| [ Audiophon: Craftsmanship in sound ] |
© Ernest Ruiz. 2006
After many months since the last article I wrote for all Audio Nirvana readers, finally I have had enough time to prepair this one that you're now reading. As I did before I come with a new article about a small spanish audio company devoted to building tube audio equipment. All the people behind these small companies shares the same objectives and wishes and they work hard building this equipment and trying to place it in the audio market. I have high respect for this entrepreneurs and I know that their products are as good as any other. So I feel in the obligation to spread their work. With this article I introduce to you Audiophon.
Audiophon is a small audio company founded in 1985 by Rafael Molina. Mr. Molina is a qualified electronics specialist who began working in this field when he was very young. During many years he worked repairing consumer electronic products and finaly at the beginning of the 80s he turned to tube audio equipment. Since then, Mr. Molina has worked designing, building and selling this kind of equipment. Althought his work is widely known in his city, Valencia, and all around Spain and can be found in Audiophon's web site, I hope that this article, and the next one I'm preparing about one of his amps, will introduce his work to a wider audience.
Mr. Molina's work at Audiophon is very special, unique, I would say. Mr. Molina not only designs and builds by hand his amps, but he also makes his own transformers for all the equipment. So in this case we are facing a true craftsman. In his small lab, Mr. Molina designs and builds the output and power transformers, designs and builds the circuit boards and assembles and tests all the equipment. As you can imagine making a transfomer in this way from the beginning is something very uncommon. Usually these small manufacturers use transformers from electronics companies or ask for special designs to the other manufacturers. Mr. Molina tried several years ago both methods but he didn't find what he needed. So he decided to learn how to build transformers and after a long and hard research he developed the skills needed to do that. When he talks about this period of his life, Mr. Molina explains that before learning how to do the right transformer, he build hundreds of them that ended in the dustbin. In the following images you can see Mr. Molina's lab and the machine he uses to make the transformers.
After completing the assembling process of his amplifiers, Mr. Molina spends many hours testing them in long auditions. Mr. Molina is a skilled musician and has a good pair or ears. Beside his lab he has a listening room where he can test the sound of his amps and after doing that he considers them finished.
After taking this brief look into Mr. Molina's work, let's see the equipment he builds and sells under the Audiophon brand. Audiophon's range is composed, basically by triode based power amplifiers in single ended or push-pull configuration that can use different triode tubes according customer desires. Audiophon's range also includes an EL34 based integrated amplifier in push-pull configuration, some MM phono preamps, line preamps and headphone amps. All these systems are build under customer demand and althought there're some standard configurations, Audiophon can give almost unlimited choices and also can build special products. All Audiophon's systems are tested before delivering to customer in two phases: first, they are tested under stress conditions for electronic reliability and second they're tested for audio qualities during one week. During this week tube selection is done in order to obtain the best sound from the amps. Here you can find a detailed list of Audiophon's amps:
All the 300B power amps listed above can deliver 15 watt per channel but taking the tubes to their maximun operation limits and due to that their life can be shorter. KR tubes can deliver up to 22 watt without exceeding normal parameters.
Here you can see some pictures of these amplifiers:
During the visit I did to Mr. Molina, in addition to sharing some nice moments and learning new concepts, I had the chance to listen to one of his amplifiers (a deep listening session and an article about it will come to Audio Nirvana in some weeks). It was a 300B based stereo power amplifier in Single Ended configuration. As always, when I listen to this modest powered amps I'm surprised with the things they can do. Working with a pair of Tannoy Ascot TD145 (by the way, another nice surprise) or with a pair of PMC IB1 the amps did a great job. It was surprising to listen how the amp changed his sound when we switched from the original Valve Art 300B tubes to the 300B Mesh Plate from TJ/Full Music or to the KR300B. The biggest change was with this last model. Mr. Molina told me that with the KR300B-XLS the change is even bigger. KR tubes are known for their high specs. If a standard 300B tube can deliver 7-9 watt, the XLS delivers 15-25 watts without problems. In Audiophons amps thsi tubes is configured for 17 watt per channel. This is a very good option for those audiophiles that want the 300B sound while owning low sensitive speakers.
As you can see the number of products made by Audiophon is very important and if to them we add the products made under specific customer demands, the possibilities expand with no limit. I belive that Audiophon is an excellent example of what an audio craftsman can do.
Finally, many thanks to Rafael Molina for giving us the chance to know his work and for allowing us to do the audition of one of his amps. Keep your eye in Audio Nirvana for the article about it that will come.