Octave's New Top-of-the-Line Preamp
ased on more than twenty years of development, Octave's new Jubilee Preamp SE ($48,000) has not essentially changed what made the company's Jubilee Preamp what it is. The Jubilee SE continues to have both single-ended and balanced inputs and outputs, and an external power supply. It still uses a quad of 12AU7 tubes. Rather, it includes several refinements and new features that, according to Octave, "improve what really matters." The Jubilee SE's redesigned XLR transformers were developed for the input stage and are tailored to the requirements of modern DACs and sources, offering enough headroom to support output levels up to 8V, and with significantly higher input impedance of 80k ohms. Distortion figures of less than 0.005% and a bandwidth of 5Hz-150kHz provide a more stable signal to feed the proprietary Octave tube gain stage. The Jubilee SE boasts a signal-to-noise ratio that is 3dB better than its predecessor's. The home-theater bypass with unity/0dB gain is now
standard with the Jubilee SE, and a new mono switch joins the phase inversion switch to
provide more control over the idiosyncrasies of recorded music. A new internal adjustment
of the tube gain stage allows more optimal matching to a wider array of amplifiers and
speakers. Inputs have been relabeled to be more universal, and a discreet LED indicator
was added to the volume control to provide clear visual feedback. According to Octave,
"every refinement serves the same purpose: to improve the user experience while
preserving the integrity of the music." |
