The new Coda S5.5 amplifier: It's a "Petite Beast"!


I have in-house the New Coda Technologies S5.5 amplifier for review for Stereo Times website. It will be awhile before I write the review. However, I'm so impressed by the performance of this petite amplifier, it only weights 45 pounds, that I wanted to give a heads up to you GON members if you are in the market for a balanced pure class A amplifier, delivers 50 watts @ 8 Ohms, and can drop 100 Amperes of current on a peak!

The world class build quality of Coda amplifiers is on display with the S5.5, along with the most beautiful purity of tonality, precise sound-staging, complete liquidity offered by pure class A design, and what might be the best top end regarding details, decays, and a natural shimmering without brightness or any edge at all.

The S5.5 uses extremely wide bandwidth output transistors instead of the usual TO3 devices used in most transistor designs. I own the Coda #16, which is great, but the midrange/high end is taken to another level of musical enjoyment with the S5.5. The S5.5 has a sense of speed/aliveness that is exciting to listen to that you experience in live music. The amp is dynamic as hell, has driven with ease any speaker I have tried it with, hence my nickname of the "Petite Beast". Remember, 50 watts pure class A, can drop 100 amperes of current and only weights 45 pounds.

Teajay (Terry London)

johnah5

Showing 2 responses by gryphongryph

@sim_audio_nerd Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the Grange and the Coda synergy, I myself have the Supratek Cabernet driving a Belles SA30 class A power amp, it sounds great on my Graham Audio LS 5/9 also very nice on low volume, my amp gets quite warm 56c so is very useful for heating up the listening room in the winter, although in summer it can be a bit annoying, only thing I sometimes wish for is more detail, but at the same time I don’t want to lose my systems musicality, have also wonder about the Atmasphere class d offering and the Musiklab 200.

Good luck with your purchase 👍🏻

@sim_audio_nerd

How is the gain between pre and amp, does the pre and power amp make any noise when turning on or off ?

Does the sound ever get bright ? And does male voices have gravitas, off course more depending on speakers.