Partying with Music Hall's A70.2

There were beautiful women. There were pink socks. There was loud music, expensive alcohol, shameless dancing. There might have been a tiger in the bathroom. It wasn’t like a party in the Music Hall suite—it was a party. The company’s energetic sales manager, Leland Leard, was too busy rocking out, so Roy Hall introduced me to his new A70.2 integrated amplifier ($1499). (Here we see Leland playing DJ; I will spare us the images of Leland on the dance floor.)

Rated to deliver 125Wpc, the dual-mono A70.2 is easily Music Hall’s most powerful amp to date. It uses two large toroidal power transformers, one for each channel, and offers a front-panel iPod input and headphone output, rear-panel RCA and XLRs, a moving-magnet phono stage, preamp output, and home-theater bypass.

The A70.2 was mated to Epos’s Elan 30 loudspeakers ($1999/pair) and EAT’s E-Flat turntable with a gorgeous Yosegi phono cartridge ($7495). We listened to a mix of independent and mainstream dance music—James Blake’s “Limit to Your Love” preceded Lady Gaga’s “Disco Stick”—and the system showed no signs of breaking a sweat, even when pushed to party levels.

COMMENTS
deckeda's picture

... that "iPod" input is a mislabled 1/8" line level auxilliary input. Just like cheap car stereos sometimes have.

Wait, that's not right. Cheap car stereos often have DACs in them with USB inputs to bypass the iPod's internal DAC and headphone amp.

Cihangir Güzey's picture

Cartridge price is 3 times the cost of amp+speakers. I wonder who one else builts a system with such a balanced (!) combination.

Stephen Mejias's picture

$7495 is the price of the turntable and cartridge.

Paul Luscusk's picture

Before or after Roy brought  out the "Single Malt" ?

stereo slim's picture

... and slipped into my blue suede shoes --- J. Blake's incredible "Limit to Your Love" indeed induces shameless dancing ... not even Single Malt required ... keep on dancin', Stephen, despite your loathing Vegas!

Bill Leebens's picture

The spectacular Jozefina of EAT was in the house--and you show LELAND?!?

Stephen, Stephen, Stephen....

X