And now for something completely different…

The amp operates in Class AB, with a linear power supply, but beyond that I really can’t tell you much about what’s inside, due to the security stickers securing the chassis. Seasoned listeners used to US-style behemoths were often shocked when first exposed to the diminutive 47Labs Gain Card amplifier – and even more shocked when they discovered that it was based on a single, monolithic op-amp! If I had to guess I’d suspect that the contents of the Integrale 2000 chassis are, in their own way, just as surprising. But the point here – just as it was with the 47Labs designs – is not what’s inside but what it does, and in that respect, the Integrale 2000 is shockingly good!

By sheer coincidence, the arrival of the Konus components coincided with the presence of the Vimberg Mino speakers in the Reading Room. I hooked up the little Eastern European upstart, just to get it warmed up and run in. What I was totally unprepared for was the incredibly immediate, tactile and articulate sound that issued forth from the Vimbergs. Initially at least and unsurprisingly, the balance was off, but shifting the Minos backwards a couple of centimetres and dropping them a shade closer to the floor soon restored order. With the speakers properly positioned (I’d been running them with the VTL S-200 previously) the music gained some weight to go with the dynamic and rhythmic agility and suddenly, we were in business…

My second post-Covid concert featured the remarkable, irrepressible and effervescent Patricia Kopatchinskaja, performing the Stravinsky Violin Concerto, more than ably supported by Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra (their Rite…was a veritable tour de force). Her vivacity, energy and attack, those rapid, almost disconcerting changes of line and direction, move this piece a world away from the homageto Bach that it so often becomes. Instead, it is by turns innovative, vibrant, exciting and dramatic – and there are a lot of turns! It’s also the sort of challenge to make the average audio system quail. I’d been listening to her recording with Jurowski and the LPO (Naïve V5352) and it just happened to be in the player. I was floored by the confident verve and clarity with which the diminutive Konus amp tackled this incredibly demanding performance, eliciting apparently uncompressed drama, energy and intent from the Vimbergs – despite the apparent mismatch. Indeed, if the Vimbergs are themselves a significant bargain at their €20K price, one thing they are not is forgiving of partnering equipment. Which makes the Integrale’s confident debut all the more impressive. Despite (and defying) appearances, this is clearly an amp that need make no musical apologies.

More fun than a box of frogs…

You might only get one chance to make a first impression, but the Konus Integrale continued to surprise and delight. As things bedded in, its performance went from strength to strength until its easy confidence, presence and sense of purpose could be pretty much taken for granted. The breathy intimacy of the vocals on Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space (Mo-Fi MFSL UDSACD 2021) had that in the room immediacy, full of expressive nuance and knowing cynicism. The soundscape of incidental noises that opens ‘Real Bad News’ was at once atmospheric and part of a coherent whole, the jaunty rhythm and descending lines of ‘The Moth’ full of that catchy, ear-worm quality that many digital front-ends find so hard to generate – and systems to preserve. It’s testimony to the sure-footed and mobile bottom end generated by the amp that it kept the musical foundation both solidly planted and moving in the right direction. Big, complex or both, it seemed to matter little to the Konus amp, which simply got on with getting on…