It may be strange to read what I’m about to say in the pages of Stereophile, but it’s the cold hard truth so here goes: Audio reviews are inadequate. They don’t tell the whole story. They come up short and can even misdirect.
It’s not their fault, or at least sometimes it isn’t. Even the good ones can’t tell you how something will sound to you—let alone make you feel, the ultimate point—in your own room. As helpful as they may be, they can’t address the elephant in the listening room: synergy.
Have you ever been to an audio show where a component in a demo sounded wonderful, only for that same model to sound average or worse at the next show, or, God forbid, in your own system? The truth is that most components these days are well-designed and sound good, so why don’t all exhibit rooms sound great?
There’s no better example of a truism in our hobby than that a well-set-up $10,000 system will sound better than a badly set up $100,000 one. Money can only go so far. Synergy goes further—among components, with the room, the recording, the listener’s tastes, the foundation under the equipment, the tubes, and on and on. Even electrical power enters in: Recall another audiophile truism, about how your music often sounds so much better late at night. (The explanation usually given: The power is better late at night.)
In both cases, the reason is synergy. The greater the synergies we achieve in our listening environment—more synergies and more synergistic—the better the music sounds.
In reviewing the Octave Audio V 70 Class A integrated amplifier ($12,000 and up; $15,900 as reviewed), I was reminded of the importance of synergy in our hobby.
Octave Audio
Germany-based Octave Audio’s origins date to 1968 when it began as a transformer-winding factory called Hofmann, after founder Karl Heinz Hofmann. In 1975, Hofmann’s son Andreas, an audio enthusiast with “electric current in his blood,” to quote the company website, introduced hi-fi into the family business by building and selling his own amps, initially under the Hofmann name. Then, in 1980, the company rebadged his wares with the Octave logo. Not until 2000, when Andreas took over the company, was the Hofmann brand changed to Octave Audio. Today, the company builds transformers for OEM companies, though only a few.
Octave Audio released the class-AB, 70Wpc, push-pull V 70 integrated amplifier in 2003. It has been a constant staple of the company’s product line and remains so today—only now it has a brother, the 50Wpc V 70 Class A, I was excited to review the new model.
