Muchos mas. Watts they'll be. Do we need so many? A story has it that back in the day, B&W's big flagship speakers were that thirsty. Since Electrocompaniet were involved in high-profile recordings whose studios ran those Bowers & Wilkins, they made the original Nemo to drive them. Muscle-amp arguments always flash 'lifelike dynamics' and how those demand a cool 500 watts. That conveniently forgets the widespread use of recorded dynamic compression which squashes lifelike. No blood from a stone. Then THX levels in a living room are nuts; and not much better in a movie theatre unless we desire latter-day tinnitus. And just because recording or mastering engineers may listen very loud doesn't mean we ought to. Playing our hifi isn't a war game. Calmer heads consider the actual SPL reality in a normal home, their long-term ear health plus typical recorded dynamic range on hand. I own one CD with 50dB of dynamic range. Most my good recordings max out at ~30dB. The majority of 'Pop' is happy if it makes 10dB. I consider 90dB peaks at the ear as loud as I ever want to go.

When it looks and walks like dual mono. The 'dirty' power supplies sit up front, the 'clean' signal processing circuitry lives ensconced in the heat-sink fortresses closest to the i/o.

So any appeal that fistfuls of dynamic fury may have is tempered by a demand for basics first. Basics are perfectly noise-free operation mechanically and electrically; and ability to do the subtle and pure justice at SPL I actually engage. In theory and probably practice, keeping gain circuits simple and parts count low are more likely means to ace these basics. Certainly they're more cost effective. From a civilized perspective, these fundamentals must be nailed before we get to escalation into occasional mayhem. Such more cautionary thinking excludes owners of amps-for-breakfast speakers. Those need big artillery just to get out of park. Bring out the torpedoes. Ditto bangers. But do bangers lay out €20'000 on an exotic amplifier?

Such a segue into high-power turf is mandatory. It's no anti argument, just a first-things-first reminder. A recent 350wpc class AB muscle amp's big donut exhibited obvious transformer hum. While it was 'only' £9K so 10 less than the AW800M, I'd not pay for noise which I can hear from the seat. I also wouldn't pay for power that demands I crank the SPL to come alive. It's the first few watts which rule our majority listening. Only if those first few watts are top quality should we want many more like them. Shall we now call our Über and see where it'll drive us? We already peeked under the bonnet to be ready for sonics. And no, I didn't ask for two to do 'twice balanced' in mono/mono mode. If 300 watts into 8Ω won't suffice for my ~40m² room and hearing, I'd own stupid speakers. Last time I asked them, none confessed to being stupid.

But it's certainly a season for flagship high-power amps. Kinki Studio's new 791 monos rate at 600W/4Ω from a quad of 800VA transformers in each amp's basement coupled to 88'000µF capacitance and 8 pairs of lateral Exicon Mosfets. There's always the relentless Dan d'Agostino leading this parade with 1.5kW/8Ω, a spec his amp shares with Boulder's 3050 monos. Once bridged, do our Norse 800-watt Nemo monos claim 2nd place? Not on paper. There are kilowatt Goldmund Telos 5500 NextGen monos, kilowatt Bryston 28B³ monos and 900-watt Accustic Arts Mono V. A bit lower on this power perch sit 600-watt 701 monos by Soulution, 600-watt X600.8 monos by Pass, 530-watt Heisenberg monos by Audionet – and others I don't know of or remember when I keep only lame tabs on hifi's Hummer heap. No matter how we parse this though, it all makes for quite illustrious company. It's the global BBC; the Big Boy Club. And today I have a temporary membership card to mix 'n' mingle.

Having speakers which benefit from high current was obviously mandatory. Qualio's IQ to the rescue. Though our 25wpc Enleum AMP-23R gets them louder than I'd ever want, the 250-watt Kinki EX-B7 exert plainly superior control over the 6" SB Acoustics Satori midrange. That loads open-backed and spans 600Hz-8kHz with shallow 1st-order filters on either end. It's that driver which audibly salutes more snappily with high current drive. I had my Nemo playmates. Centerfold time. When Nemo was about to surface, I got an email with one too many 's'. Elite Audio UK organizing the gig confirmed ship readiness; of AV800Ms. By Ragnarök, they meant to ship two. I quickly stressed (out) that I had no speaker which I thought would benefit from bridged power and related ship fees. My contact called Norway. "That's of course entirely up to the reviewer. However, a bridged amp like the AW800M has different characteristics from a stereo amp. How much this affects sonics is difficult to say. It also depends on what you test it with. If one uses big power-hungry speakers, two 800M might be just the thing. For others, 300 watts in stereo might be just about right." I expressed perfect willingness to do Nemo². If so, I'd compare mono to stereo. And it's here where my loudness habits and speaker harem threw up doubt. Would doubling weight and expense pay back as it should; if at all? If the latter, an extra €20K were entirely wasted. I rather thought that going bridged would want big Wilson or B&W, low-Ω Maggies or others which anticipate big rooms, high SPL and subwoofer-like bass whilst caring little about load pain. But I'd never heard any Electrocompaniet before. I clearly couldn't judge the matter in an informed way. So I bounced that ball back. I'd play with whatever showed up at my door.