Power Amplifier Reviews

I remember the distinct, acrid smell of ozone and burning voice coils like it was yesterday. It was a Friday night, the house was full of friends, and I’d just finished a painstaking speaker cable setup that I was sure would impress everyone. The volume knob on my old receiver was pushed to its limits […]

I’ll never forget the smell of ozone and disappointment that filled my living room three years ago. I’d just hooked up a pair of high-end, 4-ohm speakers to a shiny, lightweight receiver I bought on sale. Ten minutes into a Marvel movie, right as the bass dropped, everything went black. My sleek “600-watt” unit had […]

I’ll never forget the smell of ozone drifting from my media console during the climax of Dunkirk. It was a faint, metallic scent—the smell of money burning. I’d just upgraded my home theater, and because my rack was feeling a bit crowded, I did the one thing I now warn everyone against: I sat my […]

I remember the smell vividly. It wasn’t quite a fire, but more like a sickly-sweet, ozone-heavy metallic scent that filled my basement just as the bass dropped during a screening of Interstellar. My heart sank. That beast of an amplifier, the one I’d bragged about for months, suddenly went silent. I had made the classic […]

The sweat was stinging my eyes as I wrestled a sixty-pound hunk of “audiophile grade” iron into my equipment rack. I actually heard my lower back protest with a distinct pop. At that moment, surrounded by thick speaker cables and a literal mountain of heavy machinery, I had a realization. My room was eighty-five degrees, […]

I remember the distinct smell of toasted electronics like it was yesterday. It was a Tuesday night, the lights were low, and I was finally pushing my new setup to its limits. I had spent weeks convincing myself that why a power amp makes more difference than a new receiver was the hill I wanted […]

I remember the first time I scored a vintage Marantz at a local garage sale. I hooked it up to my favorite speakers, feeling like a king, until I hit the power switch. Instead of the warm, velvet sound I expected, I was greeted by a persistent, low-frequency 60-cycle buzz that felt like it was […]

I’ll never forget the smell of toasted silicon that filled my living room three years ago. I had just finished setting up a gorgeous, mid-century modern cherry wood console. Inside sat my pride and joy—a beefy Class A/B power amp that weighed more than my first car. It looked stunning behind those closed doors. But […]

I smelled it before I heard it—the unmistakable, acrid scent of scorched dust and dying solder. There I was, sitting on my rug, watching a high-octane action flick, feeling proud of the three massive power amps I’d stacked neatly in the corner. I thought I was being efficient. I thought the rubber feet provided enough […]