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Compared to the April Music Ai500, the MRE-130s scaled up mass and showed more connective tissue between and around the notes. The Korean integrated biased high into class A stripped some of it away to sound wirier, leaner and cooler and relatedly portrayed more image specificity or subjective separation by way of sharper drawn outlines. In matters of color temperature however, the expected usual differences between transistors and tubes did not assert themselves nor did silicon book an advantage in bass grip or woofer control. In terms of dynamic swing potential in fact, the KT88s took the lead.

The general gestalt of the Octaves became a far closer stand-in for the mighty KWA-150 by Alan Kimmel and Dan Wright. This reiterated a leit motif of existing press commentary which identifies the Octave sound as essentially transistor with but a dash of tube flavor thrown in for good measure. That is accurate. The task shrinks to explaining the dash of tube flavor as I've attempted on the previous page. With the ModWright bruiser, that distinction shrunk to meeting quite closely in the middle - of a transistor behemoth reaching for the opposite camp with a special input stage; of tube muscle amps reaching for the opposite camp with low output impedance, stern power supply regulation and wide bandwidth low-distortion circuitry.


If you asked me for a definitive sonic reason to pick one of these super amps over the other, I'd call it coming down to the textural difference. That likely pales against considerations on price and size but where deemed deal maker, prize and price go to the Germans. The choice of preamp will naturally also play a role and ModWright's DM 36.5 becomes even more of a doppelgänger proposition when leashed to its stable mate vs. the Octaves on the Esoteric C-03 (or its stand-in, the overachieving but otherwise unprepossessing Wyred4Sound STP). Versus the Norwegian Hegel H-100, said difference increased again to make the thermionic contributions of the MRE-130s more overt in the opposition. The SoundEngine™ class A/B circuit was tonally cooler but not as sharp as the Korean.

In matters of treble effulgence -- air, openness, fizz on decay sprays, elongated decay trails, lit-up ambiance -- April Music's Ai500's leaner voicing went farthest not as a matter of 'more' but rather, by way of less tone mass and starker blacks.

Conspicuous consumption revisited. My major and really only criticism of the MRE-130s is that they're overkill. That's a wickedly unfair thing to be accused of. Still, my prior private exposure to the V80 integrated followed by the V40's public showing at München 2009 has me convinced. For most intents and purposes, Andreas Hofmann's new & improved 'entry'-level' integrated plus a quality preamp will be all mere mortals even with he-man speakers should ever require or desire. Octave's know-how over the decades has simply become too dialed and substantial and trickled down too successfully.

This collage shows the bias master selector; the five LEDs nestled against the transformer cover but here superimposed on the front panel; and one set screw with its own light-emitting diode which fires up as soon as the master control is turned to its position. Getting precision bias any day of the week really couldn't be easier, faster or more convenient.

Overkill extends to the Super Black Boxes and their promised -- and factual where actually needed -- benefits in bass control and 2-ohm stability. On my customary ASI Tango Rs, I preferred the monos sans reinforcement. The bass swung better and didn't feel overdamped. It took Triangle's Magellan Cello Sw2 to touch upon SBB justification and my Mark & Daniel Maximus Monitor with optional Omni Harmonizer to milk them more fully. The benefit on gnarlier speakers in that department isn't bass quantity but quality. Things become cleaner, more decisive and robust. The only speaker in my arsenal to benefit substantially was the synthetic über monitor from Shanghai.

Hence don't plan on the SBB upgrade path as an inevitable and preordained future investment. It shall fully depend on your loudspeaker and you might have to deliberately go cruising for bruising with It's that girl again Basia Trzetrzelewska. Octave's integrateds are so good already as to make the MRE-130s nearly a long-shot exercise. And the monos are so powerful and stable that it requires quite a brute of a load to see them obviously improve with the external capacitance upgrade. Here's one Super Black Box unveiled.

Mondo mono: Slapping oneself on the shoulder for an excellent choice and expensive acquisition is nearly in bad taste so moderation shall prevail. When I asked Herr Hofmann for an octavian recommendation about a drive-anything tube amp, he delivered just that. When I committed pre HighEnd 2009, I simply didn't realize just how endowed his baby integrated would already turn out to be. The killer dem with the Dynaudio Sapphires was quite the shocker. Considering size of venue and stout SPLs -- appropriate there but wildly excessive when transposed to the usual listening room -- I fail to see how most folks would really need more than the V40. Converting it into a power amp with the push of a button to be driven off an external preamp could be all the doctor would ever recommend in good conscience.

Does that make the MRE-130s with SBBs too good? Of course not. They're the equivalent of a Porsche Cayenne, very powerful, very nimble and fully prepped for any and all off-road adventures. For most folks, even a VW Tuareg is simply already quite a bit more than strictly necessary. That doesn't make such cars silly. It makes them into dream machines for connoisseurs and big adventures and Octave's MRE-130s belong into that class.
Octave website