Integrated Amplifiers

Soulnote was established by former employees of Marantz Japan, including its director Norinaga Nakazawa, as the ‘high-end audio brand’ of Japanese electronics manufacturer/distributor CSR in 2004. A year later, its current Chief Engineer, Hideki Kato, was brought onboard as a product designer. Also a Marantz alumnus, Kato’s experience with ‘non-NFB amplification’ (including models for the LHH series under the Philips brand in the 1990s) remains key to the current Soulnote design ethos.

As he explains in his lengthy ‘Design Philosophy’ series (that you can read here Soulnote Philosophy), Kato’s childhood years were spent building loudspeakers and amplifiers ‘as a hobby’ without use of any measuring equipment. Decades later, he talks of a ‘discrepancy between specifications and sound quality’, which is perhaps evidenced by the A-2 amp tested here, being notionally more powerful than Soulnote’s 160W/4ohm-rated flagship M-3 monoblock. As for Kato’s ambition, it is ‘to make Soulnote the best audio brand in the world’, something he hopes the company’s increased presence in Europe, since the Munich High End Show in ’22, will help accomplish.