Introduction Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson joined forces in the early 1970's to form Conrad-Johnson Design, Inc. with the goal of building high quality tubed audio preamplifiers. From the beginning Conrad Johnson was all about the sound and stayed far from the hype and flash of the high end audio industry’s hey days of that era. Conrad Johnson’s first amplifier, the MV-75 was introduced in 1978. The MV-75's success opened the doors for Conrad Johnson to become a serious contender in amplifiers as well as preamplifiers. Conrad Johnson produced its first solid state electronics in a new line called Motif. The Motif line was soon after joined by the Sonographe line to form a respectable product offering of solid state gear, from mid-level high end and up. The company continued to develop both tube and solid state gear and has used its two and a half decades of experience to bring us its latest products, ...

Introduction Jeff Rowland Design Group makes the sexiest audio products in the world. There is no other way to put it. Milled from a solid billet of aluminum and etched with the most stunning brushed aluminum wavy pattern directly onto the amplifier, the Jeff Rowland Model 112 makes as much of a statement about your sense of design as it does your lust for accurate reproduction of sound. The Model 112 is a completely new look from Jeff Rowland Design Group, demonstrating increased value and a smaller physical size, as well as a departure from the battery design of some of their older products. The Model 112 features a unique two-tier design that isolates the amplifier section from the power supply. This serves to keep the sensitive amplifier circuitry shielded from the electrically noisy power supply. Unlike other "audiophile" amplifiers, the Rowland Model 112 avoids the temptation of breaking the amplifier into two (or four, ...

Introduction I received a call from my wife a few months back while I was traveling on business. She said that there was a box on the porch that she couldn’t possibly budge. I soon realized that it was the awaited Pass X350 that I was to receive for review. Knowing that it was heavy, I asked her to get a neighbor to help her drag it into the house. She later called and said that it was a huge job, even with a strong male helping. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized how massive and dense this box really was. From unpacking to positioning it onto my amp stand, this was a project. It weighs about 150 lbs., but that doesn’t tell the whole story. At 19 inches wide, 22 inches deep and 10.5 inches tall, the X350 is not a small amp, but it is not the ...

Introduction The Audio Research VT100 Mk II is a 100 watt all tube, balanced stereo power amplifier which retails for $4995. It uses two matched pairs of 6550 output tubes per channel, and four 6922 twin triode tubes per channel. It also incorporates a fully regulated, 540-joule power supply, distributed between two separate, isolated output circuit boards, thus creating short signal paths and true "dual mono" operation back to the main power transformer. The VT100 Mk II is a fully balanced amplifier, which offers both balanced and single ended connections. When using single ended inputs, shorting pins are inserted into the XLR connectors. There is a choice of 4 and 8 ohm speaker connections. I was first taken by the overall look of the amp. I confess that I have had a fetish for the look of Audio Research gear for years. I just think AR gear looks cool. It has always looked rugged yet glamorously simple. Setup ...

Introduction A fact of life in the high-end world is that amplifiers are heavy, obtrusive square chassis with massive heat sinks. However, that is about to change with the release of Sharp’s SM-SX100 1-bit amplifier. The stylish silver chassis with colored accents looks more like an executive shelf component than the 100-watt 2 channel, $15,000 amplifier that delivers clean, unaltered sound, bringing digital technology to what was once a purely analog product. The SM-SX100 is rated with an amazing frequency response of 5 – 100 kHz. Okay, we mere humans can’t hear much above 18 kHz (if we’re lucky), but the extended range ensures a flat response throughout the audible range and a reproduction range commonly associated with analog signals. It is capable of driving a speaker with an 18-inch woofer, yielding devastating subsonic frequencies, while driving the tweeter and midrange effortlessly. Dynamic range is measured at 105 dB, though the theoretical dynamic range associated with ...