Home General Asylum

General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories.

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ General Asylum ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

nOhr Le Amp review pt 3

After an hour of listening I was convinced that Le Amp was an outstanding product, particularly given its very low price. Time to compare with an equivalent, so I hooked up my friend Jim Romeyn's well-travelled Marantz monoblocks (160W/ch) which retail for $600pr, more than Le Amp. A brief, joyless audition of the very transistory sounding Marantz convinced me it was not in the same league with Le Amp.

So we returned to the Plinius SA 250IV, my reference for the past year and a half. Mr. Barnes invited comparisons of Le Amp with state of the art transistor amps, so I felt comparing Le Amp to the Plinius was not out of order. We used the Plinius in its class A mode, and once warmed up, the Kiwi amp showed all present what "state of the art" was all about. The Plinius provided layering, depth, dynamics, and first octave bass not present in the nOhr amp, with more naturalness to boot. So how about Le Amp II, Mr. Barnes? Maybe with a $1000 budget you could build a world beater.

Not to disparage the sound of Le Amp, far from it. Within its power range I can't think of anything that comes close. Some may prefer an amp with more bass extension (like the Stratos or the QSC pro amps). Others may like tubes, although Le Amp has the kind of ease and naturalness that reminds me of a very good tube amp, but with better bass. The next amp that really competes with Le Amp in my humble opinion is the Spectron Musician II, a $3200 product.

LeAmp is shipped and serviced from the designer's warehouse in Buffalo NY, so don't worry about sending it to Thailand if it blows. The only service you could perform is replacing the monolithic output stage, which is cheap and easy. In our listening, the amp showed no signs of distress or overheating inspite of the 4 Ohm load. Reliability should be good.

A wonderful product at a low price. Not flawless, but very very good. Check it out.

Big B

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Schiit Audio  

Topic - nOhr Le Amp review pt 3 - Brian Cheney 21:53:41 10/13/01 (56)
You can not post to an archived thread.

[ Top Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]