Preview: Audio Research Announces New Core Amplification Products

• The i70 integrated tube amplifier, priced at an estimated $8500 (US). This is a 70 watt per channel preamp and power amp combo. The remarkable thing is how it sonically goes beyond the (still available) i50 in definition and speaker control while retaining the musicality of the i50. Phono input allows for MM or MC cartridges.
• The LS3 solid state preamp, priced at an estimated $9000 (US). The sound of this preamp is remarkably smooth, in the sense of very low grain or added texture. It will be available with two card slots, one for an optional DAC and another for an optional MM/MC phono stage.
• The LS2 tube preamp, priced at an estimated $10,000 (US). The LS2 offers a tube gain stage, which Audio Research feels is more a sonic variant that a hands-down superior offering to the LS3. The same card options are available here.
• The S100 solid-state power amp, priced at an estimated $9500 (US). Somewhat like the i70, but even more so, the S100 makes you wonder if you need anything more. The dynamism and control of this amp are remarkable. It also sounds very clean, but not in a cold or artifact-driven way.
• The S200 solid-state power amp, priced at an estimated $12,000 (US). If you have low sensitivity speakers, this amp is designed to give the maximum output possible while preserving the sonic qualities of the S100. Bigger amps (and to be clear, this is a powerful amp, so bigger means really big) often have to use large numbers of output devices and many engineers feel this can lead to some sonic sacrifices.
• The D80 tube power amp, priced at an estimated $15,000 (US). Audio Research is trying to deliver most of what the 160M tube amplifier offers at a much lower price, and of course with lower power. The 160M is a wonderful amp as we have reported, so if they pull it off, the D80 for the right speakers and listener could be a winner.

If you know Audio Research, you will know those prices are pretty reasonable. When you see their production process, you may think these are a bargain. As I always say, I can’t know your budget and needs, so you have to judge affordability. But, if Audio Research could deliver improved performance at lower prices than they have traditionally offered, it would constitute solid value for those whose budgets are in this price range. That’s what they have set out to do.

The Significance of Audio Research

Some important context for the significance of these products comes from knowing the history of Audio Research and having heard many, many of their products and compared them to the competition. We will cover the history in some detail in issue 360 of The Absolute Sound magazine, but let’s summarize.

Bill Johnson, the founder of Audio Research in the late 1960s, went against the grain of the times and built preamps and power amps based on vacuum tubes. This was an era where transistors were all the rage, and people assumed the vacuum tube was “dead”. Johnson, being an engineer and not a technological determinist, noted that vacuum tubes had certain technical advantages over the transistors of that era, especially in linearity. Linearity is very valuable in analog audio reproduction, but not so critical in digital circuits. So, Johnson chose to use tubes in his first designs. I recall hearing his SP-3a preamp in the mid-‘70s and it was a revelation. I am not alone in that experience, and our magazine documented the impact and the incremental improvements wrought by the variations of the SP-3 series. Johnson and his team did similar things with tube power amps. This work developing better tube circuits went on for decades and made Audio Research one of the most respected names in high-end audio.

The thing is, Johnson was simply a very smart man, and he recognized that tubes had advantages, but also that they drove the cost of products up due to certain circuit requirements. To take just one example, tube power amps generally need output transformers and good output transformers are expensive. So, Audio Research also designed and released several lines of solid-state products. Initially, these were not well received by us and others, but in hindsight one has to wonder how much of this was a new-fangled technical conservatism born of Johnson’s work showing how great tubes could sound. Simplistic “tubes good”, “transistors bad” thinking, and many variations on this theme, continue to misguide consumers. But Audio Research started early on to follow the engineering idea of using the best devices and circuits for the job, rather than making a religion of some idea or another. They are returning to this idea with a vengeance.

The New Audio Research Strategy

With this in mind, we come to the new Audio Research. We might say that there have been three Audio Research companies. The first is the Bill Johnson-led company of legend. Then we have the private-equity funded rendition, which did some nice work, but was also searching for a viable path forward. Finally, now we have a new, privately-held version of Audio Research, led by new CEO Val Cora.

Since Cora took over, it perhaps hasn’t been obvious to consumers what the game plan is or whether there really is a game plan. Well, from our discussions with the new management team, there certainly is one. We will cover this in more detail in previews and reviews of these new products, but a few points are worth articulating because they, perhaps more than the product details, define why these new products are such a big deal.

The first point, which seems like just a nice idea until you hear the products, is that Cora has resolutely returned Audio Research to a guiding north star of musical believability. As we walk through each product in upcoming videos, you will see (subject to our limitations as communicators) that the design process for each product has musicality and believability as an essential feature of the feedback loop that guides choices of circuit topology and production process. When we are as far along the maturity curve with analog circuits as we are in 2025, it is almost unimaginable that you could do design at a high level in another way, but I haven’t very often heard engineers describe their work as placing musicality at the core of the design cycle to this degree. The big thing about this regarding the new products being introduced here is that the designers are told by Cora to design great, musical circuits first, and then the company works on ways the bring the costs down while always referencing and trying to improve on the musically successful prototype design.

The second idea that Cora brought to the table, and has invested in, is the idea of dream design teams. This might sound easy, but being an excellent talent-spotter requires the CEO to be deeply knowledgeable about both circuits and people. If you’ve managed technical teams, you’ll know how hard this actually is. Cora is building at least three teams at Audio Research. “Team Tube” is led by Dylan Constan-Wahl and has done the LS2 preamp and the D80 amp in this new line up, but they’ve also worked on the remarkable 330M monoblock amps. “Team Solid-State” is led by Mike Bettinger and is resolutely focused on signal preservation from input into real loads. “Team Beyond-The-Edge” will be led by a new and famous designer to be revealed later, and may be charged with developing hybrid circuits aiming to go where no man has gone before. There is more going on in the technical realm, much more actually, but this should give you some idea that these and other new products aren’t just tweaks, they are the result of a fundamental strategy.

Summary

As far as we call tell, these are important new products for listeners who care deeply about musical believability. This, if you think about the big picture of a flagship brand like Audio Research, is also great news for listeners excited about continued progress in audio electronics. We will return to these subjects starting in a month or so as we get each of the new products in for review.

Exciting times!