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My mother's words echoed in my ears as I unboxed Classé Audio's CAM 350 monoblock amplifiers, and I couldn't help but smile. I've been using Magnepan loudspeakers on and off for the past 20 years, most often matching them with tube amps—VTL, for example, or perhaps VAC, Sonic Frontiers, or Audio Research. As good as these systems have been, what I always inevitably found myself wishing for was "a really good, big solid-state amp."

Aladdin's Lamp?
At 350W—or 700W into the Magnepan 3.6/R's 4 ohm load—I figured the…

Over the years, in daydreams in which I'd mentally paired Magnepans with my dream amp, the most dramatic effects were significant improvements in transparency, dynamics, and the resolution of low-level detail. In my musings, that last little bit of gauze that my Maggies could never seem to shake would simply vaporize. The tiniest details would be revealed, imbuing images with a vibrant life and body. Subtle…

Potentiometers:
VR1: Your choice of ALPS "Black Beauty" 100k stereo audio taper pot, Penny & Giles RF15-2-20k-A 20k stereo audio taper pot or ALPS "Budget Gourmet" 100k stereo audio taper pot (Radio Shack part #271-1732).

VR2 & 3: Bourns 3386-OT1 5k sealed cermet miniature trimpot.

Buffers:
IC1 & 2: PMI BUF-03AJ milspec version. (The impecunious can experiment with the less-expensive BUF-03J and -EJ commercial versions, which have reduced slew rates and drive capabilities, but these have not been auditioned.)

Switches:
SW1 & 2…

Fig.1 Click on image for larger view

Fig.2 Click on image for larger view

Letters in response appeared in Vol.15 No.2, February 1992

Passive semantics
Editor:
My audiophile interest and activity date back to the time when a cactus thorn was the high-end stylus of choice, ca 1938. This predates the preamplifier by approximately ten years.

In its first embodiment, a preamp was just that: a self-powered extra stage of amplification between the phono cartridge and whatever amplifier was being used. This was made necessary by the very low voltage output of GE's new variable reluctance cartridge as it began to replace the crystal devices we…

"Dad-blamed Postal Service!" Elvis fumed, shooting up a Mitsubishi big-screen TV with his blue .357 and taking a pull off a Big Red. "Mah one chance tuh be awn a genyoowahn US stamp, an' they got me lookin' jes' like some cleenteen WIMP, man!" A smoking shard of the big-screen's control panel fell earthward. Elvis whirled, blew it into dust before it hit the ground.

Why was the King Of Rock And Roll in my dreams again? To holler about the…

I've always liked the various Kimber Kables (the AC cord on my preamp is a Kimber Power Kord), so I got hold of some of their silver KCAG interconnect; you know, that cool-looking white stuff with the three braided wires and no shield. Inside the preamp, I used it just like it's used for interconnect: one wire for signal, the other two tied together for ground. I…

But when I installed the dual-regulated power supply, the preamp was transformed. Bass lines just bounced out of the BUFs, deeper and tighter than I'd ever heard them over the mighty Muse subwoofer; the sense…

I The chapel is quiet. Early morning sunlight, tinted by stained glass, glares through the gloom. Golden dust-motes leap up at our entrance, flashing crimson, then cerulean as they dance among our rattling footsteps.

Silence is not emptiness, I muse, sitting in the deserted sanctuary. Even when still, the space is full of itself. The walls and roof are but a skin; what they contain is the thing itself.

II Hyperion Knight, drawn to the Steinway, begins to play, and the…