Introduction Tube gear used to scare me. Spooky people are into tube gear. The kind of guys who wear pocket protectors and brag about their mail order engineering degrees. My idea of high end audio is not heating up the soldering iron to mod my preamp or hunting down the latest tube condoms from Uzebkistan. To quote the 1970's disco/soul profits, The O'Jays "I love music... any kind of music." The Sonic Frontiers Line 2 lets you love your music exactly the way you want to. Your listening options include configuring your system for high performance 2 channel stereo playback with remote control, feeding a home theater or multi-room system or listening through headphones. Incidentally, you will never find Sonic Frontiers gurus Chris Johnson and Chris Jensen with tape on their glasses or pens in pocket protectors. The Sonic Frontiers Line 2 ($3295 USD) is a Canadian made preamp that is well suited for music ...

Introduction Magnum, a small British audio component manufacturer, was started several years ago by the one of the founding fathers of the REGA Planar turntable. Today, Magnum is making their line of mosfet integrated, pre and power amplifiers, CD players and loudspeakers available to audiophiles and music lovers throughout the U.S. I was fortunate enough to procure the MP 160 ($750 USD) preamplifier and the MF 160 ($750 USD) power amplifier and have had the two pieces in and out of my audio system over the last few months. The MP 160 preamplifier is a slim-line unit featuring all single ended inputs and outputs and boasts an internal power supply. The front panel features an on/off switch, three buttons each (tape monitor, mute and mono functions), an input selector along side balance and volume controls. Also, to add even more value, the MP 160 comes not only with a phono section but a user selectable ...