Pre/Power Amplifiers

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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Schiit Audio Magni (£80)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 22, 2015
Schiit products benefit from a Scandinavian nomenclature – Asgard, Bifrost, et al – so, should this stunning little Magni headphone amplifier prove tempting, you needn’t approach the salesman with the embarrassing request, ‘Do you stock Schiit?’ As its company founders are seasoned designers of [quote], ‘fully balanced differential power amplifiers, fully discrete I/V conversion stages, audiophile D/A converters, relay-switched stepped attenuator volume controls in preamps, etc,’ they could have launched Schiit with whatever product genre they liked. Being savvy, they chose headphone amps. Schiit works with ‘simple, discrete circuit topologies’ for the analogue sections, while its DAC products feature ‘innovative bit-perfect management systems’. It also uses Class A amplifier designs ‘where practical – and single gain stages when possible’.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Teac Ha 501 (£700)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 22, 2015
Teac’s HA-501 is a Japanese product of the old school, with no-nonsense looks and a quality of fit and finish that belies its £700 asking price. Teac highlights a number of aspects of the 501’s circuit design. First that it operates in Class A, as evinced by the case running warm to the touch. Second, dual mono construction is clear when you remove the top plate to reveal two identical circuits side by side on the main PCB.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Audio Research Sp20 (£8998)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
Ifyou’re old enough to remember Audio Research gear circa-1972, the new SP20 will tug at your heartstrings. This preamp’s fascia designer has revived the distinctive sectioned faceplates of the SP3 – the whiff of retro is much appreciated. Suffice it to say, gone are the days of a half-dozen toggle switches, mechanical push-buttons or old-school rotaries. The SP20’s buttons are limited to power on, mute and a choice of output to ‘speakers’ (power amp) or headphones, but not at once.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Mark Levinson No52 (£28,000)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
At last, Levinson’s flagship No53 monoblock amplifiers [see HFN Jan ’11] now have a Reference-status preamplifier with which they may be rightly partnered. The No52 is a two-chassis component designed with meticulous attention to detail both in its topology and in features that offer comprehensive system configurability. The rationale of this approach is to isolate the pure analogue audio circuitry from any possible source of pollution: it physically separates the power supply and microprocessor-driven controls from the audio electronics contained in the larger chassis. Volume control is via a precision ladder resistor network with fine gain adjustment in 0.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Krell Duo 300 (£9500)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
Krell’s new iBias range is claimed to be more efficient, or less power-hungry, than pure Class A. Paul Miller suggests that iBias is a modern take on the popular sliding bias circuits of the 1980s. So what is the motivation for it? Statements from the company suggest that Krell is doing its part to modernise the high-end, to increase its appeal to audiophiles who are not comfortable with bulky intrusions into their living spaces in a manner acceptable in the past. And yet nothing differentiates the Duo 300, physically, from hundreds of other ball-buster amps.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Vtl S 200 Signature (£11,500 With 6550 Tubes; £11,700 With Kt88s)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
User-friendly features are a major aspect of the current VTL Signature Series, including the power amp reviewed here. Based on four 6550 output tubes per channel, it has newly-designed output transformers, a larger power supply, and the Signature Series control electronics. When running, the tubes can be seen discreetly glowing through the smoked glass front window. (Our sample was fitted with KT88s, an option that adds £200 to the price.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Modwright Ls 36.5/kwa 150s (£7995 Pre With Psu/£6795 Power)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
ModWright’s owner Dan Wright argues that ‘Valves are great voltage amplifiers and solid-state devices are great current amplifiers. ’ Hence the combination here: the top of the range ‘DM’ dual-mono version of the LS 36. 5 preamp, with its separate PS 36. 5 power supply, and the KWA 150 Signature Edition power amplifier.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
T+a P3000/a3000hv (£9500 Pre/£11,900 Power/£7900 Psu)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
Each of these three units – preamplifier, two-channel power amp and a power supply to ‘beef up’ the power amp’s performance – is housed in an all-aluminium chassis identical in size and appearance. Pre and power amp are ‘double mono’, the left and right channels both electrically and mechanically separated, with power supply sections, audio circuits and control electronics all in shielded chambers. The new P3000HV preamplifier has a comprehensive functionality that includes an analogue tone processor module to provide bass/treble adjustment, a user-variable ‘loudness’ control to suit your loudspeakers’ sensitivity, and parametric equalisers for tuning your speakers’ bass performance to your listening room. Illuminated touch-sensitive controls allow access to the preamp’s configuration menu, and a headphone amp is built in as well.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Icon Audio Mb90 Mkiim 150 (£2900 Pair)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 20, 2015
Like the hardy perennials of audio horticulture, the standard valve amplifier circuits keep coming up fresh year after every year. And there’s been a new flowering in the family of beam tetrode tubes that started with the venerable KT66. This is the new Tung-Sol KT150, and the first manufacturer to feature it is Icon Audio, showing this tube off to good advantage in its MB90 MkIIm monoblock power amp. Built in Icon’s factory in China but finished and tested in Leicester, the MB90 MkIIm looks solid and handsomely-proportioned.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Furutech Adl X1 (£400)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Dec 22, 2014
Furutech’s Alpha Design Lab range includes cables, headphones and earphones, a portable headphone amplifier and stylish system equivalents of the ADL X1 here. This appears to be a portable miniature music centre, offering USB and iDevice functionality, plus a built-in rechargeable battery giving around five hours of operation. Six top-mounted LEDs display sampling frequency, and there’s a front fascia volume control – which sadly proved just a little too easy to accidentally move when out and about. Those on the Number 41 bus will doubtless prefer the ergonomic simplicity of, say, an Arcam rPAC or Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS, which are truly portable devices.
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Pre/Power AmplifiersVintage
Musical Fidelity The Preamp/Dr Thomas (Vintage)
Richard Holliss  |  Dec 22, 2014
In Tony Michaelson’s company started with one diminutive but memorable product, called simply ‘The Preamp’. He started by making them on his kitchen table… What made the product so eyecatching was the acrylic front, with the product name illuminated in red. In its original form, The Preamp had an appeal all of its own. It was so tiny, so simple, yet so businesslike.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Mcintosh Mc275 Mkvi (£5500)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Nov 13, 2014
McIntosh’s original MC275 featured as an ‘Audio Milestone’ [HFN Dec ’10], but what’s reviewed here is the current production version of this most famous power amplifier. It’s the same as the 2011 Anniversary Edition but with stainless steel rather than a gold chassis. Its most spectacular outward feature, described in staid McIntosh tech-speak as ‘small tube illumination for amplifier status operation’, comprises LEDs indicating status or output tube failure. This is a part of a protection circuit system which will also shut the amp down if speaker wires are shorted or there is a gross impedance mismatch.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Musical Fidelity M8pre/ M8700m (m8pre, £3500; M8700m, £4000 Each)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Nov 13, 2014
Enter Musical Fidelity’s latest ultra-high-power creation, described as ‘a true heir to the [2008] Titan, delivering near-identical sound’. It’s a monoblock design that’s considerably more bank-balance friendly, rated at 700W/8ohm, although this transpired to be conservative. It is part of a new series of high-end components, also including the M8PRE preamplifier. The sturdy casework has a finely-textured black finish and thick aluminium fascias while the M8700m’s heatsinks are smoothly finished.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Siltech Saga C1, V1 And P1 (£85,000)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Nov 13, 2014
On seeing Siltech’s pre/power combo you might think it incorporates a separate power supply. In fact, this unusual design splits the power amplifier into separate interstage (voltage gain) and current amplifier sections. The combo’s C1 tube preamplifier (pictured) features a rechargeable battery power supply as does the V1 voltage stage of the two-box power amplifier. Of course, running the complete V1/P1 amplifier from a battery would be wholly impractical, so the P1 is mains powered.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Simaudio Moon 380d & 330a (380d, £4600; 330a, £2800)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Nov 13, 2014
At the heart of Simaudio’s 380D DAC/preamp is its M-AJiC32 processing (Moon Asynchronous Jitter Control in 32-bit mode) and at the core of this is an eight-channel ES9016S Sabre DAC from ESS. Simaudio claims to have further improved jitter performance with its own ‘Alpha Clocking System’. The 380D has separate power supplies, each with a toroidal transformer and 11 stages of voltage regulation, for its digital and analogue sections. The analogue stage is a fully differential circuit and balanced XLR connections are strongly recommended, although RCAs are also provided.
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