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Special Design Features
highly refined
circuit design
All Classé analog amplifi cation stages are based on circuits that have been
extensively optimized over many years of continuous development.
By starting with excellent circuit designs and working with them over the years,
we are able to discover the many small refi nements that add up to superlative
performance, in a variety of applications. Altering a voltage here, or using a
slightly diff erent part there, may make all the diff erence between solid and
absolutely outstanding performance.
is level of refi nement only comes with a great deal of experience, and is not
available to those who fl it from one trendy notion to the next. It accounts
in no small measure for both the consistency of sonic performance among
Classé products (as they are all based on similar analog gain stages), and for the
consistently excellent reviews those products receive by owners and reviewers
alike.
extensive listening tests Excellent measured performance is to be expected in world-class products, and
Classé products deliver that performance. However, experience has shown that
technical excellence alone is insuffi cient to guarantee subjectively musical results.
For this reason, all Classé products are laboriously fi ne-tuned during the
development process by carefully controlled listening tests. Our ears are still
some of the fi nest laboratory test instruments available, and nicely complement
more traditional engineering test equipment. In the course of optimizing the
circuitry for a product, hundreds of decisions are made based on the subjective
impression given by substituting one high quality part for another.
As an example, we may listen to half a dozen 0.1% fi lm resistors of the same
value, from several diff erent companies. Standard tests may show them all to
provide identical results in terms of noise, distortion, and so forth. Yet, almost
invariably, one selection yields some small improvement in the subjective
reaction to the performance of the product under development. Less often, even
a single such change can result in a surprisingly large improvement.
Multiply those various improvements by the dozens or even hundreds of such
decisions that must be made before the product can be fi nalized for production,
and you have a remarkable improvement, indeed—all based on careful listening
tests, which we view as a necessary complement to the solid engineering you
might rightly expect from Classé.