Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Hearing Things Release date of the A1400-8

Over the years I have always found the sound differences between amplifiers to be subtle when compared to the differences found in speakers. Hence if budget is a concern you are probably better to cut a little deeper on the amp side. The main reason for this is that amplifiers (with the exception of some bizarre designs out there) do not colour the tonal balance of the performance nor have any bearing on the off axis response. This does not mean that all amplifiers sound the same but that different factors come into play. Without question the big one is the amount of power available to play dynamic peaks. Wid was commenting earlier about the statement that at normal listening levels you do not need more than a watt or two and I agree with him that this statement is, in practical terms, false; though granted in mathematical terms under certain conditions it can be proved true. The power required to bring home a great performance can get pretty large if you want even just moderate listening levels in a large space without any clipping in the dynamics. The reality is that when most people want to crank up their system they rarely achieve the volume level they truly want; instead they go to the level of clipping distortion in the dynamics that they can put up with (which sounds painfully harsh and loud even if it isn’t).

So, in the past at least, if you wanted to achieve loud and clean the reality was you were faced with a big spend on the amp side to achieve this. A stack of mono blocks was really the only solution and this came at enormous cost. In my case I had over 2 times the money invested in the amplifiers compared to the speakers. Central to the design goals of the A1400 series amps was to be able to solve this problem for a fraction of the cost. I have been living with one of the 2 prototypes of our new amp (JC has the other one) for a few months now and it far exceeds the quality of this stack of mono blocks and does it for $3,850. Now I have more power and better sound for an investment in the amplification less than half the cost of the speakers.