Premiere Design

According to the brochure for the Hiato 2-channel integrated amplifier from Plinius Audio, "Benefiting from our tranquil location in the inspirational natural environment of New Zealand, the Plinius design team brings you products that faithfully reproduce the emotional touchstones of your favourite music. The holistic integrity of nature's designs inspire Plinius to combine wonderful sound, superb finishes, and technical excellence to delight the senses." Sounds good to me.

The power supply, preamp, and class-AB power amp are carefully matched, leading Plinius to claim that the Hiato achieves levels of reproduction not possible with most separate-component systems. The specs are certainly impressive—300 watts per channel (continuous) into 8Ω (450Wpc into 4Ω), both channels driven from 20Hz to 20kHz (±0.2dB) with a -3dB point at 70kHz, and THD less than 0.2% at rated power.

The rear panel provides four line-level inputs—two of which include additional balanced connections—and an optional unbalanced photo input with adjustable gain and load. Four pairs of speaker outputs allow biwiring, and there's a line-level out for recording and a pre-out for biamping.

The included full-function remote also controls Plinius CD players.

So how much? $10,585 with the phono input, $9100 without. That's a lot for a 2-channel integrated amp, but I imagine it sounds as clean as the New Zealand air in which it was conceived.