The Belles Aria Signature Integrated Amplifier


The Belles Aria Signature Integrated Amplifier has landed at the Audio Connection in Verona, NJ. I think John said 120 watts per channel with a phono stage that supports both MM and MC cartridges. 3 Single ended and 1 balanced input and output. Sounds great even though the unit has less than 24 hours on it.
joey54
I need to talk to John Rutan about the differences between the Aria and Signature. It would be nice to do an A/B comparison.
As far as Belles' website, I agree, it would be nice to get more information, but I can understand that Belles probably doesn't have the marketing budget of, say Wilson Audio or PS Audio.
B
Obviously the output is significantly more, 125W into 8 ohms, but my impression is that the biggest improvement is in the preamp section, where he's trickle-downed new designs that were developed while he was working on the Virtuoso preamp.
I recently had the opportunity to compare the Aria Integrated with the Signature with Johnny R. For full disclosure, I spent most of my time there (a few hours with my vinyl) with the Aria and Rogue Sphinx v3 as the Signature is outside my budget. I would definitely say that the Signature was an improvement, but I was very impressed with the Aria. 

I also much preferred the Aria to the Rogue, and as I wait for mine to be built and shipped, I can confirm that Dave B has quite a few orders to fill. 
@msafrick,
Mr. B. is building some Aria Monoblocks for me, too.
It seems to be taking longer than expected, but I think that is due to difficulty in sourcing parts due to the pandemic. I have heard of other manufacturers having similar problems.

Bob