This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below

Tonally neutral, this was fully convincing and even on resolving power the Nuforce obviously wasn't shy. By contrast the Devialet added a skoch on top to take the treble lead. Whilst the Nuforce felt anything but restrained and played it wide open and with clarity, intense comparisons had to admit that in the high frequencies the IA-18 sounded more compact and static than the D-Premier. The latter released even more energy from the high registers to perhaps suggest subjectively broader bandwidth.


I noticed this on Lili Boulanger's "Nocturne" where with a self-circling theme Irnberger's violin threads higher and higher into a clear night sky whereas in the same passage the Nuforce drew a few small clouds to put it figuratively but by direct comparison only. Since the D-Premier commands more than thrice the coin before it change owners, this downplayed or even shifted things in favor of the American.


It goes without saying that both amps portrayed a dimensionally correct properly scaled perspective on the performers though in this discipline the Devialet seemed exceptionally at ease whilst the Nuforce went about it with... well, Teutonic exactitude. In the end this had Devialet's soundstaging seem a bit more natural. With it the speakers didn't act as corner stops and there was more depth range. The Nuforce played it a few degrees more compact though far removed from distant, flat or one-dimensional.

The IA-18's price sector is obviously busy. One type of counter proposal would be Audreal's A600 E reviewed two years ago. This classically conceived integrated convinced particularly with its power where it suggested big monos. On that count the IA-18 came close but in the bass lacked the organic/earthy diction of the Audreal. There was less bass emphasis than with the Chinese. Nuforce's similarly extended bass did it light-footed and coiled if less nuanced and more even than the A600 whose sonic virtues include relatively high class A bias. At the time I'd loved how the Audreal handled the concert grand's authority on Klara Würtz's and Peter van Winkel's reading of Schumann's "Allegro in A minor, Lebensstürme, piano for four hands". Unmistakably each hammer fall conveyed the physical size of the instrument and the decays of the steel strings more than the actual tone inquired keenly into specific timbre.


The Nuforce created the impression than Winkel and Würtz worked through the score with heightened élan and speed. The massive chord clusters felt less massive to where homogeneousness and tempo dominated. Nuanced harmonics lost some individuality however. Most pianists will play whatever Steinway grand the concert venue provides. Only a few travel with their own instrument to maintain trademark tone. Whilst I admit to being clueless what concert grand the performers played, with the Nuforce it simply sounded more like a generic Steinway provided by the Philharmonic whereas with the Audreal it had suggested an older somewhat more darkly hued specimen.


The D-Premier bridged both worlds, keeping pace with Nuforce's subjectively faster take without diminishing the raw heft of sonic mass or its nuance. Even so these weren't wildly different sonic worlds between amplifiers. The IA-18 managed to remain within eyesight of the far costlier competitor at all times. Whilst the color palette of the French was the more generous, the IA-18 never suggested a grey filter. Listening to Melody Gardot's "Lisboa" from The Absence, I enjoyed my usual effortless associations with the colorful southern flair of Portugal's capitol. The low rider integrated really dug deep into this milieu if admittedly not as subversively irresistible as a well-done valve would.