The new Coda S5.5 amplifier: It's a "Petite Beast"!
I have in-house the New Coda Technologies S5.5 amplifier for review for Stereo Times website. It will be awhile before I write the review. However, I'm so impressed by the performance of this petite amplifier, it only weights 45 pounds, that I wanted to give a heads up to you GON members if you are in the market for a balanced pure class A amplifier, delivers 50 watts @ 8 Ohms, and can drop 100 Amperes of current on a peak!
The world class build quality of Coda amplifiers is on display with the S5.5, along with the most beautiful purity of tonality, precise sound-staging, complete liquidity offered by pure class A design, and what might be the best top end regarding details, decays, and a natural shimmering without brightness or any edge at all.
The S5.5 uses extremely wide bandwidth output transistors instead of the usual TO3 devices used in most transistor designs. I own the Coda #16, which is great, but the midrange/high end is taken to another level of musical enjoyment with the S5.5. The S5.5 has a sense of speed/aliveness that is exciting to listen to that you experience in live music. The amp is dynamic as hell, has driven with ease any speaker I have tried it with, hence my nickname of the "Petite Beast". Remember, 50 watts pure class A, can drop 100 amperes of current and only weights 45 pounds.
Teajay (Terry London)
@markmuse I also ended up with an upper end Widex pair after living with another brand. After dicking around with these for over a year, I prefer listening without them. I'd rather not have the higher frequencies compared to crappy sounding higher frequencies. LOL, same. Fairly useless in that regard. Just guessing but I think if you had healthy ears, you would prefer the S5.5. I have a very nice modern class D amp and I think I know what you mean. Thanks for posting your impressions. |
@vinylvalet My hearing must be worse than yours. Without my hearing aids everything is dark and heavily muffled. I have Widex Moment. All in all, I think they are pretty good, and dramatically better the the other two brands I had before them. My gripe is that aids and audiologists are aimed at voices, as if that is the only important thing we use our ears for. I spend far more time listening to music than I do talking with others, something on the order of 95% to 5%. And when I am outside I want to hear the sounds of nature in all its glory, without hype and without the sound of bird chirps causing pain. |
@minatophase3 Silversmith makes Fidelium interconnects now? I have the speaker cables. |
@fthompson251 Yes they do. They are not listed on the website yet but reach out to Jeff and you can order them. He is offering both XLR and RCA. I am very happy with the RCA's. I will either order a set of the XLR's or speaker cables next, not sure which one. |
