SOULNOTE A3 Integrated Amplifier, £18,900

Soulnote’s grand daddy Integrated, 25kg of high end heft, replete with all of their ingenuity. Floating decoupled construction, complete separation of left and right channels, ground switching selector, volume bypass and record out. Three RCA and three balanced XLR inputs, a phase reversible input, spade and 4mm terminals. The A3 joins our existing heavyweight battalion of Integrateds – the Thrax Enyo and Ares, Vitus RI-101 and  SIA-025 – to make for a formidable 2024 line up for the discerning customer, Musical, confident, organic and vivid, the A3 will be winning many hearts here in the demo room. It represents the cornerstone of the Soulnote brand here at Lotus and offers superlative performance at the asking price.

· Complete separation of left and right channel ground – The ground separation technology incorporated in the P-3 pre-amplifier is applied to this model with a power amplification circuit. Its structure is not the same as the so-called dual-mono construction.

· Single push-pull output stage – The output stage uses a single push-pull SEPP circuit with can-type bipolar transistors as used in the M-3 monoblock.

· 4-stage Darlington configuration with super-powerful driver and pre-driver – To drive the CAN-type transistor easily, an ultra-powerful TO3-type transistor is used in the driver as well as in the pre-driver.

· New Type-R circuit, fully balanced non-NFB – For voltage amplification, a newly developed single-stage Type-R circuit is adopted.

· Ground switching selector – Disconnecting ground, which is one of the main features of the P-3 pre-amplifier, eliminates the sound quality degradation caused by ground loops when many playback devices are connected.

· Relay-switching balanced attenuator

· Ground anchor – The ground of the left and right channel power supply units are grounded to the left and right side metal insulated with ceramic washers, a special enclosure construction that acts as a ground anchor.

· Super-strong power transformer – 2x 700VA unimpregnated toroidal power transformers are used for power amplification.

· High-speed non-NFB power supply

· Copper busbar heat sink

· Unfixed structure

· Volume bypass function

· Multiple-unit connection function

· Record out function