Avantone pro cla-200 studio reference amp

[Floyddroid]

I'm intrigued by this amp. Just out of interest is anyone here using one? Can it be used by audiophiles?

[Firebottle]

Found this on ASR:

I have experience with this amp. It sounds incredible and powerful, especially given the price. I wonder though if it would drive 4 ohm speakers if used in bridged mode with two CLA-200’s.

the components inside are so so quality. They use elna 80v 10000uf (4 total) filtering capacitors but I did a quick search once on them and there were some skepticism about the authenticity of it being elna. I heard that it was elna but they were made in their “Asia” factory or something. Either way the amp sounds great, but the gain knobs feel cheap/are cheap, the VU meters literally never move, and when playing music very loud for like more than 45 minutes, to my ears it sounds like the amplifier runs out of gas or gets tired. The plus side is this amplifier has a huge toroidal transformer, and uses 14 or 16 gauge internal wiring.
Oh, another caveat is the binding posts are very cheap quality, and the user manual doesn’t really explain very well what the ground lift switch does, nor is there any proper info on the amplifiers input sensitivity given the fact that it has gain knobs with 20 different level settings. It just says 0.775v @ 1khz.



Don't see any reason not to use in stereo system, not surprised at the comment about the gain knobs (pots) as this is all too prevalent.