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Listening Room
In the next issue of
A surround sound tube preamp from
Copland, two amazing CD players, an
astonishing high-powered integrated
amp, a terrific new phono stage
And that’s only the start!
Copland CVA-535
This remarkable Danish
company has produced not
only some of the world’s
best-sounding products (we
know…we own two of them), but also
some of the audio world’s top bargains.
Of late Copland has been moving into
surround sound. In our next issue we’ll
be reviewing the CVA-306 six-channel
tube preamp. How does it sound?
Superb (you heard it here first). So we
were optimistic that this five-channel
solid state power amplifier would also
break new ground.
It’s a neat package. You can see the
inside on the next page. The power
supply is gigantic. The five channels
are arranged in individual modules,
though they are not removable as they
are in some amps. For each input you
have a choice of a pretty good RCA jack
or (for balanced lines) an XLR jack. The
output posts work well.
We gave it a few extra hours of breakin,
and then gave it a fairly tough test:
we took it into our Alpha room so that it
could pretend to be a two-channel stereo
amp. The CVA-535 will mostly see duty
as a movie amplifier, of course, but we
figure that it if doesn’t have the moxie
and the finesse to do justice to music,
it will lose a lot of what’s in a movie as
well.
The 535 looks as though it should be
a first cousin of the CTA-520 amplifier
we gave a warm review to in our last
issue. Could this multichannel amp be
just the CTA-520 with extra channels?
That would be nice.
But if it were, wouldn’t it have to be
two and a half times bigger? It isn’t…not
quite. Perhaps more significantly, it costs
only about 35% more. That could mean
it’s a bargain. Or perhaps something
else.
We performed the test in our Alpha
system, using two of its five channels,
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 53