CLASSÉ DELTA
If you have even a passing knowledge of the French language, you will know that Classé’s company name is pronounced not with a silent ‘e’, as in ‘class’, but with the final ‘e’ pronounced as an ‘a’, as in Class-A. This is not because Classé was founded in a French-speaking province in Canada (although it was, in fact, founded in Montréal, which has more French speakers than English speakers), but because the company’s very first product — the DR-2, a 25-watt amplifier designed and built by the company’s sole founder, David Reich — was, in fact, a Class-A amplifier.
That’s rather appropriate, because the Classé Delta Stereo power amplifier that’s one of the two products reviewed here is also a Class-A amplifier — or at least it is up to a power output of 12.5-watts, after which it transitions to being a linear Class-A/B amplifier up to its rated output of 250-watts per channel into 8Ω (and 500-watts into 4Ω and 350-watts into 2Ω) and the Classé Delta Pre operates completely in Class-A. (For technical details about the differences between Class-A and Class-AB amplifiers, see the article ‘Amplifier Classes’ on page 58.
CLASSÉ DELTA PRE-AMPLIFIER
Although it is only a two-channel pre-amplifier, the Classé Delta Pre has all crossover controls and time delay controls (and more!) that you would expect to find in a full-featured home theatre component:
