Pre/Power Amplifiers

Constellation’s ‘series 1’ engineers were assembled by Peter Madnick as Project Manager in 2009 – the good and great of audio engineering that included John Curl and the late Bascom H King. For this series 2, co-founder and CEO of Constellation Audio, Dr Murali Murugasu, prefers instead to focus on the Constellation engineering team as a unified resource. ‘There is no one person who designs any single product and it is always a group effort’. says Murali. Peter, most recently designing for MoFi alongside Andrew Jones [HFN Dec ’23], is still involved with Constellation, however.

The decision to adopt a custom SMPS in place of the original, hefty linear PSU followed a decade of evaluation. ‘I was personally rather wary’, admits Murali, ‘however the science and sonic improvements convinced me. Our PFC is rock solid, ensuring the SMPS’s output is stable even if the AC line voltage drops below 80VAC. Also, our custom-made transformer allows for zero current switching at ~69kHz while offering a short-term peak capacity of 1.4kW’. Although the new C-SMPS is fundamental to the Revelation 2’s sonic uplift, Constellation also took the opportunity to update its board designs, where needed, shortening and optimising signal paths.

As to the future, ‘We will launch the Performance 2 Amplifiers, Preamplifier and Phonostage in the first quarter of 2025, all with the new C-SMPS and PFC. The Reference 2 Amplifiers and Preamplifier will follow shortly with similar changes and improvements’. PM