With its ProLogue series of tube electronics, PrimaLuna burst onto the audio scene a few years ago and established itself as a serious contender in the value-priced sweepstakes. Designed in the Netherlands, built to high ...

I like this product’s name, and not just because of its promise of reaching beyond the common range of perception. It’s the version number—the Eight—that really piqued my interest, suggesting a mature product evolved through ...

The Audio Space Reference 2 from Hong Kong audio engineer Peter Lau is a genuine rara avis—a fullfunction, fully balanced preamplifier that uses two matched pairs of 300B directly heated triode tubes in its output ...

The $750 Belles Soloist 3 preamp and $900 5 power amplifier from Power Modules embody the time-honored audiophile tradition of minimalist, no-nonsense electronics. Even their austere exteriors reflect a bottom-line mentality—that form should follow function, ...

I owe a debt of gratitude to the conradjohnson CA200 control amplifier and a saxophone. In a single moment they crystallized in my mind a conclusion that I arrived at during last year’s Class D ...

The venerable Audio Research Corporation has been on quite a roll of late. Its newest-generation amps (the Reference 210 and Reference 610T) and preamp (the Reference 3), designed as always by the legendary William Zane ...

JR Transrotor of Germany is widely respected for its striking and innovative turntable designs—a reputation it’s earned over the last twenty-five years. Less commonly acknowledged is the Phono II, Transrotor’s one and only phono preamp. ...

No component since this magazine’s inception in 1973 has troubled me as much as the ASR Emitter II Exclusive, a Germanmade- and-designed solid-state amplifier. Not because it is a flawed product— quite the opposite. This ...

Classé Audio’s new Delta Series might have been just another exceptionally pretty face if it weren’t so seriously good. Bringing much of Classe’s flagship Omega Series technology and topology to the table, these new Delta ...

Cary Audio Design has slowly evolved from a company that mainly focused on exotic, single-ended tube gear to one that focuses on exotic, single-ended tube gear and a growing range of other, not-so exotic components. ...

Big-ticket controllers project power. They bristle with command and control modules while deploying the most advanced audio decoding, video switching, and transcoding enhancements. They are a virtual launching pad—the A/V counterparts to a modern aircraft ...

The PrimaLuna Prologue Three preamp and Five power amp are at the top of my list: good sound, good value, simplicity. They are also good fun, if you like playing with tubes (the power amp ...

In the past two decades, a slow evolution has taken place in audio, as top-notch designers come more and more to understand the nature of the beasts they are working with. Today it is not ...

Lyngdorf ’s RoomPerfect TDAI 2200 is a digital amplifier with a built-in, stand-alone (no computer interface) room-correction system of a new and unusually sophisticated sort. Visually, it is elegantly understated and rather smaller than one ...

Of all the gear I’ve had the good fortune to own over the course of the past two-and-ahalf decades, the Mark Levinson Nº 31 Reference CD transport, Nº 35 digital-toanalog converter and Nº 38S preamplifier ...