KR AUDIO VA880

摘要

This diminutive hybrid tube amp may live in the shadow of the awesome Kronzilla [HFN Aug ' 13] but it more than holds its own, surpassing the output of that massive single-ended triode amp thanks to its more conventional push-pull pair of KT88s. Both amplifiers feature a solid-state driver stage (claimed to run in Class A) but the VA880's pair of tetrodes muster a full 2×50W/8ohm via its 8ohm tap (35W/4ohm), rising to 75W and 80W into 4ohm and 2ohm under dynamic conditions [see Graph 1, below]. There's no 'hard' clip point so the maximum output is rather dependent on the acceptable level of distortion, from 0.03% at 1W to 0.12% at 10W and 1% at 50Wohm to 2.5% at 55W/8ohm. As expected, distortion also increases at the frequency extremes from 0.25%/20Hz at 1W to 0.4%/20Hz at 10W [see Graph 2, below].