P A U L T A T A R A

Acurus DIA 150Integrated Amp

glance at Mondial’s Acurus beefed up, the en-DIA 150 immediately sug- tire circuit has beengests the lucid elegance with refined for cleaner

x which this 150-watt/channel sound, and, in aeo integrated amplifier plays music. It’s welcome touch, a

got a gray/black, jet-set look about it, with abare minimum of knobs and buttons vyingfor your attention. The control panel is laidout in a graceful little swoop that somehowreminds me of a well-appointed French-man crossing his legs and smoking a ciga-rette. From a purely physical standpoint, ifthe DIA 150 were a person, it would be YvesMontand-although I’m sure Yves Mon-tand would have been too low-voltage todrive your speakers.

The DIA 150 is Mondial’s latest take onthe company’s “passive integrated amp”concept, which it pioneered with the earlier100-watt/channel DIA 100. This timearound, the power-amp section has been

AUDIO/SEPTEMBER 1999

operate the thingfrom the other side of the room.

DIA is short for “direct input amplifier”:Instead of the active preamplifier circuitryfound in most competing integrated amps,the Acurus goes the purist route by usingpassive volume and balance controls, as wellas passive source switching. So the purity ofthe original signal is maintained right up tothe power-amp stage, and you don’t have topay for a lot of extra circuitry that couldend up diminishing the sound quality any-way. Mondial claims that through the use of

a high-sensitivity power-amp stage and aseparate internal subchassis that shields thepassive preamp section it’s come close toreaching the “Holy Grail of audio”-astraight wire with gain. In a nutshell, youget more out of leas. More or leas.

I’m exceedingly pleased with the DIA150's control layout, as I’ve never been verygood at remembering where the individualfunction buttons are on audio equipment.(Then again, I’m not very good at remem-bering much of anything that doesn’t in-volve me receiving money or getting kissedfull on the lips.) It takes me forever to be-come intimately acquainted with all thosecontrols; I usually have a major problemgetting past the “staring like a flounder”

The DIA 1 5 0 isMondial’s latest take

on the company’s“passive integrated

amp” concept.

phase when I want, for instance, to switchfrom CD to video.

Not so with the DIA 150. Five minutesand even I can) figure it out. It has thoseeight little buttons swooping left to rightand two great big gray metal knobs thatcontrol the volume and balance. That’s it.There are no dials telling you what time it ison planet Zoltar-7, no little lights bouncingaround to visually confirm that you’re actu-ally hearing music, no burning neck be-cause you’ve realized that you shelled out

20 kHz, into 8 ohms.

Dimensions: 17 in. W x 5 in. H x

D(43.2cmx12.7cmx35.6c

Weight: 35 Ibs. (16 kg).

Company Address: Mondiol De

20 Livingstone Ave., Dobbs

N.Y. 10522; 9 14/693-8008;

www.mondialdesigns.com.

for features that you’ll never,ever use.

The buttons comprise switch-es for power and muting plus sixfor source selection: CD, video,D/A, tuner, auxiliary, and tapemonitor. It doesn’t get muchsimpler than that. I also applaudthe speaker connectors, whichare placed on opposite ends ofthe back panel so that you don’thave to wrestle several wires intoa l-inch space. Your aunt couldcope with this baby, though I’dstill keep her away from it. It re-tails at $1,500, and you knowhow flighty she can get.

So if you’re the kind of person who likesto be seduced by his equipment, the DIA150 certainly gives you the old amplifiercome-hither. But, hey, just for the sake of ar-gument, let’s be adults about this. Relation-ships are more than just looks, otherwiseSophia Loren would never have marriedCarlo Ponti. No, a healthy attraction is alsobased on personality, the lusted-after one’sability to communicate his or her inner feel-ings. Well, the folks at Mondial, those slydogs, have created a looker with a soul.

I auditioned the Acurus integrated bywedging it between my reference NAD 522CD player and a pair of NHT SuperTwofull-range floor-standing speakers. Kim-ber’s PBJ audio interconnects and RadioShack’s 16-gauge brown-colored speakerwire tied it all together.

My normal amp is an NAD 310, which isa fine little unit, no doubt about it. It is,however, an altogether different beast fromthe more cultivated DIA 150. I know therule is supposed to be that you get what youpay for, but anybody who’s attended amovie or bought a car in the past 15 yearsknows that’s an almost amusingly opti-mistic stance. It’s more likely that you'll getwhatever the hell they decide to give you,regardless of cost.

Incredibly, however, the DIA 150 deliverson all fronts. The elegance that’s so imme-diately apparent on the outside extendseven to the amp’s insides. It has hardly anyguts, but precision engineering sees to itthat that doesn’t matter. It’s the very defini-tion of inner beauty.

I was so astounded bythe sound, I quickly

started plowingthrough my CDs.

I was so astounded by the sound, I quick-ly started plowing through my CDs as I re-alized which bits of my music collection I’dlike to hear iiber-juiced by the amp. These,of course, aren’t the discs that you’d bereaching for in the same situation, but ifyou wanna come on over and write this re-view, I’ll gladly take a nap.

Cedar Walton, Naima. This is a nifty liveperformance from 1973, recorded at aManhattan club called Boomer’s. I alwayssay that I like to hear the wood creak in myjazz. Keep the electric instruments awayfrom me, and if Monk is stomping on theground while he solos, I sure as hell wannaknow about it. The DIA 150 lends asonorous mahogany warmth to Walton’skeyboard, with cymbal work that sparklesaround the edges.

You could argue that more bass would benice-and with the lack of tone controls,you better like what you get--but one ofthe best things about the bass on the DIA150 is that it lays itself down as a backdrop.You don’t feel that it’s being punched out atyou, and you don’t get the somewhat soupylower-register tone that I find when I’mgrooving to the NAD 310. The sound is so

convincingly live on this disc, Ialmost bought a drink for theblonde over by the bar, and shewasn’t even there. And neitherwas the bar. And I’m engaged.

Bob Dylan, Blonde onBlonde. It’s no scoop that thisis one of the greatest rock ' n 'roll albums of all time. Thesurreal wordplay and don't-try-to-tell-me-they’re-bad vo-cals are part and parcel of Dy-lan’s most brilliant ’60s output.I just have trouble listening toit because of what Dylan him-self calls its “mercury” sound. I

think what he means is that there’s some-thing simultaneously organic and tinnyabout it. As undeniably visionary as therecord is, it often winds up giving me asplitting headache.

The DIA 150 doesn’t completely solvethis problem, but at least it sounds like Mr.Zimmerman is just blowing that damn har-monica directly into your ear, rather thanmethodically stabbing your timpanic mem-brane with it. Mostly, though, the sonicpalette is much more forgiving than I’mused to it being on this recording. You get tohear it all with the DIA 150--the fog, theamphetamine, and the pearls. Just like Bobintended it, although what he intended re-mains a little piercing on occasion. Still,tones ring out and die away that you don’teven know are there when you play the discon less formidable machinery.

Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright.This is my favorite pop record from 1998,and it’s one of that year’s most fascinatinglydense productions, to boot. Wainwrightcombines an almost Broadway-like musi-cality with a perverse sense of humor thatowes a lot to Randy Newman. That meansyou get a lot of catchy piano, bizarre keychanges, bells ding-a-linging, and slowlymounting arrangements that burst intohuge orchestrations when you least expectit. Though my NAD pumps it all out withbrio, the DIA 150 does a vastly superior jobof separating the many layers of sound.

Too many string and rock recordings canend up sounding like a squall of sound,rather than the more inspiring wall thatPhil Spector used to build. The DIA 150

A lJ b I CbISEPTEh4RP.R 1999 37

ig. 2-THD + N vs. frequency at 10 wred), 50 watts (blue), and 100 wattgreen)) into 8 ohms (A) and 4 ohms

aves like a big stereo power amp wiirly stiff power supply. And, in fact,light reasonably regard the DIA 150g high-gain power amp with multp u t s a source selector, and an inputcontrol.Distortion is very low at frequencies

er a few kilohertz and still reasonablye n at the top of the audio range (Fig

it varies hardly at all with level u

Fig. S-Crosstalk vs. frequency.

ormal circumstances. Frequency re-ponse (Fig. 4) is extremely flat, thoughhere is about a quarter-decibel channel

(23.5 dbW)/channel into 8

and 290 watts (24.6 dBW)/chann

into 4 ohms.

oise, A-Weighted: -80.3 dBW.

the overload point is reached. Noisequite low. The only appreciable blip innoise spectrum (Fig. 3) is a small hspike at the 60-Hz power-line

imbalance and interchannel crosstalkFig. 5) is well controlled.

In short, the Acurus DIA 150 is anotherlean, quiet bruiser of an amplifier from

provided the producer was at least a littlebit on his toes during the recording process.On Wainwright’s most sublime track,’“Foolish Love,” I even detected a previouslyunheard swirling organ sound that remind-ed me of The Band’s Garth Hudson, andthat was when an entire orchestra wascranking behind it at top volume. And thebass, as usual with this amp, was crisp andfully evident without wrestling the other in-struments into submission. I never caughtthat fairground organ before, and it made

berance, of course, may vary.Frank Sinatra, The Capitol Years. Every-

thing on this three-disc set springs to swag-gering, finger-popping life through the DIA150. On “One for My Baby,” you’d swearthat Frankie is breathing Jack Daniels va-pors down your neck. And don’t even getme started on “I’ve Got You Under MySkin”; it’s so dazzling I actually yelped. Theentire collection sounds like fancy crystal,from beginning to end. When croonedthrough the DIA 150, Sinatra’s way with a

than you’ve come to expect it to be; you’repractically wearing every whisper. Jill, mybetrothed (and a major Sinatra fanatic),took one listen and said, “It’s like sex foryour ears.” Nuff said-and that pithiness,coupled with her startling cuteness, ex-plains why I’m marrying Jill.

The DIA 150 sounds spectacular, folks,but all is not completely hunky-dory inAcurus world. First of all, there’s no head-phone jack. I know it’s heresy to some au-diophiles to even bother with headphones,

38 A U DI O/SEPTEMBER 1999

and that makes sense when you considerhow marvelous music can sound whenwafting out of a great set of speakers. I,however, like to put together tapes for myfriends, and a quick check with the head-phones can make it a lot easier to cue up thenext track when the song you’ve justrecorded is over. Besides, if you live in athin-walled apartment building, sometimesyou simply have to use headphones. Neigh-bors in New York City, as you perhapsknow, are quite capable of killing withoutremorse.

Another relatively minor drawback isthat the amp is pretty dam heavy. I don’tknow what kind of metal the chassis ismade of, but I wouldn’t be surprised if itwere salvaged from an old panzer. The alu-minum faceplate certainly looks beautiful,but you need a decent set of biceps to pickthe thing up and stick it in a cabinet byyourself. And it has more than a few sur-prisingly sharp corners to contend with. Bythe evidence of my right palm, the DIA 150can also be used to carve the roast on Sun-

days--I mean, if you’re in abind and feeling especiallymanly.

But those are rather neg-ligible concerns when youconsider the luminoussound; after all, that’s thereason you buy an amp.The DIA 150’s diction, ifyou will, is precise, free ofslurring or muddled gut-tural pronouncements. Thenuances it can pull out of a piece of musiccan turn even your most often listened-todiscs into adventures of rediscovery. (I hadincorrectly assumed that my days of gettingall worked up over Van Morrison’s "Moon-dance” were finished about 10 years ago.)

The top end doesn’t screech its waythrough an arrangement, even when you’redealing with a perilously pitched big-bandtrumpeter like Sweets Edison. And the bass,as I’ve already said, is supportive ratherthan steamrolling, plus the DIA 150 candeal with a broad range of low-end boom-

ing. Paul McCartney’s playing comes acrossas delightfully buoyant, full of surprisingtextures, while Charles Mingus's altogetherdifferent muscularity is never goosed by theamp into overpowering a recording. Themusic spreads out and luxuriously sur-rounds you. You don’t feel as if it’s beingshot out of an expensive cannon.

All in all, this is a gorgeous-sounding am-plifier and an extremely nice piece of fancy-shmancy furniture. Your music (and yourdecorator) will be pleased, I’m sure. NowI’m gonna put that Sinatra back on. A