louder and never becomes hard or loses hold of the speakers.

The Apex Stereo's grip on the speakers produced an unexpected, welcome effect: Because I sit quite close to the tall XVXes, sometimes, depending upon the recording, the soundstage appears higher than it should be, floating in space. The Apex, possibly because of its stellar performance in the midbass to bottom-end range, consistently presented a floor-based soundstage at the proper height. Listening to Charles Lloyd's delightful live recording Trios: Chapel, with Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan (Blue Note promo FLAC; the vinyl wasn't due until the end of June), eyes closed, the soundstage appeared to extend from just above the woofer enclosures to a height that reflected the acoustic space of the recording, the Coates Chapel in San Antonio, Texas. And although the spatial presentation was high and deep, the musicians remained grounded and were imaged solidly and believably.

A synergistic combination
It made complete sense to audition the Gryphon Apex Stereo amp with Gryphon's recently reviewed Commander preamp. The importer agreed to bring the preamp over, which was not an easy undertaking, as it consists of two bulky, heavy chassis.

Once here, the Apex–Commander team seemed to work synergistically and took my listening experience with the Apex Stereo—one of the best home auditions I've ever had—to a higher level still. (I've noticed similar synergy with the darTZeel amp– preamp combo.)

Back in 1997, King Records, in Japan, hired Record Technology Inc. (RTI) of Camarillo, California, to press a series of Decca/ London reissues. Mastering overseer Robert Pincus (Cisco, Impex) sent me a stack of white-jacket test pressings, including Vladimir Ashkenazy's Liszt Recital (King KIJC-9206). That record through this system (X-quisite ST cartridge, the AXIOM tonearm reviewed elsewhere in this issue, X-quisite step-up transformer, and Stealth Helios DIN/RCA cable), with this Gryphon amplification, produced the most realistic piano sound I've ever heard in my room, in every known sound-reproduction parameter and probably a few that are not yet known. (The Lyra Atlas Lambda SL/Schröder arm/OMA K3 combo was slightly less percussive and somewhat darker but also riveting.) The combo also produced the most believable Rolling Stones performance yet on the supposedly murky and impenetrable Exile on Main Street (Artisan Sound original Rolling Stones Records 722507). A 50-year-old record played for 50 years delivered a huge shot of adrenalin—and not because the amplifier was about to catch fire!

I don't think I've ever used the old audiophile acronym PRaT (pace, rhythm, and timing), so I'll use it now, in my final Stereophile review: The Apex Stereo amp has PRaT, but the Apex–Commander combo has it in spades. The Apex Stereo amp, alone and combined with the Commander preamp, seems to up the pace of everything, as if your turntable is running fast, while simultaneously digging further down into each musical instant, making each gesture live longer, with precise attack, generous sustain, and long decay. The amp simultaneously speeds things up and slows things down. A neat trick. That's the long and the short of it.