The TMA gets more minimalist still!
By Roy Gregory
When it comes to audio components, does anything project attitude in quite the same way as an amplifier? From the techno/brutalist styling of the Gryphon Antillion to the glitzy high-tech sheen of the Devialets, the unashamedly artisan appearance of the original Audio Note amplifiers to the effortlessly cool Lectron JH50, there’s an unmistakable quality to each and every one. It’s a quality that extends past the exterior appearance, into the interior construction and the sound that results: muscular, dark and heavy or compressed, flat and shiny; basic and direct or unhurried, calm and detached. If amplifiers look the way they sound (and a surprising number do) what does that tell you about the Neodio HQA?
On the surface, not a lot: A simple but elegantly constructed black box with an equally simple copper stripe inlaid across its front panel. But look a little deeper and what’s happening on the outside is a direct extension of what’s happening on the inside – and what’s happening on the inside is distinctive indeed. In fact, what is happening on the inside is simply dripping with attitude – and it ain’t the sort of attitude we normally associate with high-end audio.
The HQA story starts with the company’s TMA integrated (https://gy8.eu/review/maximal-minimal/), an amplifier with an agenda as distinctive as its appearance. The Minimalist Amplifier concept has been taken a step further and – crucially – become even more purist in the form of the High Quality Amplifier, simply by dint of eliminating the input switching and volume control. Physically, sonically and philosophically, the HQA is a direct development of the TMA, sharing much more than just the thinking behind that product. It is, quite literally, a stripped back, power only TMA – but when it comes to performance and system building, it’s much, much more than that.
In an age where electronic circuitry is getting more and more compact, increasingly sophisticated (for which read complex) and where closely packed componentry, proliferating ICs, multi-layer boards and DSP/software control are fast becoming the norm, at €4,600 the HQA goes beyond retro and well into throw-back territory. Yet there’s nothing lazy or accidental about its design. This is deliberate, even premeditated and it starts with the construction itself.
With an increasing number of products suffering ever-shorter shelf lives, the ability to access components and even the circuit itself has become a concern where longevity and serviceability matter. Yes, you can buy a streaming capable DAC/amplifier that’s little bigger than a stack of a half-dozen CDs, off the internet for around $100 USD. It even works – at least after a fashion. But when (as opposed to ‘if’) it goes wrong, the assumption is that it’s so cheap that you just bin it and buy the next, newer model. But if we are at all concerned with the longevity or repairability of our investment, its carbon footprint or consumption of raw materials, let alone the creation of waste product, this manufacturing model is catastrophically unsustainable. It’s also the context against which Neodio designer and engineer Stephane Even created the HQA.