Art Audio Diavolo

Sale Price: £2,995

Diavolo - A real favorite in the Art Audio line, the Diavolo is an enchanting amplifier with superlative reproduction of micro dynamics. Many say the magic is in the details, and if this sounds like you, the Diavolo is just your cup of tea.

The Diavolo produces 13 watts of pure class A power. Due to the zero feedback, high peak current design philosophy,  this amplifier sounds far more powerful than the numbers would suggest.

Reviews:

"...MILES ahead of the OCM, Copland, and Primare power amps ...When an amplifier makes you put your CD player on repeat just so that you can hear the same song over and over again, it's doing something extraordinarily well..."

" The Art Audio Diavolo is a very different kind of single-ended animal. Its bass is powerful, defined, dynamic and does not take a back seat to that of any of the push-pull power amps that I compared it to. The Diavolo leans towards accuracy and does sound somewhat forward because of some brightness in the treble, but it is still a wonderfully engaging-sounding power amp that drove the 88dB Meadowlark Hot Rod Shearwaters to ungodly levels without breaking a sweat. It is a single-ended design for real world speakers." - Soundstage extact Click Here for review

"Art Audio wanted to produce a single-ended amplifier with some power, grunt and drive; an amplifier that would drive most real world loudspeakers. They have succeeded. Let me first say that, this amplifier sounds fantastic. It has mass, drive and oomph. It certainly does not sound like a wimpy single-ended triode amplifier at all.

Our esteemed editor, Steven R. Rochlin, said of this amplifier in his review several years ago in Ultimate Audio magazine that the Diavolo sounds like a 50 watt amplifier. This is so true. This amplifier has incredible balls for a single-ended triode amplifier and in this regard, it smokes my Audionote Meishu 300B integrated amplifier.

The Diavolo strikes an almost perfect balance between the light, airy and ethereal type of sound and the warm, dense more massive solid type. This is an extremely difficult trick to accomplish. Traditionally, most of the single-ended amplifiers that I have heard have great strengths in subtlety, finesse and purity. Their sound is very open and relaxed, but they do not have the energy drive to really move the music into the room. It's almost like the music is massless and lacks the solidity that I hear in live music. I'm not talking here about just loudness but a sense of texture and physicality to the music.

The soundstage is very large with good width and depth, that in my small room is a great accomplishment. This large and open soundstage is accomplished without a thinning out of the sound. Many amplifiers that I have heard, both transistor as well as tubes, create a soundstage that loses its mass and density as the width and depth of the sound stage increases creating a sound that is too light and airy. 

The Diavolo is very detailed, but unlike other amplifiers, does not throw it in your face. The subtleties, the voice inflections are all there, but they are integrated and are part of the music. This is exactly how real music sounds. This detail is expertly combined with great body and warmth. You hear the subtleties in the music and the richness of texture as well. I believe this is the hardest thing to achieve in amplifier design; getting an amplifier to sound detailed with great definition and at the same time produce an amplifier that produces a sense of body, richness and musicality. One can hear this in natural instruments like brass and woodwinds. With these instruments the amplifier has to reproduce the quick attack of a trumpet or trombone for example, and still produce the resonant, throaty sound of those instruments." - enjoy the music review by George Papadimitriou Click Here for full review