Premiere Design

North American distributor Aaudio Imports was quite busy at CES last January, introducing many audiophile products to the US market. Among them was the 882 integrated amplifier from German boutique maker Lindemann.

The 882 is brimming with high-end features, such as dual mono power supplies, fully balanced operation with separate amps for the positive and negative halves of the signal, a push-pull output stage, and intelligent, dynamic thermal-bias adjustment. Also, all gain stages operate as current amps, which is said to improve dynamic range, noise immunity, and low-level resolution.

Two L/R pairs of balanced XLR inputs are joined by three pairs of unbalanced RCA inputs, which are converted to balanced as soon as the signal enters the device, and the outputs include one balanced XLR pair and two pairs of speaker binding posts. The 882's power output is rated at 160Wpc into 8Ω or 300Wpc into 4Ω, and loads down to 2Ω are supported. Frequency response ranges from 1Hz to 250kHz (-3dB) with <0.01% THD and >106dB SNR (A weighted, related to 30V output).

As you might expect in this blog by now, the 882 is expensive—$16,700 to be exact. Is that too much for a 2-channel integrated amp? Perhaps, but perhaps not, at least if it sounds as good as it looks on paper.