Boulder Amplifiers 866
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “boulder”? I think of a rugged, mountainous landscape with jagged snow-capped peaks. I see images of the last time I drove up from sunny Boulder, Colorado, to Rocky Mountain National Park and discovered so much snow coming down that if we had dared walk too far in, our trail would have been covered with snow and we’d never have been able to find our way out. But how magical it was!
My first visit to the area was in late July 1972. I was fleeing New York City for the Bay Area in an old car that burned oil. The park provided welcome relief from the long, monotonous drive. The Summer of Love was long passed, but when we stopped high in the park and ran through wildflower-covered mountainsides, I felt like the flower child I never was. Today I view that escapade with regret—in our innocence, we were unaware that our carefree frolic was doing lasting damage to a fragile landscape—but I’ll never forget the joy that flower-covered mountainside brought.
I want my audio components to grant me experiences as varied, risky, and ecstatic as those I’ve had around Boulder. I want the high end to transport me to Strauss’s climactic peaks and into the heart of Schubert’s winter despair. When I listen, I want to feel as cool and sophisticated as Patricia Barber and as joyous as a choirboy singing of sleigh rides through the snow.
That’s a tall order. Can Boulder Amplifiers’ new 866 integrated amplifier ($13,450, or $14,950 with optional upsampling Roon-ready streaming DAC)—which co-designer Jameson Ludlam told me was “a more accessible product that provides the features we think many people are looking for with the performance they have come to expect from Boulder”—reach the summit?
The terrain
The Boulder 866 integrated amplifier’s chassis somewhat resembles an accordion, with an angled front panel and irregularly shaped, oddly angled, smooth-edged heatsink fins. Dominating the view
