Allowances. In the end, middle and shortly past the beginning, that's really how I felt about these black Allnic monos. I had to make undue allowances. Very strategically, I had to select legato tunes of a pastoral simple bend which would play to not against them. But still I had to goose the volume past where I wanted it to wake up the tunes. Being so used to transistors for so many years—or perhaps having had them ear/brain-wash me?—I couldn't hear past the PX25 weaknesses to focus on the stronger points. My fundamental thus irreparable disagreement with the A-311M was their heavy-handed damper on the transmission of musical energy. This was frustrating. It'd been the very aspect which the direct-coupled L-10000 stablemate preamp's 300B with their enormous gush factor had liberated. By the time the monos were in the hot seats, one of the preamp's small tubes simply had gone noisy. Without a replacement on hand, the L-10000 disqualified itself from further use. The little I tried with it didn't suggest a sufficient reset. The music still sounded pretty but uninteresting. It felt homogenized and enveloped in mild fog. Energetically it moved through water. I felt like a kid with the circus in town. Instead of getting the crackling hot dog with spicy mustard and ketchup, my parents presented me with the garishly coloured cotton taffy.

Given my minor chassis nits—the carry-over hole fronting the output bottle, the tacked-on badges, the bolt-on handles which other Allnic gear integrates more seamlessly—then adding high-end costs… I couldn't muster enthusiasm. Dutch distributor Armin's Bastanis speakers run big active bass. His open baffles probably respond quite different to these monos though higher speaker sensitivity should  expose more of their self noise too. On our single-driver speakers meanwhile, I felt stuck in first gear. I heard promise but couldn't break out of the surrounding criticisms to leave them far behind. Or had I outgrown pure single-ended power tubes after all? With 6BQ5 and SRS551 specimens in line, time would tell. Relative to the A-311M, I sympathized with a German distributor. He had effusively but intelligently raved about Allnic's L-10000 to find himself very much in accord with my own experience. Then he'd named only two of their phono stages as his other cherry picks of the line. Perhaps Kang-Su's greatest design gift really was in low-level circuits?

Even if so, my response to his A-311M with PX25 isn't the last word. Treat my review as an introduction which notified you of their existence. Wait for subsequent reviews to get a fuller picture of their true potential when they find themselves embedded into very different systems facing very different ears. Looking back, I was probably the wrong guy to accept this assignment in the first place. That's simply something one never knows beforehand. I've been very impressed with Allnic's ZL3000 and ZL5000 cables and ended up acquiring a complete loom. I loved their L-10000's sonics if not price. In short, hitting gold three times out of four is not only an excellent result. It makes this writeup the odd one out…