I need to mention one more thing that recently improved the sound of my system in a big way. I've been using the Puritan Audio 156 power conditioner for about 4 -years now. Recently I added the Puritan's own Ground Master City and the Route Master to ground all my equipment. Last night I even grounded my Ether Regen which I'm using right before the Pulsar. I had some expectations of improved sound after I read some reviews but I never expected it to be so dramatic. The sound just became clean and the background completely black. The separation between the instruments became real. Highly recommend trying it if you are not using any special grounding setups.
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)
Showing 4 responses by olesno
I don’t post here very often even though I’ve been on Audiogon for well over 20 years. I need to however thank Terry London for pointing me in CODA direction and ultimately making me buy the S5.5. I have a decent system and I use it to almost exclusively to stream music from Qobuz via Roon Nucleus+. I use the Innuos Pulsar streamer, Lampizator Golden Atlantic TRP DAC and Don Sachs tube preamp and amp. My speakers are the big Tekton Ulfberht towers which are 4Ohm and 99dB efficient. I was very happy with the sound and really didn’t need anything else. Well, it doesn’t work that way with me. I started thinking about adding a solid state amp and tweaking the sound a little. I thought about Pass and couple of other options but I remembered talking to Terry in the past about my Ulfberhts and reading his review of another CODA. After another call to Terry I became convinced that the S5.5 might just be the right choice. 100W of pure class A power into 4Ohm speakers seemed plenty enough. My decision was right. The amp is fantastic and I enjoy my setup more now than ever before. The sound is very smooth and extended in highs and lows with tube like midrange. No edginess or brightness. Very dynamic and clean. Wonderful sound staging and depth with very well defined vocals and instruments. I made the right choice and my tube amp will have to wait a while now before I get the itch to listen to it again. |
I like my Ulfberhts a lot. My pair has one Be tweeter installed and I made that decision right before I ordered them about four years ago. Never regretted it. They are big but they literally disappear in my room with the right performance. All you hear is vocals and instruments in space, unattached to the speakers. In my opinion they are highly undervalued. Outside of the Ulfs some of the other speakers I had within the last 20 years were... KEF Blade 2, Gershman Black Swan or Piega. Also Gallo Acoustics and Legacy long time ago. |
@minatophase3 They are big and heavy and visually imposing. I got used to them and my better half likes to listen to music with me so it wasn't a WAF issue at all. Mine are piano black so they look cool too. |