Are you still saving for the Spatial Audio Raven pre amp? I am leaning towards the Atma-Sphere MP3, or a used LTA with level two upgrades. The MP3 is superior, but twice the price, and they do not come up for sale used. Well only very old ones, people keep them.
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)
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@charliee No I no longer am getting any preamp. I had conversations with dealers that advised it is not necessary with only 1 connection. I would just be adding more into the chain, need more (expensive) interconnects and power cords. Instead I added a end game (for me) DAC. I am very happy with how the rig sounds now, very happy. |
@fthompson251 The real test to see if a DAC’s volume can hang with a great preamp is to listen at low volume. The only DAC that I found could hang with a great preamp was the Lumin X1 with the Leedh volume control. Even that was not as perfect as my Benchmark LA4 preamp but came close. The issue was not really sonics but operational. The volume could not increase at the proper increments at low volume. |
@yyzsantabarbara The Legacy Wavelet II is a pre amp so adding a tube preamp would be redundant. My DAC doesn’t have a volume control. The only source into the Wavelet is the XLR's from the DAC. |
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