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Pass Laboratories celebrated its 25th Anniversary in business by introducing its HPA-1 headphone amplifier ($3500). The circuitry is a two-stage CFA topology using cascaded ultra-low noise Toshiba JFETs driving complementary Fairchild power MOSFETs running in class-A.
Pass Laboratories designer Wayne Colburn showed me their new INT-60 Integrated amplifier ($9000). Rated at 60Wpc, the amplifier uses the same heatsinks, power supplies, and output stages as the Pass Point 8 power amplifiers. As usual, the Pass Laboratory products were on static display, so I was not able to sample the sound of this new integrated amplifier.
Finished in Lancaster Grey, the Quad PA-One headphone amplifier is a full-tube design, with a built-in DAC.
Quad electrostatic loudspeakers have been unavailable in the United States retail market for the past few years because there has been no importer. In the past 12 months, MoFi Distribution has stepped up to develop a dealer network and provide service. As a long-time Quad 989 owner, this was music to my ears.
Jonathan Derda, Mo-Fi's National Sales and Marketing Manager, described the new service center in Fairfax, Virginia that will service all vintages and versions of the loudspeaker, including ESL-57s, ESL-63s, 988s, 989s, and more recent models. Leaning on a new, 42" high, $11,999/…
Scientific Audio Electronics (SAE), founded in 1967, has been out of business for decades. Recently, Morris Kessler of ATI, manufacturers of the ATI and Theta brands,helped restore the company. At CES, Bill Skaer, National Director of Sales, presented the firm's latest amplifier, the 125 lb, SAE 2 HP-D Display version ($19,995).
The front panel features a huge digital display that shows either two analog meters, one stacked on top of the other, or a real-time spectrum analyzer, also showing both channels . The design is a dual-mono, fully differential, full-balanced amplifier…
VTL Amplifiers, Inc. introduced the $3000 TL-2.5i Performance Preamplifier at CES 2016. It features 6 line inputs, an optional $2000, internally retrofitable phono stage, two pairs of outputs, and a tape loop.
Released as a new and improved version of a previous model, both line stage and phono stages have been upgraded with audiophile parts. Its internal phono stage supports both MM and MC cartridges, and features a low-noise hybrid JFET design and a user-selectable MC step-up transformer option for lowest noise. Alternatively, the user can use an active gain stage for MC cartridges. The…
Shipping in the second quarter of 2016, Meitner's extremely powerful MTRX2 1kW monoblock amplifiers (price around $80,000/pair), which output 600W into 8 ohms and 1000W into 4 ohms, may be the weaker siblings of their flagship MTRX predecessors, but they have their own proprietary topology to make them feel their equal. "Not only are the MTRX2 amplifiers ultra-fast and ultra-transparent, but they'll also output to 1 ohm," EMM Labs' Shahin Al Rashid explained. "That means they will handle any speaker." Add to that zero loop negative feedback.
In an all-Meitner system whose new DA2 stereo…
I've been variously enamored and critical of the sound of Acapella loudspeakers and electronics on previous occasions, but here, in a space I would have considered too narrow to be optimal, the German-handmade Acapella Cellini ($55,000/pair) sounded excellent. Never before shown at a US show, the Cellini stands out due to its hyper-spherical midrange horn. (The Acapella Violin, for example, has a spherical horn.) It also has Acappella's TW1 ion tweeter, and claims an overall frequency range of 28Hz–40kHz , and a sensitivity of approx. 91dB/W/m.
The hyper-spherical shape, I was told, makes…
Now this is an interesting one. Using the same Dan D'Agostino Momentum monoblocks ($65,000/pair) as in the Wilson Alexia/dCS suite in the Mirage, albeit with the new case work; the same dCS Rossini player ($28,499) and Rossini Clock ($7499) as in that room, and whose sound I know quite well because I've spent considerable time with the player in my own listening room; an even higher Opus level of Transparent Cabling than in the Wilson/dCS suite; and the not too shabby Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum preamplifier ($32,000), EgglestonWorks' Ivy Signature SE Reference Series…
The picture shows the inside of Nagra's new HD Amp, whose 6 output devices are specified as driving 270W into 8 ohms, 1kW into 2 ohms. The HD Amp was on passive display, but Nagra's all-Nagra component chain, feeding Wilson Audio Sabrina loudspeakers, made quite a favorable impression. Listening to the same Delibes ballet music I auditioned on the far bigger EgglestonWorks Ivy Signature SEs and dCS Rossini (see above), but this time with Reference Recordings' HDCD decoded by the new Nagra Classic DAC ($15,000), I heard a delightfully open and far less dark sound.
When volume was turned up…