Anyone heard Lavardin amps?

Posted by: Top Cat on 13 May 2002

Just curious what you thought of them and their strengths and weaknesses relative to higher-end Naim amps.

HiFi+ seem to be very keen on them, and I'm just curious to find out if they live up to their hype...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

Posted on: 13 May 2002 by Tim Jones

TC -

No, but if it's any use I remember an Naimophile reviewer (Paul Messenger IIRC) in Hi-Fi Choice giving their integrated a storming review.

Lots of stuff about tranny bass and valve treble, etc, etc.

Bit pricey for an integrated amp though (c. £2k?)

Tim J

Posted on: 13 May 2002 by Mike Sae

sounds interesting, but what kind of classic flat earth speaker are we supposed to run with 30 Lavardin watts?

Posted on: 14 May 2002 by Robby

With my speakers (83db sensitivity) I had a similar problem to Jason.

From a sound point of view I much prefer DNM - with similar amount of watts on tap they drive my speakers with much more authority and clarity.

In Hi-fi+ reviews they bamg on about the detail retrieval of the amps but this is fairly average. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary IMHO. Definitely way behind DNM.

I may be shot for this but I prefered the sound of the Unison Research S2K that I listned to at the time of listening to the Lavardin.

Maybe with much more sensitive speakers I would have had a different result.