High fidelity amplifiers

To answer Mike’s request, here’s a little presentation of amplifiers issue.

I Technology

There are two kinds of technologies in amplification: transistor and tubes.

The fact is that (good) tubes are better to reproduce medium/high frequencies while (good) transistor are better in the low.

II Integrated or power amps

An integrated amp is an amplifier which integrates the preamplifier section. So it’s in one box. It’s cheaper, but not the best.

Another way is to use power amps with a preamp. In this case, as the name suggests, the two parts (preamplification and power amplification) are separated.

To go further, it’s possible to use power mono blocks, which means that you use one power amplifier per channel (left/right), and in the case of a bi amplification where high and low are fed by different amps (tubes in the highs and transistor in the low for example), that can make a total of four mono blocks for the whole! (2 tubes mono blocks + 2 transistor mono blocks).

There are also others technics like tri-amplification and multi amplifications, but it’s not the most efficient.

Budget integrated transistor amplifier:
Nad c320



Excellent -but still affordable- transistor power amp (400W)

Excellent integrated tube amp that can be turn easily into a still better power amp: Jolida



The same in bigger.



Conrad Johnson: the cream of tubes amps:

Top transistor preamplier:

Mark Levinson 32 reference

I don't know this special one, but yes, Musical Fidelity is a good brand, and class A amp are better in the highs than normal ones. It closer to tube sound.

I've got a friend who owns a Musical Fidelity F18, which is a monstruous (and excellent) 600W power amp. He uses it in the low in a bi-amp. It's very heavy too!

KORA (Excellent french gear)

MikeEnRegalia wrote: With these tubes exposed like that, it's obvious that they pick up all kinds of electromagnetic interferences. I guess you have to decide whether you want an amp that looks cool, or sounds good ... or you remove all electronic devices from the room ...

It sounds better than any transistor amp, and on theback it looks good.