LATEST ADDITIONS

While Universal's heavily publicized attempt at CD price reduction didn't pan out as hoped last year, there is evidence to suggest that CD prices may be slowly moving downward.

The Jeff Rowland Design Group has long been renowned for the exquisite quality of its chassis. The company was one of the first to promote fully balanced topologies in preamplifiers and amplifiers in the high-end market, one of the first to offer a sonically acceptable remote control, and one of the few to offer a battery power option for their amplifier line.

Pass Laboratories' X amplifier series represents the efforts of designer Nelson Pass to prove that simple linear amplifier topologies can be scaled to provide high-quality audio performance at very high power levels. The handsome X1000 monoblock under scrutiny here, the largest and most powerful amp in the Pass stable, makes 1000W into 8 ohms and a mighty 2000W into 4 ohms. The amplifier has no global negative feedback, and only two gain stages: the front-end provides all the voltage gain and feeds a high-current follower stage.