Nothing puts a bigger smile on my face than reveling in great-sounding audio gear the average Joe—or Jolene—can actually afford. Priced at $1299 and $1599, respectively, the Audio by Van Alstine (AVA) Ultra SL preamp ...

Variable gain power amplifiers have always made a lot of sense to me from a sonic, if not always a practical, standpoint. Including a gain control to vary the voltage output of the amplifier approaches ...

My search for a great sounding, affordably priced high-end system brought me to two very different companies, Cambridge Audio and Era Design. The former is a 30-year-old British firm that has recently transformed itself into ...

In this new feature in The Perfect Vision, we’ll seek out those “special” components that bring music into your home with an intensity, depth, and emotional connection you may not have thought possible. This class ...

There is a level of excellence at which conventional words about quality and cost-effectiveness become meaningless. Like the very best cars, watches, and wines, and every other assault on the consumer state of the art ...

John Ulrick, the founder and designer of Spectron, has a wealth of switching amplifier experience that few in the industry can match. In the late 1960s he was a co-founder of Infinity (with Arnie Nudell), ...

Cary’s A 306 Class D amplifier, part of the new Designer Series that includes the superb CD 306 CD/SACD player I reviewed in Issue 164, is big and heavy enough to be mistaken for a ...

Beautifully made (it is certainly the best-looking Class D amp of the lot, with a body carved from a billet of 6061 aluminum and a wavy faceplate straight out of Rowland’s Classic line), the 250Wpc ...

The Kharma MP150 has been my reference amplifier since I received a pair in March to go with the company’s gorgeous-sounding Mini Exquisite speakers (a review of which will appear in our next issue). Before ...

In our Class D amplifier survey in Issue 166, some of my colleagues were unconvinced that the current crop of Class D was ready to take on the Class AB Old Guard in a head-tohead. ...

Founded in 1925, Luxman is one of the most respected of all Japanese audio manufacturers and was a name to be reckoned with in the seventies and eighties owing to a series of very highly ...

I spend a lot of time cheerleading for integrated amplifiers. I like their spacesaving footprint. I like eliminating the interconnect and with it the ancillary circuitry required for preamp and amp to shake hands electrically. ...

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 ...

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 ...