Primare 130 Integrated Amplifier and CD31 Compact Disc Player

A winning pair of aces

The Primare (pronounced “prime air”) units, from Sweden, are handsome, easy to set up and run, and high in performance. In a year that dealt me good moderately priced high-end audio electronics to review, this pair has come up aces. The 130 integrated ($2495) started its sojourn here in my small system, with the Spendor S8es and a couple of good CD players (the $600 Music Hall cd25.2, and $2500 Musical Fidelity A5), and Nordost Heimdall cabling. I was breaking the amp in, not really listening critically, but liking the balance and clarity I heard on the fly. Then, in the middle of a loudspeaker review, I called on the Primare to pinch hit in the main system for the big Musical Fidelity kW500, which had to go in for retubing. I set up the Primare amp with the Acoustic Zen Adagio loudspeakers, MF CD 5 player, and Acoustic Zen cabling, and carried on.

The first moments after the exchange were discombobulating. Putting a 100Wpc device in place of one more than double that can shock the ear. But in time, the glories of the Primare began to make themselves heard, and in the months since, it has continued to improve, slightly but audibly. The kW500 came back after some weeks and I compared the two again. This time the Primare came off better in the contest than it had earlier.

The most important aspects of the perceived improvement underscore the real value of the little Primare. Built with the Norse genius that fashioned early ocean-worthy ships and that still knows how to blend art and function (here, unusual attention at its price is paid to power supplies and isolation techniques), this little amp is a royal. Under its aegis, music of all kinds sounds wonderful. It is perhaps happier with delicacies than with the full storm force of orchestral tuttis, but it doesn’t subtract much there, either, and delicacies, remember, can include grace notes and fullspectrum melodic runs on the organ on Reference Recordings’ The Great Organ at St. Mary’s Cathedral; chorus in full roar; the gamelan magic of Lou Harrison, which combines big-throated bellows and the smallest of tinker-bells. On Mariza: Fado em Mim [Times Square Records], the Primare brings out the details of voices and instruments, of lyrics and small interactions among instrumentalists, yet remains satisfyingly sonorous in the bottom octaves, and handles a subwoofer well. It has a full midrange, dramatic and musical; it brings out sweet, sweet highs and the primal cry of the treble on violins; it sparks cymbals and bells into life. It also lays bare recording venues and miking techniques, and you’d better hope they’re good—on studio stuff, you’ll hear sometimes more than you want to. For instance, in Woman of Song [Chesky], Rebecca Pigeon’s lovely, controlled soprano soared out of an overly reverberant studio that nearly marred the songs. I hadn’t heard that studio hollowness so clearly before.

More powerful amps of equally good provenance have greater height in the stage, deeper lows, and the veritable power-pulse of large music that less powerful units lack. But the Primare has so little distortion and so few “noise” effects, it shines.

After first pairing the 130 with the Musical Fidelity A5 CD player, I put in the Primare CD31 ($2295), which, initially, was startling. This little unit, like its integrated sister, has that remarkable combination of clarity and balance, and a silence that leaves the music floating on what sounds like real air and not a bed of fog or grain. On good recordings, nothing stood out in any frequency range, and the sweetness of the instrumental voice, any instrumental voice, had the stunning drama of a child soprano. The CD31 doesn’t have the depth that makes the midbass to bottom octave on my reference MF unit stand apart. But its lovely balance point, like a fine hairspring, held the fabric of the music under control, and the noiseless background kept the delicacies sweet while retaining the rich wash of the music. After a couple of months of listening, and rereading my notes about recent visiting amps and players, I began to think that the difference between these and other units I’ve heard under $2500 lies in that silence of the background. (The 130 integrated is a true dual-mono, differential circuit design, and has other important-sounding elements that lie beyond my ken. The CD player has multiple isolated power supplies. These things may explain their golden silence. Or not.)

Two recordings demonstrate well everything I have been hearing. I use Reference Recording’s Great Organ at St. Mary’s as a test for almost any piece of equipment: It lays bare the reproduction of power, clarity, frequency response, and the subtle stuff. And soundstaging, which here lies in the breadth and height of the instrument rather than side information or imaging. Some of the music is difficult—a tour of the full organ from 1600 to the late twentieth century—but it is excellently recorded, and a really good system will sort out the musical themes and elements and make the whole comprehensible to ear and brain. Throughout, the Primares let the melodies in the high ranks float out over the bassline of growling lows. Sometimes, the melody and its ornamentations dwell briefly in the big pipes, while the rhythm pulses in the highs. And those melodic lows have to be clear, clear, clear. I heard these glories in all their particularities with the Primares, as in no other modest system I know. For sheer excitement, listen to “Carillon de Westminster” by Vierne. Crank this one up—the amp can take it, if your speakers can—and you will be surrounded by flesh-trembling organ swirls.