"Oh no, only $225." In looks, build, parts quality, and sound, the Original proves you can't judge an amp by its price tag.
Other bang for the buck gear with mouth-watering casework came from New York's Woo Audio, designed and run by brothers Zhi Dong and Jack Wu. Jon and I enjoyed the $450 NA3, single-ended class-A OTL amp a lot. Then we heard the $950 WA2, which is also SE, class-A, and OTL, but uses CA57, 6922, and 6X4s instead of the NA3's 6A57/6922 array. Whew—want one!
Empirical Audio's Steve Nugent thinks digital delivery via computer may be the future of audio and, if that's true, we better get busy making it sound good. Empirical has a line of black boxes that exploits I2S, "the native interface on most DAC chips," he said, to control jitter. He makes a Pace Car re-clocker ($1500 for 1 clock; $2000 for 2), which re-clocks I2S, totally separating the power supplies for input and output to achieve complete "galvanic isolation" between the computer and the audio system. He also demoed the $950 Off-Ramp Turbo 2 USB to S/PDIF coaxial converter and $950 Off-Ramp I2S USB to (you guessed it) I2S converter. The gear sounded good, looked impressive, and Nugent is a charismatic promoter of his ideas. I'd like to hear more of his stuff.
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