Jeff Rowland to what?


I currently own a Jeff Rowland 625 S2 amplifier. I'm curious as to what amplifiers I should listen to below 20K, new or used. I'm not unhappy, but I'm curious. The amp will be driving Monitor Audio PL500 II's. The preamp is a Jeff Rowland Corus.

ricred1

Hi Richard, as many already pointed out, exceeding the performance of the amp you have without "amping up" the investment very significantly might be a tall order. As you enjoy the sound of M625 S2 but you would like more power, I warmly recommend the Rowland M725 S2 class A/B monos or the Rowland M825 stereo, or the M925 monos. Outside the Rowland World, I might look at Solution amps.... Quite expensive, but yield a musicality that also meets my sound concept.


But there is something you can do to enhance the music of your system while keeping M625 S2, Corus, and the Aeris DAC.... Last week I have installed the recently released Rowland Power Storage Unit (PSU). As I mentioned via email, this is an external full chassis power supply based on ultra-capacitors. It is designed to feed simultaneously Aeris and Corus with pure DC, and takes them off the AC mains grid. I had heard glowing third party reports on it, but I was a little skeptical... While I have not had ultra-capacitors in my system, I understood the concept, and have had battery powered pre-amplifcation before.... And the performance difference between batteries and AC was very subtle.


But when I connected PSU into the Rowland Aeris DAC I realized that batteries supplies and PSU are totally different animals... The performance enhancement is simply staggering, even on my system which I already considered wonderful, where Aeris feeds directly a pair of Rowland M925 4-chassis monoblocks into Vienna Acoustics Die Muzik. The enhancement is apparent from first activation for all audible parameters I can think of, and is followed by a rapid evolution lasting perhaps 200 hours, which pushes performance even futher.


I will soon create a dedicated thread on PSU with a lot more detail.


Guido

        

  

Guido,
As always, thanks for your input and passion regarding Jeff Rowland components. How much is the PSU?

The response to my post has got my thinking. The first thing I want to try is a new power cable for my 625 S2 amplifier. I currently use a 1m Wireworld Platinum power cable, but it's plugged into my Torus RM15 Power Conditioner. I want to try going straight into the wall, but I need a 3m cord. Any suggestions?
Guido,

You beat me to it - I was going to suggest the same thing. Here is an extensive review of the Corus/PSU by Christiaan Punter of HiFi-Advice.com, a huge aficionado of all things Jeff Rowland.

http://www.hifi-advice.com/blog/review/analog-reviews/amplifier-reviews/jeff-rowland-corus-preamplif...

Hello @gareneau, indeed PSU is quite transformational. I suspect that given the high caliber of Richard's electronics and speakers, a PSU would yield significantly more benefits than a power amp change. Fact is that Richard already has Aeris as well as Corus.... And one single PSU would enhance the performance of both of them... Even though I only have Aeris but not Corus, The enhancement that PSU made in my own system is far from being subtle, or even moderate.


G.