Jeff Rowland Design Model 525 Bridgeable Power Amplifier

[GuidoCorona]

Hi Seriouslyhifi, unfortunately I have not experienced M525 yet… Beyond the specs at the top of this thread, I do not know too much more about it yet… Please post your impression when you listen to it at your friend's place.

Lucian Pichette at the Rowland factory told me a couple of days ago that there is the first M525 review written in German. I thought the review was already on the Rowland Knowledge Base, but it isn't there yet. Apparently, Rowland is working on a good quality English translation. I will post the link to the English language version as soon as it becomes available.

Hope you get M825 or M925 for your own system... My M925 is an amazing music-making device!

Saluti, Guido

 

[clab]

I couldn't find the article but at least the magazine in which it has been published

here

http://www.hififorumpreul.de/de/aktuelles.aspx

Have a nice day

 

[seriouslyhifi]

Thank you. I finally did get a chance to hear the M-525 though briefly with 50 hours only on the break in. Heard them for an hour each on 2 occasions. Impressed....very, very impressed. I believe this little amp will at its price will change the way people think about Class D. I myself was surprised. No hardness at all, a warm midrange, very transparent and excellent bass control relative to its price. I think one could fool audiophiles by doing a blind test on this amp. It is that good and again I repeat at it price or even double. But early days and do not want to make a judgement till it has at least 300 hours on the clock. Guido hearing this I cannot even imagine how good will the M825 or M 925 be. I am now sure that you are on the right track. Good luck.

 

[GuidoCorona]

Hi Seriouslyhifi, my M925 is becoming more and more amazing. The degree of musical information and ambient detail that it delivers to the speakers is extraordinary. And when M925 is biwired to my Vienna Die Muzik, it becomes even more musically revealing, 3-dimensional, and emotionally intense.

Recently I have been asked two questions....

Does M925 yield proper bass control on difficult speakers like Die Muzik... Yes it does, but in a way that makes you forget that it is "controlling" bass. In other words, bass is present, deep and pitched, and has no inherent tendency to fluff or bloat. Simultaneously, there is no feeling of bass being overdampened or held "in a vice" in some artificial way. Bass is a foundational and perfectly integrated component of the musical object.

A friend of mine was told that M925 has a tuby richness to its midrange... In my opinion, if M925 delivered only a textured midrange and little else, such an assertion might have some vailidity. However, M925 treats the entire audible frequency band the same harmonically textured way from deep bass to top treble, without a particular preferential treatment to any region.

Saluti, G.

 

[musicargyle]

Bridged 525/825 questions: : Would bridging a 525 or 825 change the fundamental sound of of the amp ? Would it be for example somewhat less delicate, detailed or perhaps a tad brighter in the mids & highs? Also how would bridging affect the overall life of the power module & longevity of the amp?

 

[GuidoCorona]

Operating M525 in bridged mode will not cause any sonic deterioration... Rowland supports bridging via simple user-operable switches because a particular amp will not suffer at all from that configuration... Sonically or duration-wise.

On the contrary, all reports point to M525 gaining in ease and authority in bridged mode.

The Rowland factory has used a pair of bridged M525s in combination with M825 in their demo room to drive bi-wired speakers.... Apparently the result was amazing... I'll try to get more information.

Guido

 

[seriouslyhifi]

A single M525 is certainly a bit more transparent and really a magical amp.
A bridged M525 looses a bit of transparency but has more power for you, if you require the same.
I have always gone back to a single M525 in a system over bridged M525. And this has been over various speakers.
A bridged M525 on the bass is stunning but you must remember that there is a 6db gain in the output so you will not be able to match it with most of the amps out there as you require the matching amp to then have a output of 32db. Only the M825 or M925 can do that as they have a gain switch behind to choose from. That means that you cannot even do a bi wired speaker with a single M525 on the top and a bridged M525 at the bottom.

 

[johndoe21ro]

Seriouslyhifi, what loudspeakers were hooked to the M525? How would you describe its character tonally? What about the timbre?