Because of the
Stereophile writers' need to share a cab (and keep costs down) I visited the Nagra suite at the Mirage hotel with JA, JI, KR, and LG. As we walked through the Mirage I felt like we weren't a group of audio writers, we were a posse. I kept humming the music Quintin Tarantino used in
Kill Bill for the Crazy 88's whenever we walked around. All right, we weren't
that bad ass.
On display in one of Nagra's rooms was their new 300i tube integrated amplifier (price yet to be determined). The integrated features four 300B output tubes—two each per channel in push-pull—and will put out 20Wpc. The Stereophile crew all listened to the 300B with Verity loudspeakers on a wide range of music. Bruckner's symphonic music seemed to be a bit of a workout for this amp, but John Corigliano's score for the
Red Violin sounded harmonically and dynamically superb. The 300i will be released in August 2010.
