February
2021

Apollo

From the moon landing to the eponymous butterfly to the ancient Greek god, Apollo has gotten around. By early 2021, he'd made it to the Denafrips assembly line where he is a 55kg stereo amplifier. That packs 225wpc of class AB push/pull power with 16 pairs of bipolar junction transistors per channel, a 2'000VA shielded power transformer, XLR-only inputs and black/silver finish options. 4Ω power still doubles to 450wpc and for a relative song and dance—that's ~3'100 in foot-tapping euros—Apollo could be your huckleberry.

A celestial name demands shiny specs to go with. Here Denafrips present us with an input Ω of 22k, input sensitivity of 1.8Vrms, voltage gain of 30dB, -2.2dB bandwidth of 10Hz-50kHz, THD of 0.02%, S/NR of 118dB, dynamic range better than 121dB and crosstalk of -110dB. Auto-adaptive AC supports 100-240VAC 50/60Hz whilst power consumption at idle is a stout 500 watts which still quadruples at full operational tilt. Hello utility company. The chassis measures 43x47x24cm WxDxH and warranty is 3 years. In the Denafrips firmament of amplifier stars, Hyperion burns at 80wpc, Thallo at 120wpc and now Apollo at still twice that brightest of all.

This is a heav(enl)y proposition for those who demand big power not in class D without agreeing to pay anywhere near five figures. Given the company's track record in our archives, Apollo promises to be yet another very strong value/performance hitter. As always, the only way to be sure is to try. Your back simply might have creaky doubts. 121lbs aren't exactly child's play. No, Apollo will be a real chunk of hardware if you bring him home.

If only desire was mightier than the scale, huh?