John
The EVO 400 is an all-tube integrated amplifier from PrimaLuna. It is designed in the Netherlands – with heavy input from US distributor Kevin Deal – and made in China. The tube complement sees an octet of EL34 power tubes bridged with a quad of 12AU7 pre-tubes by a pair of 12AU7 driver tubes. All internalised output transformers and toroidals are wound in-house and the wiring protocol is strictly point-to-point. The tube sockets are ceramic. The volume pot is an ALPS. Nichicon and Realcap supplied the capacitors; WBT the speaker binding posts. The single-ended inputs number five and are gold-plated with additional RCA sockets added for HT bypass and mono/stereo subwoofer outputs. Don’t be fooled by the phono stage input. It only functions once the MM pre-amplifier board has been fitted to the amplifier. (In my case, it wasn’t). A quarter-inch headphone socket adorns the front panel but the amplifier must be switched into ‘HP’ mode for the main circuit’s feed to be suitably rediverted. Put down the multi-meter and screwdriver though! One of the EVO 400’s key selling points is its adaptive auto-biasing circuit that works continuously in real-time to ensure that each tube receives the correct dose of voltage at all times. Price? US$5600.
🎥 Camera: Olaf von Voss / John Darko
🎬 Editor: John Darko
🌈 Colour: Olaf von Voss
🕺🏻 Motion GFX: John Darko
💰 Ad segment: Jana Dagdagan
🎵 Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video – and other videos – can be found on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko
Further information: PrimaLuna USA
👉🏻 As seen in this video…
PrimaLuna adaptive auto-bias
📖 https://www.primaluna-usa.com/adaptive-autobias
Beginners guide to tubes/valves in audio
📖 https://spartanmusic.co.uk/blogs/smblog/beginner-guide-to-tubes-valves-in-amps-audio
Zu DWX
📖 https://darko.audio/2023/05/zu-announces-dwx-medium-format-standmount-loudspeaker/
Klipsch Forte IV
🛒 https://howl.me/cimB6UfWWkx
Vivid Audio Kaya S12
📺 https://darko.audio/2022/03/vivid-audio-kaya-s12-video-review/
NAD Masters M23
🛒 https://howl.me/ciLEalJcW8g
Lyngdorf TDAI-3400
📺 https://darko.audio/2023/05/lyngdorf-tdai-3400-cd-2-video-review/
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