News

High-end amplifier marque D’Agostino Master Audio Systems has launched a successor to its Relentless monoblock [HFN Mar ’20] – two offspring, in fact. Both the Relentless Epic 1600 Mono (£XXX,xxx) and the Relentless 800 Mono (£XXX,xxx) feature a recognisable industrial design, albeit with comprehensively upgraded PSU, driver and power stages.
The latter model [pictured, right] is said to bring the company’s ‘reference sound quality to a smaller [145kg] package’ and has a rated power output of 800W/8ohm (and 1.6kW/4ohm) courtesy of 84 output transistors in complementary pairs. The 82.6cm deep, 248kg Epic 1600 Mono, meanwhile, follows in the footsteps of the original Relentless Mono, claiming a massive 1.6kW/8ohm (3.2kW/4ohm) from its bank of 112 transistors.
Key to the updates are new power transistors used in both the revised driver and output stages, expanding both its Class A operation and speaker load tolerance. These changes, and the copper/aluminium heatsinks, make ‘thermal issues irrelevant’, says D’Agostino. Moreover the high voltage ‘Super Rail’ operation of the driver stage further improves linearity while a new PSU design boosts the S/N ratio of driver/output circuits.
Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems, Arizona, USA, 0208 971 3909; www.dagostinoinc.com