Dé Durob Audio blog – Le Blog de Durob Audio

Owner Review of our PrimaLuna EVO 400 Tube Integrated Amplifier!

This amp is heavily under rated. Yes it is rated high but thats not what I meant. I got this amp with the kt150 tubes and the sound quality exceeds amps ive been around lately in the last several months. I wanted to take advantage of the quality assurance upgrade option wondering if something could sound better I would be interested. Decided i would stop by a couple friends houses and i even drove to three audio stores and asked to listen to specific tracks i had on a usb, songs i knew really well. I have to say I did hear some good 15-30k amps. The 15k range was almost unnoticeable but some extra clarity at higher volumes and were talking like 1% or less clarity increase. All other really expensive amps I heard; some really didnt sound much better at all, some even sounded duller, while there was one 30k that blew me away but the guy had 100k speakers on it. With regard to the evo 400 it has absolutely no noise even when turned up in silence. It is extremely bright but not brittle, meaning a snare drum, or a tight vocal or a cymbal crash sounds like its supposed to. My friends call the evo the heart breaker. It can play so clean that you can hear the high quality vs poor quality production recordings in great detail. Revealing some songs just sound like a preschooler recorded it and others sound incredible like you are standing there. I have noticed pail in comparison many stereo, decks, and speakers all setup with a colored or :boasted: type of configuration in the circuit. This almost makes all the songs super level in volume and tonal character. This makes most amps really sound the same in nature and even some of the not well recorded and mastered songs sound loud and proud. I don’t understand why amps have these hidden features. Its really embellishing and sorta gives those other name brand or more expensive amps a way to hide from a truly immersive experience; with just added tonal changes to boast everything with the designers ambitions to audio(this actually limits and restricts those amps sound stage and immersive sound experience). the thing i noticed on this amp is that is doesn’t have any of these features. its takes in the signal and it will reproduce it 100% on the output side allowing mistakes to be present and or truly astounding quality audio to be present. I would say its on par with a 15-30k amp easily any day of the week. The one thing i will mention is in my journey i went through three speakers with this amp, and as i had a semi positive experience with the klipsch, i then upgraded to the monitor audio and those allowed the amp to shine but still sounded a bit neutered. I then upgraded to 328be and it was a completely different experience. If you are limited to speakers then i suggest you get this amp as a go to for sonic performance(it wont hold you back). if you can afford to crank up your speaker budget and invest in a speakers that can actually allow you to hear the quality of this amp then you will not be disappointed. This amp + revels was a like a bare noticeable if any comparison to a 100k dollar speaker + 30k power amp. The only thing i noticed was beyond this amps wattage delivery, the other 30k amp sounded better cranked up delivering serious sound to those other speakers as the amp and speakers had a higher capacity to operate.Tthe evo400 itself at full volume has no audio based defects, its just the limit where it hits. I have yet to turn it up and hear any distortion or fatigued audio noises. This amp with a decent speaker budget and wiring is absolutely the best value you will find on the market. note: I am operating in a 90% treated dead room. So I can hear a mouse fart in the background if there were to be one in the recording. dont sleep on this amp. I assume using two power amps in mono would substantially make a difference from what others have said, in my situation i have a small room so the integrated amp was my choice.

Elliot

Learn more about our PrimaLuna EVO 400 Tube Integrated Amplifier through the link below.

https://www.primaluna.nl/tube/integrated/primaluna-evo-400-tube-integrated-amplifier/