Pre/power amplifier
£13,000
There’s something serious stirring at Chord Electronics HQ. After years of delivering class-leading digital products, the company is revisiting its core analogue components. And, in quite short order, it has revamped almost the entire range. This isn’t some slight tweaking to give sales a little boost, but a more thorough rethink that has resulted in significant performance upgrades to the brand’s analogue amplifiers.
The new Ultima Pre 3/Ultima 6 is the company’s starter full-size stereo pre/power pairing, and is an excellent example of the qualities the new designs offer.
The Ultima Pre 3 (£6000) is a pure line-level device with five standard inputs, two of which are balanced XLRs. If you are looking for a built-in phono stage or a digital-to-analogue converter you won’t find them here. There isn’t even a headphone output to allow for personal listening, which is probably more of a loss from our point of view. So, if you want to play vinyl or have a digital source you will need the appropriate extra boxes. We’re sure that Chord will be only
