This amplifier is revolutionary because, mostly, of the things it doesn’t do, and because of the see-into-and-through transparency that results from its dramatically lowered noise floor (which allowed us to make similar reductions in much of the rest of the audio chain). It has other distinctive attributes, including a sense of “ease” on everything you can throw at it, and maybe to a degree I’ve never heard from any solid-state product before. It also packs a genuine wallop of those big bass notes that allows you to feel, for example, how tight the skin of a drum is. In other words, it has all the best attributes of the most serious state-of-the-art amplifier contenders.


The TAS 157 review is a follow-up to the original review by the same author.