Solid State Power Amp Reviews

For an audio reviewer, too, this presents a challenge. What do you write about when the component under review has no sound? That said, every audiophile has particular sensitivities, things that especially bother them—and also insensitivities, things other people hear easily and avoid that they are more or less immune to. I know that's true of me.

I won't talk about my insensitivities—not here—but a particular sensitivity of mine—and it is a useful one for a reviewer—is to the electrical character audio equipment can take on. Every amplifier—indeed, every element of an active hi-fi system—sounds like what it is: an electrical/electronic means of reproducing sound. But some components sound more electrical, some less.

Even if you were to completely eliminate electrical sound from your reproduction system, you wouldn't be rid of it. It remains on most recordings, which, after all, were also made electrically. If the electrical sound is there, your system should reproduce it, even if you don't want to hear it.

One of my main goals, as audiophile and reviewer, is to eliminate that electrical sonic overlay or reduce it as much as possible. I share this, probably, with many listeners and at least a few hi-fi designers. I'm convinced I share it with whoever at Burmester designed this amplifier.

In the strictest sense, this is only relevant for recordings of acoustical instruments. Anything else will sound electrical because it is electrical.

The absence of that electrical sound can greatly benefit any instrument, but I find it especially important on piano, acoustic double bass, and human voice. Still, I've found that the reproduction of electrical instruments—even synths—can be improved by banishing the electronicky overlay. I rather enjoy listening for the sound of the microphone on vintage vocal recordings—a good example is Ella Fitzgerald's Let No Man Write My Epitaph, songs from the film simply recorded with voice (and microphone) and Paul Smith on piano (24/96 FLAC, Verve/Qobuz). Add an extra electronic overlay from the reproduction system, and the distinctive sound of Ella's mike becomes more diffuse and troubling.

The more I can banish that electric sound from the best recordings of acoustic instruments, the happier I'll be. These Burmester amps do it as well as any amplifier I've had in my system. One could almost imagine them being powered not by electricity but directly by a windmill or something—maybe a monkey on a bicycle. I have no idea how that would work.

This is what I noticed first and most about the 216s after a bit of break-in, when I got serious about listening.

An album I've listened to a lot since its early-July release is Mozart Recital by Su Yeon Kim on the (obviously) piano-centric label Steinway & Sons. I'm enjoying it mostly for the music: It's a fascinating program with some unfamiliar Mozart, and this young pianist has a definite point of view, in the best way. Her touch is simultaneously warm and precise, and she plays with humor. The first thing that caught my ear was the opening Gigue, "Eine kleine Gigue" in G, K.574. The way she plays it, it took a while for me to recognize this as Mozart; at first I thought it was by some modernist.

Joshua Frey, the recording engineer, has endowed the piano with a lovely sound but a perspective that's difficult to judge. It's a blend of up close and a few rows back. Notes are arrayed over a space that suggests the piano is perhaps 30' away, but the texture of the notes suggests close miking.

What did the Burmester 216s bring to the party? (footnote 1) Piano notes sounded weighty, full, dense. This is definitely a piano, with warmth and wood—none of the fortepiano sound one hears on some piano recordings. The leading-edge transient was fully there, to a degree I found quite natural, but the emphasis was on the rich core of the notes.

Scrolling through my most frequently played tracks in Roon, I chose The Window by Cécile McLorin Salvant (24/96 FLAC, Mack Avenue/Qobuz; later I listened to the LP, Mack Avenue MAC1132LP). This has become one of my reviewing standards; I've heard it many times on many systems. I have a good idea of what it sounds like.

This is a very fine recording. Cécile's voice is embodied, corporeal, present. The vocal mike is fairly neutral, so you don't notice it as much as you notice Ella's mike on Epitaph, though the microphone does take on an edge when her voice goes loud in her upper register. Sullivan Fortner's piano sounds very much like what it is, a piano in space, sounding mellow on some notes, percussive on others, depending on his touch.

Apart from the fact that I'm hearing reproduced music, which I would not be doing if there were no amplifier, I'm really not noticing the amplifier at all.

As good as the studio tracks on this album are, I think it gets better on the live numbers, recorded at the Village Vanguard. (My son was there for one of these performances; I should have been.) On Buddy Johnson's "Ever Since the One I Love's Been Gone," Cécile's voice is especially dynamic—edgy and in-your-face loud, which, naturally, you notice more at higher volume. The microphone is tangible; you're hearing not just the voice but voice plus microphone. The piano sounds a touch more solid and real on this and the other live tracks than it does on the studio tracks—more like Su Yeon Kim's recording of Mozart. Then comes "À Clef ": Why is it that Cécile, whose voice often sounds aggressive and strange—that's a compliment; it's a big part of her talent—always sounds so lovely and feminine when she sings in French?

One of the great pleasures of a really fine music system is how it—or rather how the music, via it—can take you by surprise. I should leave this album and move on, but I'm finding that hard to do, because as I listen more, even this recording that I know so well continues to deliver surprises. On "Obsession," after Fortner's short introduction, Cécile's voice is exceedingly simple, soft, almost but not quite spoken word. It sounds a bit further back on the stage now, surrounded by space, including front to back; the space surrounding her voice has space of its own.

An audio system is a facilitator. It's the music that affects us. The system has to let it affect us, and sometimes it doesn't. It's that disappearing thing again, and the 216s are doing it—disappearing, leaving lovely music in their wake, except that there is no wake, or none to speak of.

It's time for me to rip myself away from this lovely album and move on to something else—but not far. I'm moving to another album by Cécile, who followed up three consecutive Grammy-winning albums on Mack Avenue by moving to a new label—Nonesuch—and going more experimental. For Ghost Song she put together a band with fascinating instrumentation: voice; exotic plucked strings (plus guitar); three varieties of bass (electric, synth, acoustic); flute; piano and Rhodes; percussion. The result is a totally new sound that, when I first heard it, just sounded strange. It took several listens (and three live performances: one at Princeton's McCarter Theatre Center and two at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater) to adjust to this new soundscape. I am now well-adjusted.

Using Roon's remote—my laptop—I clicked on the first track.

Many people of a certain age fell in love with Kate Bush when she was young and we were, too. She released her debut album, The Kick Inside, when she was 19. "Wuthering Heights" is the last track on side 1 of that LP, and it's the first track on this album. It was brilliant there. It is better here. Cécile's take is profoundly different—how could it not be—yet similar in spirit. We hear Cécile's distant voice in an echo chamber, growing ever closer, singing Baroque style with much ornamentation, then she starts into the first stanza. At the refrain, Paul Sikivie's synth bass starts up and her voice snaps forward—cue the goosebumps. Just now I played it twice—goosebumps both times. Then I let the album keep playing.

Listen to "Until ...," by Sting, from the soundtrack to the movie Kate & Leopold, and tell me this song doesn't belong in the great American songbook. This recording is so rich yet so chalk-dry—dry in the sense of the total absence of that electronic overlay I mentioned earlier—that it made me look up and smile big. Really good hi-fi can make you feel foolish.

It's happening again: I'm being distracted by the music. That could be this review's take-away.

One amp or two?
The last thing I did before finishing up this review is cue up the fourth movement of Mahler's Symphony No.2, "Resurrection." I cued up the fourth movement because I wanted to hear the fifth but didn't want to dive right into it. The start of V is one of the most sudden and intense musical climaxes I could think of. (I love that this climax comes at the beginning—the beginning of the last movement, the beginning of the end.) The five-minute, 48-second fourth movement ("Urlicht") was just a lovely lead-in to the fifth. I had just one amplifier playing in stereo, so the specified maximum power into the Wilsons, a nominal 4 ohm load, was 165W. I listened to IV and V all the way through. I listened especially carefully to the climax just after 11:20, which is a little bit louder than the one at the beginning but not as broadband. And because I listened through to the end, I also experienced the fifth movement's cataclysmic last few minutes. I listened loud, with peak levels in excess of 95dB.

Then I bridged the one amp, added the other one (also bridged of course), matched the volume electrically, and listened again.

I had already written this section in my mind. I was convinced by the analysis presented early in this review—that a single amplifier had sufficient power to drive these speakers to completely satisfying levels. Sure, I realized power isn't the only technical advantage to monoblock amplifiers. The amps no longer share a transformer, and the circuits are farther apart and separately shielded. All that boils down mainly to a single measurement—channel separation, or crosstalk. Presumably the channel separation is already excellent—so how much difference could this really make?

What I heard surprised me. Playing this powerful, broadband music very loud, with a single stereo amplifier, it sounded louder, more compressed, less controlled. With two amplifiers, bridged, the music spread out more and seemed more relaxed. It didn't seem as loud. The difference wasn't subtle. Listening with two amplifiers was a more satisfying experience.

What's going on? I don't know. Subjectively, I'd describe it as a relative absence of congestion. Was it the channel separation aiding imaging, better separating the various orchestral parts? I have noticed with certain "spatial" or immersive-audio formats that by better separating images in space, a greater sense of relaxation can be achieved. Maybe it's the channel separation. Maybe it's the power. Maybe it's some other thing.

I should add, this isn't the only time I noticed an improvement with these amplifiers bridged. Bridged often offered small advantages in image separation—images spread out further, side to side and front to back, within a larger yet more precise soundstage.

Conclusions
Criticisms? The Burmester visual aesthetic will not please everyone—you know who you are. It grew on me over time. It's not that I became a bigger fan of mirror finishes; it's that I came to notice the small, mirrored part less and to appreciate its classical form more. It has a bit of a Parthenon look.

The limitations of the Burmester 216 are those you can read about in Specifications. Do they have enough power to drive your loudspeakers? There's a good chance they do, since they are fairly powerful, though more powerful amplifiers are available, including the Burmester 218. Or, if you need more power and can pay the price, you can buy two 216s and use them bridged.

This may be the most self-effacing amplifier I've reviewed. Its utter lack of electronic character is a huge plus. It's a musical chameleon. I wrote a lot about music in the paragraphs above and not so much about amplifiers. It's the best I could do. Because of its reticence—how it consistently refused to take center stage—to not write about this amplifier is perhaps the best way to write about this amplifier. Highly recommended

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Footnote 1: I listened to this music over a rather long period of time via three different amplifiers: The Burmester, the Pass Labs XA60.8, and the CH Precision M1.1, which is in for review. My conclusions about what the Burmester brings is based on those comparisons.