REVIEW MERRILL AUDIO Element 118 mono amplifier
Vinyl junkies take note as Merrill Audio's Jens phonostage preamplifier moving coil (MC) cartridge amplifier ($15,499) is truly a unique high-end audio product. As the results of seven years in constant grassroots development, it evolved and was refined. Critiqued at every step during development, the long seven year wait has been rewarded with a truly world-class MC phonostage. It became the most revealing, hyper-detailed phonostage amplifier I have experienced. It is like listening to the vinyl's mother stamper rather than a copy eight generations later. It transmits clues of stage dimensionality voice and instrumental harmonic overtones and even the nature of the space the recording was made within. Most writers might say a performance with detailing like this is layered over a "black background". But actually what they are referring to is the component amplifiers noise floor. This is a type of purity in that the device whatever it may, be lets the audio signal flow unchanged and unaffected by the power that amplifies the recorded information. The vanishing low levels of the Merrill Audio Jens phonostage noise floor showcases why it took so many years, and so many ears, to perfect this moving coil phono amplifier. See Ron Nagle's review of the Merrill Audio Jens phonostage preamplifier here.
The Best of Florida Audio Expo 2019
“A company located a little closer to home — in Bernardsville, New Jersey — but also unknown to me before the FAE was Merrill Audio, founded in 2010, who showed their Element 116 mono amplifiers ($22,000/pair).”
Have you ever noticed how people’s pets tend to look like them and reflect their personalities? Well, I have noticed a similar congruency between audio components and their designers – for good or bad (no names mentioned here are the astringent amps/designers I have come across in my years as an audiophile). Fortunately, the subject of this review, the Merrill Audio PURE Tape Head Preamp (the “Merrill Preamp” or “Pure”) for reel-to-reel decks and its creator Merrill Wettasinghe are on the right side of that spectrum. Merrill joined a recent meeting of the Westchester Audio Society (WAS) at my house and brought along his reel-to-reel tape preamp.
REVIEW MERRILL AUDIO Element 118 mono amplifier
Merrill Audio Advanced Technology Labs, LLC, was founded in 2010 by Merrill Wettasinghe, who not only earned a BS in electrical engineering and an MBA, and enjoyed a career in R&D and marketing with Hewlett-Packard, but has long had a passion for purity of sound. In 2011, Wettasinghe released the first Merrill Audio amplifier, the Veritas monoblock ($12,000 USD per pair, discontinued). The Veritas was considered a breakthrough product not only for its sound quality, but also for being one of the first amplifiers to be based on Hypex’s Ncore NC1200 class-D power module. At the time, it was also one of the few amps to use point-to-point litz wiring of ultrapure copper, rhodium-plated binding posts of solid copper, and top-quality XLR connectors — all made by Cardas.
REVIEW MERRILL AUDIO Element 118 mono amplifier
The Element 118 monoblocks are Merrill Audio’s newest products. I read about them long before I received my review samples, so I already knew that they are the most ambitious components that Merrill Audio has ever produced. They are named Element 118 after Oganesson, the newest element in the periodic table. Merrill Audio used this for the name of their amplifier because it “reflects the newest in technologies in the Element 118”. The two cabinets of the Element 118 monoblocks are quite large, a bit over 18″ wide, more than 20″ deep, and about 11″ high, although each amp weighs “only” 55 pounds. This is most likely due to their Class D amplification circuitry heritage. The cabinets of the Element 118 monoblocks are gorgeous. The chassis wasn’t designed just to look good but was designed to minimize external sound vibration using midpoint diffusers and stabilizers.
REVIEW MERRILL AUDIO Element Cara pre-amplifier
The new Cara preamplifier ($3,500) is a remote-controlled dual-mono and two-chassis (it has an external power supply) box, wrapped up in steel. Neat feature — Cara will let you “normalize” your volume by input. That is, if you have a source that tends to be a little quiet, you can give it an invisible and pre-set bump to bring it up to the level of the rest, or/likewise, you can knock down one of your louder sources to come back into line. Plus or minus 12dB is the range there. The pre has a 115dB range (max), and an SNR of 110dB/THD of .002%, and presents a 100kΩ input impedance/50Ω output impedance. The display, which has a variable brightness, is big and easy to read.
Robinson’s Positive Feedback Brutus Awards for 2018, Part the First
“Speaking of the extraordinary in the world of amplification, I have also been spending several months listening to a new design from Merrill Audio..”