Solid State Power Amp Reviews

If we had been asked some time ago to describe our "dream amplifier," chances are we would have described the Crown DC-300. Designed originally as an industrial device, it was made available as an audio amplifier rather as an afterthought. But if that roundabout approach is necessary to produce an audio amplifier like this, so be it.

I still remember reading about my first Mark Levinson product 14 or 15 years ago. It was a preamp. The model number escapes me, but it sold for over $2000. It was soon followed by the JC-2, designed by John Curl, which was a bit less pricey but still astonishingly expensive for a mid-'70s preamp. We've come a long way since then. The man, Mark Levinson, left the company that bore his name in the early 1980s and founded a new company, Cello. The company Mark Levinson became the core of Madrigal. It is a mark of their continued dedication to uncompromising high-end products that their bread-and-butter line remains the high-priced Mark Levinsons. They no longer have the Rolls-Royce of the audio market to themselves (in their early years, they made the never exactly inexpensive Audio Research products—ARC was certainly a contender for the same title—look like bargains), but they are certainly a leading player.

Every time a new audio technology enters the marketplace, a debate begins about its relative merit. That debate never ceases, even decades after the technology first came (and sometimes went). Turntable platters driven by belts vs rims vs idlers vs directly by their motors. Analog vs digital. Tubes vs solid-state. Triodes vs pentodes, Single-ended vs push-pull. Objectivism vs subjectivism. The power and seriousness of each of these debates has splintered our global hobby into diverse tribes, cults, and subcults—and therein lies one of the chief joys of being an audiophile: participating in cult rivalries.