Michael Fremer

Monoblock power amplifiers seem to be moving in and out of my listening room faster than green-onion salsa from Chi-Chi's. Over the past six months I've had the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/774">Parasound Halo JC-1</A>, the Halcro dm68, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/1103pass">Pass XA-160</A>, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/104mf">Musical Fidelity kW</A>, and now these 300W (into 8 ohms), $4500-each beauties from Theta Digital. All of these amps sounded as different as they looked, which was no surprise; too bad the "measures the same, sounds the same" dogmatists remain open for business.

With its high-end heart and home-theater brain, Chord's powerful CPM 3300 integrated amplifier ($9500 with the aluminum-cylinder Integra leg option, $8950 without) is a uniquely fascinating audio product well worth considering. High-tech innards and magazine-cover good looks don't hurt either, but what originally got me interested was the superlative sound Chord products have consistently delivered at trade and consumer shows when paired with Wilson-Benesch loudspeakers.

The old advertising jingle "Who put eight great tomatoes in that itty-bitty can?" bubbled through my head as Musical Fidelity's Antony Michaelson proudly unboxed the new $4500 M3 Nu-Vista integrated amplifier. How did they cram it all in there?

I don't know Gram Slee from Gram Parsons, or which House he was in at Harry Potter's Hogwarts School, but let me tell you: If you'd just been listening to a bunch of budget phono preamps, as I had, then came upon the GSP Audio Era Gold Mk.V, you'd think someone had switched out not just the phono preamp but your entire system. You might think you were listening to a different pressing or a different cartridge. How can this be?

With the exception of dCS and Accuphase, you don't see anyone jumping on the bandwagon of $15,000-plus SACD players&mdash;and for good reason. Despite enthusiasm for the format within the relatively small audiophile community, high-resolution audio isn't exactly making waves on the front pages&mdash;or even the back pages&mdash;of the mainstream news media. And while ABKCO Records has sold millions of Rolling Stones hybrid SACD/CDs, and Sony is looking to repeat that phenomenon with the recent Dylan hybrids, what's being sold in both cases are CDs, <I>not</I> SACDs. The higher-resolution layer is simply going along for the ride.

Before the advent of big-screen projection televisions, manhood was measured more conventionally: by the size of one's crate-sized, boat-anchor-heavy, brushed-aluminum-fronted power amplifiers. Those days are long gone.

"You can't <I>get</I> deep bass in your room," a reviewer from another magazine who'd never visited my room insisted recently on the phone. "Do you know how long a 20Hz bass wave <I>is</I>? It's <I>40 feet long</I>, and your room is <I>tiny</I>."