Tri-Art Audio B-Series 60W Stereo Integrated Amplifier
This is my second review of audio equipment from our Canadian producers, Tri-Art Audio (TAA). Please see my earlier review of the Tri-Art Audio open baffle speakers, the B series 4 Open, should you wish to learn more about this Canadian gem of a company.
Note: this review includes the added functionality of the Tri-Art B-Series DC Linear (Tube Buffered) 12 Volt Power Supply, which ships with the integrated amplifier. Price for the integrated amplifier and its outboard power supply is $3799.
Situated on the shores of Lake Ontario in the peaceful university town of Kingston, Ontario, TAA is breaking into the highly competitive high-end audio market and making a name for its unique inventory of amplifiers, open baffle speakers, cables, phono amp and turntable. Under review for today is the Class D 60W Integrated Amplifier with 12V DC Linear (Tube buffered) Power Supply.
The two units have been my companions for 6 months. This combination of amplifier energy through my B Series 4 Open Loudspeakers with my new Sutherland KC Vibe Mk2 Phono Preamp (review forthcoming), the Shelter Model 501 lll MC Phono Cartridge, the Mytek HiFi Manhattan DAC II all tied together with Rob Fritz’s fantastically impressive cables from Audio Art Cable, and you can envision a Napoleon Hill-styled, deep mental retreat into my group of metaphorical councillors that offers me direction and wisdom through great equipment and great music. Ambrosia for the soul!
The pursuit of excellent home sound within the constraints of a working musician’s wages has been a dream come true—much of it thanks to the patience and generosity of Jim Leveille and the Ginsberg family at Tri-Art Audio, Rob Fritz at Audio Art Cable, and our Audio Athene here in Toronto—Angie Lisi of American Sound of Canada. With the statements of gratitude now out of the way, let’s begin our technical discussion of the integrated.
Features and Specifications
The integrated unit has 3 RCA Inputs and features a bamboo cabinet with Acoustic “Waffling” to break up sound waves. Other details from the website include:
A class D stereo integrated amplifier with a conservative rating of 60W per Channel Continuous @ 8Ω A 24 Volt DC linear (tube buffered) power supply is included with 3 position gain selector for the tube output. Beautifully wrapped in bamboo that has been soaked in hemp oil, the cabinet has been packed with dampening sheep’s wool and features acoustic waffling to break up sound waves. Sorbothane® feet and bamboo encased remote control are included.
Power: 60W per Channel Continuous @ 8Ω
Class: Class D, Single Ended
Power Supply: 12 Volt DC Linear tube buffered
Tube: One (1) NOS GE 5670
Gain: Three Position Gain Selector Switch for Tube Output
Shield: Copper Sleeve Tube Shield
Pre-Amp: Pre-Amp Section Shunt Resistor Design
Headphone: 6.3mm (1/4") jack with built in Headphone Amplifier
Input: Three (3) Stereo RCA Inputs
Balanced: Two (2) Passive Isolating Transformers for Balanced Signal Input through RCA
Output: Two Stereo Gold Plated 5-Way Binding Post
Cabinet: Bamboo with 1/4" Anodized Aluminum Face Plate
The B-Series 60W’s rear panel.
The unit pulls in a signal that is, in its purest form, thoroughly analog throughout the full amplification process using digital means for sampling and gate control. As the Ginsberg’s explained, the analog music signal reaches the class-D module with no equalization, its frequency response optimized and matched to the gain setting of the amplification module. This input signal is then sampled by the most efficient and expedient method possible, allowing for impressive levels of distortion-free, precise amplification that is independent of the magnitude of the input signal. (Is this not what we are all looking for in the class-D amps?)
In addition, the boards for the pre-amp and amplifier are designed and machined in-house. In fact, except for high standard industry resistors and capacitors, some obvious electrical components, the construction of the metal parts and the bamboo frames and casings are all designed and made in the Tri-Art manufacturing centre in Kingston, ON.
All the input and output connectors and binding posts are hard wired. The preamp section with transformers, once again, shows solid core wiring. Architectural spacing and the highest quality of oxygen-free, rounded jewellery, quality copper wiring further insulated with good old sheep’s wool, and you have a serious attempt to reduce RF and to create a fluid functioning circuitry for the unit that delivers a very conservative rating of 60W per channel, instantly and consistently.
All of this care and detail—and we will discuss further in a moment—is there to assist the real engine of the Class-D, its power. When you supply no-want-for-anything, instantaneous power that activates the 8 sectioned, 7 part resistors power supply-pack and retrieves power immediately, you have, of course, fulfilled the requirements of macrodynamics and of microdynamics within the soundscape of the original recording.
When you have a source of power that is instantaneous and consistent you could argue the volume control on the preamp becomes no longer necessary, for the natural dynamics of the piece itself becomes the source of expression. This, it seems to me, is a very fine state to achieve with any amplifier. In addition, balanced transformers will help greatly with accurate phase coherence, thereby recreating the height and depth of the music and its imaging. Add the consistency and the homogenization of proper impedance and you have created a serious standard for your electronic piece. At this point, you have asked much and received much from your amplifier.
Furthermore, TAA uses the Gold Standard in motorized potentiometers: the iconic Alps Blue Velvet.
What else do we have?
We have the Vishay VAR-Series ‘naked’ Z-Foil resistor. This shunt resistor holds pride of place in the unit and considering the Vishay is custom made and one of the most expensive and musical sounding shunt resistors on the market, you’ll be impressed to find these resistors in an amp of this retail price. What does this wunderkind bring to the sound party? Well, we will find out very shortly, but let me offer you this glass of champagne and an appetizer as a tease. Breathe deeply and imagine a magnificent balance between neutrality, spacing and musicality.
The GE Pseudo Balancing Transformers are wrapped in Mu-metal, a metal well known for its ability to block RF and a great contribution to an ideal super low noise floor; but the designers also believe in the imaging abilities of these transformers and when a you push the B series Integrated Amplifier through the Open Baffle 4 speakers you have—how shall we say—nowhere to hide. Because the Open Baffle 4s will expose everything as transparently as anything on the market; everything you have up source, like our integrated, must exhibit electronic quality and instant power, not just constant power, or the results will be less than impressive. Finally, the B-Series uses Russian manufactured oil and paper wrapped capacitors.
But let’s be candid. You can use the highest quality of electronics ‘til the cows come home and still end up with a mediocre product. TAA’s goal is to offer the most natural, neutral and musical sounding amplification using an inherently simple circuit design in conjunction with the finest materials.
Tri-Art B-Series DC Linear (Tube Buffered) 12 Volt Power Supply.
Sound
The great Jessye Norman’s performance of Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with Kurt Masur conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig on vinyl is my first selection. I’ll focus on ‘Beim Schlafengehen’. Those who know this piece will have read this was Strauss’s elegiac farewell to the world. I’m not sure the word elegy is completely accurate, however. For in this final composition—and Strauss knew not that this would be his last—he brings the Eichendorff and Hesse poems to a musical world far away from the bombast, oft ostentatious writing of his youth and middle age, imbuing these poems with a subtle, skilful orchestration and a veteran attention to ‘word colouring’, shorn of needless ornamentation. In a farewell of such calmness and depth, there is no sadness, no elegy, only a resigned gratitude. ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ observes this perfectly for me and is my favourite of the 4 Lieder.
Between the 2nd and final verse, there is the beautiful accompanied violin solo of an autumnal surrender-like quality that introduces the ‘soul’, our soprano, to her final verse, and what a final verse! The piece begins in the secondary key of f minor but with the 2nd verse modulates to the key of Db major where Strauss gives pride of place to the French horn, the instrument his father played for 40 years in Munich, to conclude the dream-like nature of this verse. Here begins that extraordinary violin solo leading to the 3rd and final verse and the arching beautifully yearning melody of the ‘soul’ as it climbs unencumbered to her high Ab. The first time I put this LP on my turntable through the TTA Integrated Amp I was compelled out of my chair, as if the sound itself was lifting me upward. The sound simply grew as if there was a never-ending open ceiling waiting to be filled—so much space, so much breathability! Was this just Norman and Maestro Masur? For sure the power of both to craft this crescendo brilliantly was a large part of my reaction, but it was the TAA amp that did what it was built to do—take a great recording and performance and reproduce it with the space, volume never flagging, and headroom worthy of the performers. Extraordinary!
My second selection could not be more different—Il Pergolese by Maria Pia de Vito, on EMC. We have Maria Pia De Vito, soprano voice with more of a background in jazz and high-end popular music; François Couturier, piano and arranger; Anja Lechner, violoncello with a thorough classical training and Michele Rabbia, experimental percussionist and electronics on this fascinating project.
Il Pergolese is a tribute to the enormously creative, yet tragically short, life of the 18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), and how his art music and the popular music of Naples, can act as a modifiable script within a highly extemporized, contemporary perspective. François Couturier's arrangements rebirth Pergolesi's structures, offering space for improvisational interaction.
I am using Tidal on my Macbook Pro with USB through the Mytek Manhattan DAC II through the Tri-Art Integrated Amp. The ‘Amen/Fac Ut Portem’ track demonstrates all of the above noted characteristics of this project and offers a soundscape that is, I would argue, a truer emotional reading of the text than the original. I know this is offered from the vantage point of the 21st century, and I would never deny the musical beauty of Pergolesi’s original work, but the opening strangeness of the whispering electronic and percussion sounds, combined with the unsettling harmonic tremolos from the cellist in the introduction, reproduce an emotional prelude to the text of the crucifixion that is surreal as one could believe the event itself must have been. But it is the openness and the space, or the headroom of the TAA that brings forth the vivacity of the imaging. The soundstaging is magnificent and the three dimensionality of the small ensemble is perfectly mirrored by the amplifier.
For a third example; Mahler’s 5th Symphony and to the final movement, the ‘Rondo-Finale’. I have to admit to a nasty prejudice. I tend to judge the playing of this movement—whether I like it or not—by the opening horn note and about the first 26 bars. I know this is modestly irrational—bear with me. Is it played with a real fp attack or a quieter legato tonguing? How robust is the sound of the horn player in bars 13, 14 and 15?
My experience has suggested that a horn player that plays the 4th space E forte piano as Mahler asked, with a suitable ‘verklingend’ tone colour, and then play with a slightly delicious edge to the tone on the fortes, has my acclamation immediately. Why? Because what I hear is a conductor and horn player who understand that Mahler was one of the great polyphonists of the 19th and early 20th century, a composer who wrote ‘lines of music’ and these secondary and tertiary lines are there to sound. They are not there only as vertical sonorities, to be homogenized and sanitized in some pablum blend—of course these musicians understand and hear blend—but to allow the carriers of these secondary lines, like the horns, often with cellos or violas, to bring forth a true forte brass sound that has real power. Who suppresses this delicious polyphony in Mahler for a warmed-over amorphous sonority is no friend of mine. That is why I love James Levine’s recording of Mahler’s 5th with the Philadelphia Orchestra on RCA CD. Who is the first french horn player? The great Mason Jones! The whole symphony is played brilliantly and the entire horn section of Philly takes its lead from Jones.
Moment after moment in the ‘Scherzo’ and ‘Rondo’, the horns are thunderous, beautiful wild stallions, exhibiting a soaring power that comes through the open-baffle speakers and the B-Series in spades. Midrange depth, space and clarity, electrifyingly translucence with an imaging that is most admirable and the TAA once again reproduces Philly’s and Maestro Levine’s efforts with ease.
For my final example, I return to the world of spirit and space and tradition. It is said, when representatives of the House of Rus came to Constantinople in the 7th century AD and stood in the middle of the Hagia Sophia they fell to their knees vowing to bring Christianity to their homeland, so impressed were they with this physical microcosm of heaven on earth. From this point so long ago, the Russian Orthodox church grew with its own plainsong and liturgy and its unique choral repertoire for the male voice. Tchaikovsky, Nikolsky, Strokin and many other Russian composers of the 18th and 19th centuries contributed complex 4 and 5 part pieces to this choral tradition.
These later contributions are now firmly embraced as the greatest musical and liturgical representations of the Russian Orthodox Church and some of these masterpieces are captured on a CD entitled Ancient Echoes, produced in 1993 and sung by the Chorovaya Akademia conducted by Alexander Sedov. Just one piece of music into this disc and one is captured by the technical virtuosity, the sheer magnificence of the Russian male sound and, if you allow it, the music will bring you to another place. Both the music and the recording are superb. What a match for a great amplifier. We hear and see the cavernous and lofty basilica of the great interiors of the Russian Orthodox church. The sibilants of the Russian language are stunningly clear through the TAA. The ceiling of sound in the church is generously welcomed by the amplifier with no artificial compression and the music is projected to the listener with absolute crystal clarity from ppp to mp to mf up to fff. A complete coherence of sound regardless of the dynamics that creates a spiritual presence as if you, too, are a believer. Remarkable!
Conclusion
It is time to conclude, dear reader; and many thanks for your interest. I know Steve Ginsberg and TAA’s Head of Electrical Engineering, Adam Thomaes, would agree with George Polychronidis of Moon River Audio—forgive me for quoting the competition—when he states that in the audio industry there is a misunderstanding about power. ‘Power is always measured by a constant, stable frequency in the lab—a single continuous sinewave without alterations of the level in time—when the major question is how much power an amplifier can deliver instantly, not constantly. Measuring with a stable frequency doesn't tell you much about how an amplifier will handle musical dynamics, follow precisely music's chaotic and complex transients, and drive the speaker.’
This is what the Ginsbergs envisioned and what they have created in the Tri-Art B-Series 60w Stereo Integrated Amplifier with accompanying Linear Power Supply. A source of instant power producing a coherent reproduction of sound that takes sophisticated pieces of music completely in stride and suggests a power way above the conservative marking of 60 Watts per channel. There is no editorializing of sound here, although the buffered tube does place a modestly warm bloom on the overall sound, it never detracts from the crystal clarity one hears. This is a remarkable integrated amplifier that punches way above its retail price. Highly recommended.
Further information: Tri-Art Audio
