So I've ended up with this - EWA M-50 Power AMP - my thoughts ......

[mikeyb]

Most of you who know me on here will know that I already own a couple of Colin Wonfor designs, namely,

A Mark II Inca Tech Claymore


And a TQ Claymore

The Mark II is 100w and the TQ 72w, I use the TQ most of the time as it is slightly more refined than the MKII.

So anyway, I've been talking to Colin over the last few months and he mentioned he had a few new amps for me to think about, one being the M50 Power amp as I've always felt my PMC 21's needed a bit more welly than what the TQ was giving me, anyway he then came up with the idea of sending me the M50 protoype to try and see what I thought. Other than the casing the internals are the same as in the finished product.

Here is the Spec:

M50 Stereo Power Amplifier.

Input.

The input impedance is 22KΩ
Input sensitivity for full power is 1V providing 50W into 8Ω both channels driven.

Output.
​
Power rating 50W/8Ω both channels
100W/4Ω both channels
​
DC offset < 5mV
Noise open input < 2mV
​
Peak Current > 64 Amps peak.
Bandwidth 10Hz – 120KHz ±1dB
Damping Factor > 100

Power Consumption.
​
Mains on standby < 1W
Power on no signal < 40W
​
Power Supply.
​
The aux standby power supply is used to soft start the main amplifiers power supply.
The main PSU consists of a 350VA transformer and four large 10,000µF/50V bulk capacitors.

Finished product currently looks like this, but I believe new cases are in the pipeline.



It arrived last week and it was plugged in straight away, 1st track I chose was Delusion Rain by Mystery ( Canadian Prog group ).

This track starts off nice and quiet but I had the volume well up on my Croft Epoch preamp, probably about 10 out of 15 or so, first thoughts, no background noise, amp is very quiet, I sit down and start to listen, detail is great, nice wide soundstage and then the drummer hits the drums ( try the track and you'll hear what I mean ), bloody hell it made me jump, I've never ever heard my system sound like that, the drums hit me fair and square in the chest with so much impact, it was like the drummer was there in my living room.

I spent the next few hours annoying the neighbours with track after track after track, I just couldn't switch my kit off everything sounded so much better than before, this amp is the first one I've tried that really gets my little PMC 21's really moving and kicking out bass, but at the same time the detail is all there, the imaging of where everything is in the mix is brilliant too, ok previously the TQ could pick out detail and image well too, but the M50 shows you exactly where it is in the studio, before I could tell you that the guitar or piano was over on that side somewhere just near the left speaker, with the M50 you tell precisely where it was. The strange thing was that the louder you made it go the better it became, I tried it with my TQ as preamp and this was a better match gain wise than the Croft and boy could I drive my system loud, louder than comfortable if in the same room and it lost nothing in quality, did I like it, hell yeah!

I occasionally like to listen at '11' and this amp suits me perfectly ( yeah I'm a rocker at heart ), but hey it's not all shout and scream, it can do subtle as well, even at low volumes I can hear the difference, most of the time I'm only at 2-3 on the volume scale as I usually start listening at around 8am on days off and 7:30 on work days, even at these low levels the M50 still sounds superb.

So I tried all my usual demo tracks - Floyds - Money- Time, Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast, Kraftwerk - Robots - Autobahn, Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene - Equinoxe, Imelda May -Call Me, Karen Elson - Wonder Blind plus a load of others mixing tracks from vinyl and my Pi streamer, I listened for about 3 hours straight ( much to my daughters disgust lol ). I suppose the best analogy I can give and I said this to Colin is that for the first time it sounds like 'Live' in my living room.

Highly recommended to try and get a listen to if you are in the market for a power amp, its the best I've heard my system.

I'm almost there ( aye right ! ) nearly every addition to my system has resulted in a better listening experience and more enjoyment, anything that hasn't improved it has been passed on with little or no loss.