Integrated Amplifiers

Hot foot from Italy – and with the emphasis on running those quartets of KT120s very 'hot' indeed – the NYC 200i is quite possibly the most powerful tube amp we've tested. It's richly biased too, pulling over 0.5kW from the wall at idle and over 1kW at full output... In terms of 'useable' power, Audio Research's big REF160M monoblock [HFN Aug '18], with its four KT150s, managed 165W into 8/4ohm from 8/4ohm taps, respectively, while the NYC 200i (also running in ultralinear mode) bests this with 220W into 8/4ohm at <1% THD from smaller 'Kinkless Tetrodes'. While the NYC 200i's spec. is slightly ambiguous, with 230W quoted on the website and 200W in the user manual, all these figures are dwarfed by the 330W, 325W, 350W and 175W achieved under dynamic conditions at <2% THD into 8, 4, 2 and 1ohm loads [see Graph 1, below]. The current limit is 13.2A but the NYC 200i will surely still drive most 4ohm-nominal loudspeakers with considerable ease.

Distortion climbs steadily with output from 0.01%/1W to 0.1%/\10W before levelling off at 0.3-0.5% from 30W-150W, but it's the low 0.028%/1W, 0.2%/10W and 0.42%/100W THD at 20Hz bass frequencies that sets the NYC 200i apart [Graph 2]. From this perspective, the brand's custom output transformers are very special indeed even though the ~2ohm source impedance and 75dB A-wtd S/N ratio (re. 0dBW) are less spectacular. The noise is 'white' rather than hum, so will not be especially noticeable with medium-sensitivity speakers, while the output impedance will only cause subjective modification of response – from the default –0.45dB/20Hz, –2.1dB/20kHz and –16.7dB/100kHz – when driving speakers with big swings in load. PM