Please tell me about the Coda Technologies 15.0

12-27-12: Joeinid
VAC Sig IIa. I love it.

Woah! I'd love that too Joe!!!
I don't know if you are aware of it or not, but you can try the CODA 15.0 in your own system on their 14 day home trail period. Click on the 'Home Audition' link on the right side of the page.
They are great guys to work with too (former Threshold engineers), especially Doug Dale, he is very knowledgeable, helpful and reasonable too. There's not too many companies out there that have been in business for over 25 years, who still have a founding engineer answer the telephone when you call.

I've owned a lot of CODA pieces over the years, in addition to the Model 10, 20 and 11 amps, I've also owned their Model 01p and 02b preamps as well as a Model 03p phono preamp. My take on them as a company is that they are very good engineers who are very leery of the marketing wizards. They prefer to just design and munuafacture gear, they are not keen on the 'selling the sizzle' schtick. Perhaps that is why they have been in business for so long but are still a relatively unknown company.

A slightly more obscure company that may also intrigue you is Clayton Audio. I owned a pair of their M-100 monoblock amps a few years ago and they were pretty impressive too. Maybe just a tad more bass slam than the CODA amps, but a tad darker too. The M-200 fall in about the same ballpark price wise as the CODA 15.0

Cheers,
John

Ren,
Thank you so much for your offer. Yes, your answer is extremely helpful and I appreciate it very much. I may call when I get closer to a purchase/trial date. I am still in research mode and have a few other pieces on my list to compare. It sounds like you have found a great amp. I know of the Purity Audio preamp and had looked at them before I settled on my VAC. The PAD is very nice as well.

John,
I did notice the trial offer. It makes the decision to purchase much easier to justify.

It's funny you mentions Clayton Audio. I was just looking at them this evening and have been eyeing them for the past several years. Clayton Audio is also very highly rated and has my interest.

Thank you for very thoughtful input.

Joe, a word of warning, the CODA 15.0 has an input impedence of only 1K in balanced mode, which means that it could potentially have an impedence mismatch with a tube preamp. It seems like Ren is not having an issue with this, maybe he is not running balanced, but it would make me wary of this match up.

CODA's 50K unbalanced input makes for a much easier match up with a tube preamp, but I don't think that you are running your Sig IIa single-ended, are you?

John is right. It just so happens that both the VAC and the Purity are transformer coupled at the outputs and can easily handle this condition. That is why they were on my short list! I run mine balanced, and it sounds superb. Even so, I doubt short runs would have a noticable sonic difference if RCAs were used. BUT... CODA does recommend using balanced whenever possible, which is one of the things that drove me to focus on those two preamps.

Joe: I didn't catch the speakers you are using. What are they?

Thanks Guys. I plan on talking to CODA before I pull the trigger. I know my VAC Sig IIa has a very low output impedance. That was one of the many reasons why I bought it in the first place so it should match well with almost any amp.

On speakers, I just sold a pair of Dynaudio C1 Sigs. I am thinking about getting a pair of Sonus Faber Evolutions to replace them.