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As demonstrated by Vinnie Rossi's benchmark Red Wine Audio 30.2, transistors can produce warmth and tone density to go beyond well-executed tube amps. That amp's warmth is a far cry from soft focus. It's no more resolution loss than good vinyl's superior image heft and tone mass over most digital are called less resolved than CD playback. It does, however, invite a perceptional shift in the listener. Tone colors and image mass tend to have a relaxing, soothing, involving effect. One stays less glued to audiophile tricks. One sinks instead into a comfort zone of participatory feeling.


Subjectively, so-called detail in the comfort zone could seem less. It proves not to be whenever one perks up from the arm chair's embrace to notice it with deliberation. Color temperature, image density and overall mass simply are senior to the audio experience. Rightfully, the degree to which they are reproduced is a function of more or less resolving power. These qualities are in fact far more important to the experience than third-row key clacks, chair creaks and fingering noises on strings. Whether an electronic piece can recreate believable tone and image heft is as much a matter of resolution as are endless decay trails and microphone proximity effects.


Lean presentations -- those lacking in the particular qualities we'll term 'warmth' to mean the above package -- tend to invite less listener relaxation. They redouble instead with more apparent hifi spectacles. Diehard tube fiends with a long abstinence from good transistors could initially be shocked by new detail in recordings they thought they knew well. Soon thereafter, they could miss the subliminal comfort factor of image density, 'analogue-type' tone mass and deeper colors. Or not. That's where listening preference enters. The Coda amplifiers on review, from integrated to stereo to monos, operate in descending order of warmth while price and associated box count ascend. The CSi has the most warmth, each model above it veering just a little farther away. That's the basic distinction. The flip side is that apparent detail -- being more obvious because warmth diminishes -- operates from the top down. The monos are first, the integrated last.

The CX monos seem to dig even deeper into the pits when it comes to soundstage depth and ambient recovery, making perhaps a case for assigning discrete power supplies to each channel. But because resolution must include all aspects of playback as proposed above, I wouldn't call the CX monos more resolved than the CSi or CSX per se. Where the monos produce the most soundstage depth and venue data, the CSi produces the most density. Common to all is a fine textural softness that's similar to but less pronounced than what one gets with many tube amps particularly of the push/pull sort. There's no cold, hard, whitish sterility. Completely missing in action are 'shock jock' histrionics of sizzle on transients for unnatural bite and slap. Suitable descriptors would be refined, suave, civilized. Compared to the Red Wine Audio Signature 30.2 however -- or even affordable 6C33C-based valve amps like Almarro's A318B or JAS Audio's Bravo 2.3 -- there is a notable step-down in the warmth package. And for more context, the First Watt F4s are superior in the ultra sense of what's usually meant by resolution. They are endowed with faster reflexes to react to tinier signal fluctuations way down in the noise floor to make the erection of the virtual playback venue more holographic and complete.


I am suspicious that the massive paralleling of output devices with their innate offsets despite the best matching, on speakers that consume a few watts only, is a detriment compared to far simpler circuits. This gets us to a curious situation. Especially with transistors, in most companies' lineups and the minds of most people, the most expensive and best amps are invariably the most powerful. As my experiments with the zero-watt F4s by Nelson Pass have shown, 89dB speakers in a normal-size room require no amplifier voltage gain if the preamp has about 20dB. That makes a lot of what's appealing about so-called transistor statement amps redundant. Why is it that statement in this context is always more focused on power and load invariance than sonics that kick in fully within the first watt where it's needed most?


Back on track. On these Codas and on inherently leaner and cooler speakers like my DeVore Nines, you must prime the pump to approach the sense of juicy fullness a Signature 30.2 or Almarro A318B will produce a lot sooner. If that sounds as though the Codas were outclassed on such loads, not entirely. The sense of low-end grip where nothing wavers, shrinks, blurs or drops out when opposing lines clash, intermingle and duke it out goes quite beyond what most such valve amps can manage. The battery-powered T amp is an exception. Its current delivery is super robust as long as 30 watts don't run dry on a speaker. Yet the sense of endless swell when big forces scale and SPLs are high already is something apparently only amps of CX-type endless power manage with such ease.

Not surprisingly, the Coda's design brief of muscle amps hit pay dirt when more demanding loads like the Mark & Daniel Maximus and Ruby monitors entered the picture - nominal 4 ohms, 85 and 82.5dB respectively, with brute-force bass alignments in which very high internal pressures coincide with large excursions of small drivers with monster magnets in dense synthetic marble enclosures with small ports. Such speakers demand different amplifiers to shine just as Lowthers and other high-sensitivity units insist on their own special amplifier diets.


What's most important in the end is that when these apparently disparate approaches to amp/speaker interfaces are properly served, the outcome is more rather than less similar. Complaining that a muscle amp doesn't shine on a wimpy speaker is just as dumb as turning a wimpy amp into cannon fodder with a muscle speaker. After confirming this sage bit of trivia in the negative -- high-power Codas on DeVores, Rethms, Zus and Eryk S Concepts -- your scribe acknowledged reality and leashed up the tiny Rubies, the most high-maintenance babes in the power department in casa Coral Bay.


Hot damn! The tiny Rubies + Coda CXs, really and truly, now played like the DeVore Nines + Red Wine Sig 30.2. Or the Polish Ketsu S + Bravo 2.3. Or the Rethm Saadhana + First Watt F4. The matching of speakers and amp really is the most important variable in this crazy hobby. If you nail it once and then do it again via a completely different ascent up the slippery slope of Mount Perfection, don't be too surprised. The outcome should approach the dividing of any number by itself. You always end up with 1. Okay, that's being overly simplistic. Still, the point is made. Combining the diverse audio chain parts such that they add up to maximum satisfaction is certainly the name of this game. There are many roads to satisfaction but the real surprise might be how essentially close the final results can be when you pursue satisfaction to its logical conclusion by such different -- and conceptually opposing -- means.


The Rubies fronted by the Coda beef cakes had it all: scale; density; color, wallop; jump; warmth; insight. Don't belabor the speakers' diminutive stature or price as sub-par mates. On these amps, they sounded better than anything else on hand - except for their bigger brethren, the Maximii. Needless to say, very few people ever might hear these tiny tots this shockingly big and domineering. Financially, the match was pure madness of course. But it proved something else - a very visible case for damping factor. Mark & Daniel's proprietary drivers have huge throw for their diameters. With lesser amps -- simply meaning, unsuitable for the job -- the drivers will nearly jump out of their hoops. Play the same material at the same level on the Codas and they'll move far less. It's not the SPLs enforcing the majority of excursions after all, it's the lack of damping and loss of control. Even when these driver do shudder trying to track 25Hz transients, on the Codas they do so without wobble but in clean strokes. Where power is needed, it doesn't corrupt one bit. It enables.

If you envision the many musical chairs I sat on to learn what the Coda amps sounded like, you'll appreciate that they sounded different from speaker to speaker. Actually, that's incorrect phrasing. The combinations produced different composite outcomes. Had I stopped at the DeVores, I'd have said "smooth, cool, polite, restrained, uninvolving". Had I limited myself to the 101dB Zus, I'd have said "no life, dull in the treble, compressed". Had I only Lowthered, I'd have said "dull, overdamped, flat". Had I hit on the Rubies first, my enthusiastic assessment would have ended up as sloppy generalization. We already know that on my other speakers, those results didn't fully translate. So, what did the CX monos sound like?


Given the above, I could cop out. Claim ignorance. That's where experience assists. Know your hardware. Have a sufficiently broad arsenal to mix 'n' match. Rely on plenty of prior comparisons for context. Now deduce by inference. For the CX monos in particular, the proviso for best performance is to get them out of first gear with testier loads. That's in keeping with Bryston's 1/3rd power claim but running some numbers, it is probably closer to 1/10th. The monos' elegant and polite, never offensive barely wet attitude gets more and more robust, immersive, embodied, fulsome and exciting as they are asked to put out and deliver. By the time they hit their stride -- Mark & Daniel in my case but insert any number of speakers which mirror their general design brief -- the end result is warm, colorful, dynamic, exceptionally robust, fully present, exciting and involving. In short, the complete antithesis of what tube men believe about transistors. Except for one aspect. The full curtain lift occurs a little later on the volume control than with low-power hi-efficiency systems. Whether that's due more to the amps or the kind of speakers they're designed to accommodate is academic. My personal hunch is to suspect inefficient speakers needing more gas before they wake up and stand tall. But it's believable too that complex circuits don't respond with as much alacrity to minuscule voltage fluctuations as very simple ones.


The important thing is that when matched properly, the Coda sound shares much with the optimized low-power valve and hi-eff camp. You feel close to the musicians. The tunes communicate. Rhythms aren't sloppy but gathered up and in the pocket. There's full bandwidth mass to the sound, not a wispy and flickering see-through shroud - what valve people mean by color and timbre. I wouldn't guarantee the latter with just any inefficient speakers. However, the Mark & Daniels aesthetic certainly met that mark. The Coda sound was also blessedly free of the dry, over-damped bass that's sharper and harder than real life. Call it another myth buster for those who automatically equate muscle amps with low-frequency slammatronics. The aforementioned minor textural softness was evident across the board. That included the bass, very fetching to my ears.

While entirely free of chalkiness, the Coda treble isn't fully the equal of the very best of valves or even a hybrid circuit like the AMR AM-77. But that's a valve man speaking and a perennial point of contention. While transistors tend to measure farther out, tubes can do more texture and sweetness without having to play games with premature treble capitulation. Suffice to say that even in this most challenging aspect versus tubes, the Codas avoided the usual missteps. They just didn't set any new transistor records. And that's not really damning with faint praise. When it comes to picking from the three review loaners, the stereo amp blossoms just a bit sooner to be more copasetic with the majority of speakers I fancy. It's a tad sweeter than the monos as well. Finally, I'm of the twisted persuasion to believe that if you need the CXs' power, you own the wrong speakers already. Clearly, that's an extreme minority position by a fellow who doesn't own big Gryphons, JMlabs, Rockports, Wilsons and equivalents where huge and possibly paralleled woofers ask for far more amplifier control than the smaller bass units of his speakers that are appropriate for more regularly sized listening rooms.


It's the CSi who, on the kind of speakers in my arsenal, was the uncontested value/performance leader of the troupe, offering plenty of raw power for all speakers reasonably mated to it and making plainly the sweetest, roundest sound of the three. Really, it's a scaled-down CSX + 0.5X in a single chassis. For comparison, I fronted it, the stereo amp or monos with the $10,000 Ancient Audio Lektor Prime whose 6H30-driven output stage sports remote analog volume control. To that, I leashed up the surprisingly capable Eryk S Concept Ketsu Supremes from Poland with their 89dB rating and twin side firing woofers in dual-port loading. The CSX or monos nursed the CDP's balanced outputs per the importer's recommendation, the CSi the single-endeds since it lacks XLR inputs. While the CSX and CXs had a skoch more magnification power -- think one or two rows closer to stage -- the CSi packed more warmth factor and rounded curves. That seduced the voluptuousness gene of valve man. Nowhere was this more evident than in the mindblowing second installment of Mozart l'Egyptien by Hughes de Courson and Ahmed el Maghreby [Virgin Classics]. Massed strings, piquant oud, kaval flutes, muezzins and Requiem-like chorus intersect in 202-strong symphonic and ethnic forces, hipping Mozartean scores with a goodly whiff from the Khalif's palace for a fresh take on the classics.


When a wailing Arabian singer, heart in throat, scales against swelling symphonic strings with high coloratura soprano backing for accent, your hackles must raise or something's askew. With apologies to Coda, the CSi scored higher on the hackle test than the CSX or CXs. For my money, the CSi is the next presidential candidate from this roster of hopefuls. It is, however, overall a bit softer than the stand-alone amps and not as powerful in the bottom two octaves.

Enter campaign management. The 0.5X preamp, though petite, lightweight and with a ringier top cover than befits a $5,000 piece, starts out with great functionality. The ability to assign discrete input gain in 1dB steps up to the circuit's top 18dB is very useful. Input naming occurs from a preloaded list. While not quite as open-ended as Bel Canto's older PRe2 which allowed custom alphanumerical entries, it's sufficient for all but the most tweaky. Some people may need more than one XLR i/o port each. If RCA is your only currency, one main-out may leave you short. The back-lit remote's range is very wide and prompts are executed truly promptly. Some might wish for a custom wand rather than reprogrammed universal with unavoidable button redundancy and plastic appeal. In the end though and on the remote functionality front, the 0.5X's crosses off all the 't's.


Sonically, it's a virtual stand-in for my Bel Canto PRe3. That's good. For a unit without the spatial, textural and microdynamic expander action glowing bits tend to provide, the PRe3 acquits itself very well with deep magnification power and a faint silkiness that avoids the dryness which drives valve lovers to tubes. Ditto for the 0.5X. However, I will respectfully disagree with Kapra Audio's assessment on competing with top-line valve units. I'm not familiar with the referenced ARC but both the ModWright LS 36.5 and Supratek Cabernet Dual do things in the holographic immediacy domain that elude the Coda, in turn giving up no micro-scale detail I can discern. The valve units simply pack more heat in the 'warmth package' mentioned earlier. They are fleshier, richer and more vibrant not just in the midrange. This action goes well beyond midrange colorations. If you must call it coloration, better call it the colorization of black 'n' white flicks.
As an unrepentant tube fancier, transistor amps by Nelson Pass (First Watt F3 and F4), Peter Daniel (AudioSector) and Vinnie Rossie (Red Wine Audio) have proven their mettle as full equals with their own set of just as vital strengths. With the exception of RWA's T amp however, I still insist on valves in the preamp stages. The Codas don't rewrite that requirement. Due to my valved allegiances, my resident speaker assortment has been carefully preselected to conform yet Mark & Daniel's monitors were deliberately added as wild cards to give powerful transistor amps a real workout. As my attempt to fill the shoes of power-loving speaker owners, I'm very impressed particularly with Coda's new monos. What they wring out of the puny boxes from Shanghai nets sonics that are quite unbelievable and a virtual shoo-in for my customary thermionic setups. Naturally, that makes me far from a specialist in this metier. Don't expect ultimate conclusions on where in the bigger picture the Codas fall. But if a Yamamoto 2-watt micro-power fancier can feel the luv with 450-watt muscle amps on speakers like the Ruby which demand and thrive on this type of go juice and control, that fact by itself might count for something?
Rear panel voltage selector allows for discrete 120, 220, 230 and 240 operation just a knife blade or screwdriver tip away
Once you check Kapra Audio's aggressive pricing, the other counting business might add to the excitement especially for French audiophiles. Offering full service support and dealer demonstration facilities, anyone with a calculator can do the math and realize that Kapra Audio as an import house operates on very short margins. That fact by itself definitely counts for something...

Quality of packing: Stout double boxes with full foam liners. Shy of wooden crates, the best possible way to ship.
Reusability of packing: More than once.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: Easy.
Condition of component received: One transformer mounting bolt of eight amps total shore off in transit. Everything else was received in immaculate condition.
Completeness of delivery: Perfect.
Quality of owner's manual: Excellent.
Website comments: Contains everything necessary.
Warranty: 5-year parts and labor.
Global distribution: Inquire with Coda as their website no longer lists foreign distributors. Review loaners were provided b importer Kapra Audio in Southern France.
Human interactions: Timely, friendly and most professional with the importer who acted as my go-between for all questions.
Pricing: Preamp is on the expensive side; the CX monos and stereo amp seem in line with other statement high-power amps; the CSi integrated is the high value for money proposition.
Application conditions: The CX monos in particular want their load to work them. Not suitable for ultra high-efficiency speakers where the treble will shut down. Universal voltage provisions are a boon for globe trotters.
Final comments & suggestions: The new pale silver chassis with chromed end bits is attractive and fit 'n' finish are very high. The remote is plastic, not product specific and suffers redundant buttons for non-Coda components. While the latest CX monos were dead quiet on delivery, they developed a bit of mechanical noise over time, albeit not objectionably so for huge transformers. One of those last-gen CXs also developed inexplicable hum over any connected speaker which it didn't suffer at first. The transformer issue mentioned in the review may not have been 100% licked yet. A class A bias richness adjustment would be a nice future feature since both factory and importer admit that setting the bias higher than delivered improves the sonics. I imagine it would broaden especially the monos' appeal toward higher-eff speakers.


KAPRAudio responds:
Dear Srajan,
Your complimentary comments about the reviewed components confirm the validity of our decision to distribute Coda. We perfectly agree about the importance of the speaker/amp combination and are glad you have highlighted it so cleverly. Our own experience of associating the Coda amps with some great but demanding and costly speakers has shown that they are capable of -- and even principally intended to -- match with such speakers to achieve excellent sonic results with the advantage of the available power and a worthwhile ratio of "watt per Euro spent" insofar as these watts are not deceptively specified.

Thish is the very reason we decided to distribute them. We are also proud to introduce European audiophiles interested in these products to survey our pricing. We have taken pains to match the US pricing as closely as possible. Considering the fluctuating Euro, considerable import tariffs, customs duties, shipping expenses and support fees, it will be clear that dealing with us beats self importation - plus it adds our service and demonstration facilities. In other words, the components we have selected will be offered at an attractive price within the limits of available inventory. Please refer to our website. The prices indicated for "joint" orders (i.e. on "batch by batch" basis) benefit from a "direct" pricing established by the mentioned formula. However, please note that we do not do direct sales. All prices are inclusive of retail margins. Your retailer, your most precious partner, will help you before any purchase to make sure that the component you want meets your expectations.

However, exceptionally and with the agreement of Coda Technologies, foreign customers not residing in France but a European country where Coda presently has no distributor will be able to purchase through our after-sales workshop, the "Atelier de l'Audiophile" in France until such time that Coda has appointed distributors in such countries. You will find more information about the "Atelier de l'Audiophile" on our website and the provisional column relating to the Atelier de l'Audiophile will be built out shortly.

Interested readers are advised that upgraded EU transformers for the CX and CSX as described in this review haven't been delivered yet for installation in KAPRAudio's inventory. Thus there will be a delay in the delivery of these initial customer orders. More information will soon be on our website once a delivery date has been confirmed.

Kind regards
KAPRAudio
Manufacturer's website
French importer's website