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Usually I get about halfway through a "most significant [insert here] of all time" before I roll my eyes and mutter "WTF" and stop reading. And I rarely if ever read a TAS article anymore and my subscription has long expired but.... I think this is a pretty reasonable list. They got is pretty close to correct IMHO....
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-12-most-significant-power-amplifiers-of-all-time/
Name one amp you think should belong on that list? I might actually add a Cary SET 300B SEI because it seemed to bring SET amps to the great unwashed masses back in the early 90s and it also heralded the currently accepted concept that "integrated amps" can be "high end".
Follow Ups:
How the list does not include the Devialet amp is a rather large oversight. When a company enters the market with such an generational change in technology that truly provides significant improvement over just about any other product ever made, it should be recognized as a major game changer.The Devialet approach has continued to evolve to the point where it can act as a complete system that can handle any input type, and will sound better than the vast majority of gear available. It also minimizes the need to have high dollar cables as well.
When one considers the cost of phono, preamp, power amp, streamer, etc, the Devialet actually is pretty cost effective by high end audiophile standards.
It's the only design that employs a Class D output that does not generate ultrasonic output noise that has to be filtered. The voltage output is Class A, while the current is Class D.
Devialet has made significant improvements since the original D-Premier, including Speaker Active Matching (SAM).
In summary, this should have made the list.
"What this country needs is a good 5 watt amplifier!" (Paul Klipsch)
Edits: 05/16/19
They correctly included a Williamson design. Why not a Mullard 5-20?
Why not an earlier ultra linear design ?
Nad 3020
Futterman OTL
Harmon Kardon Citation Eleven
Phase Linear 400
topology than sound... or I'm just too young....
I mean to not have the Manley Stingray, the Blue Circle BC26, the LAMM monoblocks, the Airtight, the Dartzheel, Joule Electra, a VAC, or a Tenor on this list....
Or at least not having one or two of the above has me like, WTF?
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
The first P-P triode amp.
The first PP WE movie theatre amp.
The LEAK TL12.1.
Can't think of another nine.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
Western Electric 91
What about the Loftin-White, Rappaport Amp1, and countless others? The TAS bunch is completely divorced from history and amplifier topology, IMHO
Why not "The Top Ten", or, "The Top Twenty"?
Probably 'cause that's how many pages they had to fill, or maybe the names they had to include in the pages they had available.
Wah.
I have seen the Ongaku twice at audio shows. Seen it. Only. Did they hook it up, not hear the magic, then decide to just show it?
While the build quality was a vast improvement over my old Tandenberg, the highs were blazingly bright and the reason I started listening to tubes.
any old amp can be a legend; it just needs an evocative name in a foreign language -- perhaps ideally one that doesn't use the Latin alphabet.
I think I'll build one out of ICEpower modules and give it a cool Japanese name. Anyone happen to know the Japanese word(s) for septic tank ?
Or maybe dandruff ?
I'm just brainstorming here -- there are no wrong answers.
all the best,
mrh
Are you into cockney rhyming slang? :)
Hi,
If you go by Absolute Sound's top pick for the amps in the latest issue I think the Heathkit W-5 may have been overlooked. Although a Williamson design itself it was an answer to bring a more affordable amp of that type to more of the Hifi buffs still using Altec and Peerless transformers....Mark Korda
I think the Heath W4 would be considered an "affordable" Williamson amp, as it was designed as a single chassis version of the W3 with a lower grade transformer. The W5 was a high end amp (for the time) and among the better amps of the golden era. I am a fan of both.
I was just hinting at the fact that 'septic (tank)' is cockney rhyming slang for Americans. :)
Say that out loud quickly 12 times correctly.
I double dog dare you.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
The Mark Levinson ML-2 was designed by our friend John Curl and is a worthy contender to be on the list I just called John to let him know.
Do you really think the Levenson ML-2 was just added to fill up space?
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
Glad to see the 8B on the list; heck of an amplifier.
I've yet to hear a 9, so I cannot offer an opinion there.
all the best,
mrh
I was (I believe) the first US audio scribe to write about it, and the first to audition it in-home.
A genuine work of art.
John Marks
Nice pic! JM.
Of note: 7 of the 12 on the list are tube amplifiers.
Link below:
I'd probably toss in one of the Carver magnetic field amps - maybe even the "Cube." Never liked them, but they surely sold well & were impressive for a dollars/watt & very little weight or heat.
For SS amps, I would add an amp or two from Pass from the Aleph series, and from his current line , 160.8, and the smallest 25-30 watter.... Superb. Also, more from Mark Levinson, 23/23.5, were superb. The JC1 from Parasound has been around for years, still one of the best quality watt per dollar spent, Ayre, and Jeff Rowland have been stellar as well. More tubes from Heath Kits, the kt66 one and another with Peerless transformers were cutting reference numbers, and sounded great. The Eico HF89, a legend, and the Silver 90 from Quicksilver, and his M135, a masterpiece. Incredible power supply, and transformer quality, to match great sound. Too many to list ...Jallen
I guess that's why Ayre is not on the list :-)
Daniel
Jon Iverson's Electro Research A75.
Des
I agree, Jon Iverson's A-75 was a very good amp design.
Nice to see you Post John--trust you are well
--would it be prudent to suggest possibly the over zealous use of too much negative feedback in the
A75 precludes it from the list above?
just a thought
Des
I was hooked years ago and haven't been without since.
Will admit, I'm not really up to speed on the details of OTLs, but the NYAL/Julius Futterman amps were big back in the day..
Otherwise? Surely VERY significant, but will little recognition? How about the David Berning amps like the ZH-270? I've heard that little bastard power everything from a home built 2-way to a SoundLab electrostat & sound great doing it!
-Did a pretty good job of convincing the public that OTLs blow up. No debate, unlike solid state/tubes or analog/digital.
Atma-Sphere made the world's first reliable OTLs; impervious to oscillation on any load. Nowadays people are much more likely to accept that an OTL will work. But it took 25 years to get there.
Have had my H3A since 1987 and it has been utterly reliable. Several friends that have owned the original Futtermans also have had trouble free service over a mult-year period.
-with an easy load, and don't overload them, they can be well behaved.
But put them on an inappropriate load and especially if you clip the amp hard and bad things can happen.
The worst OTL amp was from a St. Louis company (can't remember the name, maybe you can Ralph). I owned the Triomphe model. The front-end voltage regulator was always burning up. LoL
It wasn't the Triomphe model though. They used a filter capacitor in their power supply marked 'Bindu' which was a really suspect name to find on a filter capacitor; to make matters worse they ran it at about 30 volts over the rated voltage!
Not surprisingly they had a way of blowing off the circuit board... I was lucky; the part missed me and embedded itself in the false ceiling above me and left a mess everywhere. My ears rang for 10 minutes.
I don't blame this on Futterman though; Futterman knew enough to not do something stupid like that. It was just poor engineering. IMO Fourier products cannot be ethically repaired as there is no way to warrant that they will keep working.
Thanks. I believe you were referring to their use of 'photo flash' caps. No pics included, LoL. :)
Usually those are marked. I know New York Audio Labs used photoflash caps in their stuff. They were clearly marked 'photoflash' as every other photoflash cap I've seen. These were not- although its obvious they were sketchy; they could well have been since they had a lot of 'capacity' for their size.
Agreed. They figured out the OTL mystery better than anybody.
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