I have through the years had the opportunity to listen to a great deal of high-end amplifiers of various makes, qualities and price range. Some were indeed impressive (but so was then often the price tag) and some were an absolute deception (and equally a financial rip off).
It is of course difficult to pick a winner in all this, and I’m not even going to try to, but one thing is for certain; don’t believe in all the trained selling arguments and technical specification lectures that people try to feed you with to convince you that THEIR product is superior to anyone else’s. Learn that this is nothing but biased information and is usually not worth much to you as a potential client. What SHOULD always count for you though is how it sounds to YOU. Your own listening impression is everything.
The funny thing is that the more I listen to other amplifiers, the more I like my own. It is certainly not the best on the market (even if it used to be among the very best ones when it came out), but its overall qualities are impressive, even by today’s standards. It produces a rich, punchy and rapid sound with a wonderful clarity, airyness and presence – altogether imaginally wrapped into smooth and warm velvet.
The best way to describe the sound of the Accuphase E-405 is probably that it is like “an iron fist in a velvet glove”. Actually, this is spot on!
There are, no doubt, a great deal of amplifiers out there on the market today that may be better in some ways than the E-405. However, its overall performance, with its MOSFET drive tuned for perfection, is truly amazing still.
If we stay with the brand Accuphase and their integrateds here, I have auditioned the E-406, E-406V, E-408 and the E-450. The one that comes closest to the E-405 in this line-up is the E-406 (which is, after all, the E-405’s successor). The E-406V and the others in this line-up are of course also all very fine machines, but they all sound more analytical and less warm than the E-405.
Which one is the best then? Well, that is obviously a matter of personal taste, the type of music you prefer to listen to, and of course what components the rest of your set-up consists of. You simply need to listen to these yourself and make the comparison.
From my personal experience I can tell you that the E-405 runs very well with a pair of Dunlavy Audio Labs (DAL) Aletha, Rauna Leira II and the ProAC Tablette Reference 8 Signature…