PS AUDIO BHK Signature Series 250

ΛΕΠΤΟΜΕΡΕΙΕΣ / ΧΑΡΑΚΤΗΡΙΣΤΙΚΑ

The power amplifier is technology always present in stereo systems. Yet, despite the fact everyone uses them, few appreciate the power amp’s critical role in preserving music’s nuanced details, because most amplifiers fail to preserve them. Overtones from plucked instruments, subtle cues defining placement, depth, soundstage width, and transient decays are often lost in the power amplifier.

The BHK Signature power amplifiers are unique in their ability to faithfully pass even the tiniest of details. The first listen to the BHK is like pulling a blanket off the loudspeakers. Suddenly revealed are the tiniest of details that now ring clear through the BHK, perfectly preserved through its extraordinary bandwidth, low feedback, vacuum tube and MOSFET design.

The input stage is a critical interface

The connection between preamplifier and power amplifier is critical, for it is at this junction where most essential musical details are easily lost. Nothing in the design of a power amplifier is more important than its input stage when preserving music’s finest nuances. In the BHK Signature a vacuum tube serves as the perfect interface between the preamplifier and the massive power output stage inside the BHK Signature. The input stage’s seemingly impossible task of passing both delicate and powerful musical information without loss is made possible by massive numbers of free flowing electrons traveling within the BHK’s vacuum tube; electrons quantities that are not to be found in transistors.

Used as the interface between the preamplifier and the input stage of a power amplifier, tubes have no peer. Invented by Fleming in 1904, and refined by deForest in 1906, the vacuum tube is unique amongst amplification devices: it boils an abundance of free electrons in empty space while modern devices pull fixed numbers through solids. A tube’s high voltage, empty space, rich numbers of electrons and connection through unattached fields preserves details lost in the solidity of silicon. Tubes are the perfect interface between sources and power stages.

The BHK Signature input features a classic triode vacuum tube in a modern configuration. Hand matched pairs of Russian Gold Lion 6922s are self-biased with constant current and high voltage, free of timing and phase distortion without the use of negative feedback. They provide the perfect interface between the delicate musical transitions output by the DAC or preamplifier, and are electrically isolated from the BHK power output stage which is connected to the loudspeaker.