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Creek P42/A42 AmplifierThe pair of strictly minimalist amplifiers: the P42 preamplifier and the A42 power amplifier. These amplifiers are produced in the Great Britain renowned for its audiophile traditions and skills in producing of excellent audio equipment. In this work the English are world recognized authorities, not without reason the term "English sound" has become a synonym of high quality of equipment sounding. And really, English sound school proceeds from that good audio equipment has to be absolutely "transparent" for sound signal not making any "gags" in the process of record/playback and sound amplifying that leads to "coloring" of sounding. These good aims are reached due to limit simplification of the circuit technology and using of quality electronic components. Therefore in English amplifiers regulators of tone and circuits of tone-compensation, which inevitably leads to phase distortions of sound signal, are often absent. Besides, to compensate high cost of picked electronic components producers of audio equipment of this type very often reject a system of remote control and other "luxuries", which do not directly affect sound quality. Such approach to designing of an audio equipment is accepted to call "minimalist" (minimum "frills" with maximal high quality of sounding), and this construction of an audio equipment - minimalist too. It is possible to install separate modules on the three linear outputs in the A42, module of an amplifier for headphones and a corrector for head of a pickup, but in our specimen we had only one board of a linear output.
The P42 power amplifier can set a record on laconism of a front panel design - there is only one play button and LED-indicator. From the "stern" it looks more interesting and rather extraordinary. Its slots for acoustic systems connection are adjusted only to pin connectors of "banana" type and look like "mother" sockets placed in two rows. It is very unusual! The amplifier looks very modest inside: a mid-size mains transformer and a small board with discrete electronic components in the middle of a case. For 2x55 W declared output power of the amplifier the cooling radiators of final transistors look, to tell the truth, far modestly.
The preamplifier has more interesting "front". There are three big, high metal handles on the front panel: input selector switch and record selector in the left part, and just the same handle acts as volume control in the right. Note, that although the handles have hardly visible mark of their position identification, it is so barely visible that it is necessary to guess all along the time, what input is connected to the amplifier. From behind the amplifier has a rather respectable effect: rows of high-quality gold-plated RCA slots look imposing enough and point to the construction quality. In general, first impression from both amplifiers was rather favorable.
Let's estimate their "vocal abilities". By first impression, their sounding as if is pleasant on the whole, with good enough medium and high frequencies, but with evident deficiency of low frequencies. The Creek quite reliably reproduces sounds of the strings, woman's vocal is also good reproduced. However by good stereo channels separation within the stereo base of acoustic systems its sounding does not distinguish, to be honest, even by hints to a surround sound, because all the instruments are localized solely in the plane of acoustic systems. There are claims on playback of high frequencies: although they are clear (meaning without audible distortions) but not ringing, with obvious simplifying of high frequencies dynamics. As volume has been increasing, the amplifier has played more strikingly and vividly, but its tone balance has more notably moved to the medium and high frequencies. Price: $500$/500 ![]() |