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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 1 response by iovi66

iovi66
5 posts
 

I had a S5.5, purchased from Mike at Audio Archon. Great guy to deal with. Had the newest and improved transistors according to Doug Dale.  While their website and documentation leaves much to be desired, Doug answered all of my questions and concerns in a timely and respectful manner. It sounded very articulate, clean and detailed and easily drove my Selah Audio Ceramica speakers (6 nominal 4 minimum, 88 dB), however, musically it just never got my toes tapping. Beautiful amp, great build quality, never got more than a little warm, great confidence in its reliability and potential longevity.

But I believe it would have sounded much better with a solid state preamp instead of my BAT VK-51SE tube preamp. Its XLR input impedance is only 10kOhms, so most likely too low and not a good match for an XLR tube preamp. Just wanted to point this out to anyone potentially considering use of this amp with a tube preamp. It sounded better with my Lyngdorf MP-40 as the preamp, but not even close to the overall fidelity level of the BAT tube preamp with the 2 amps I tried with over 100 kOhm input impedances. So I sold it to TMR and it sold within a couple of weeks. Of course, your results may vary with your tube preamp, but I can say, unfortunately, that I found it to be a mediocre match with the BAT tube preamp.

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