Keep on Rollin’: PrimaLuna EVO 200 Tube Power Amplifier Features Compatibility with Practically Any Tube Type, Drives Speakers with Ease, Includes Adaptive AutoBias, and Plays with Full, Rich Sound

With the PrimaLuna EVO 200 tube power amplifier, you’ve got options. Compatible with 6L6G, 6L6GC, 7581A, EL34, EL37, 6550, KT66, KT77, KT88, KT90, KT120, and KT150 tubes, it touts a flexibility that cannot be beat at this price point. And because it runs tubes at about 417 volts for plates and screens, you can rest assured whatever tubes you roll will last a long, long time — cutting down on needless expense and frustration. And no matter what type of speakers you own, now or in the future, the presence of two-, four-, eight-, and 16-ohm outputs covers the bases. 

Loaded with eight tubes and outputting a robust 44Wpc (into eight ohms, stereo) and available in stereo or mono configuration (more on the latter below), the 50.6-pound EVO 200 employs Adaptive AutoBias — a smart, completely passive technology that employs sensors to monitor your tubes and makes adjustments in real time. Since it addresses “tube pinch off” at high volumes, it reduces distortion by a figure of more than 50 percent. Plus, EVO 200 runs its output tubes at a minimum dissipation without going into crossover distortion. 

That all sounds great, you might say, but doesn’t that mean the amp provides less power from each tube? It does. But big power numbers don’t ever automatically correlate with stellar sonics. The latter happen by leveraging the strength of big transformers as well as high-grade sockets, wiring, resistors, and capacitors. The very approach taken by EVO 200, allowing to provide power that is pure and clean, and which leads to gorgeous midranges, controlled low-end passages, and airy, extended highs.

Inside EVO 200, large toroidal transformers are enclosed in a metal housing and potted in a non-microphonic resin to future reduce noise and protect the windings from deterioration. This solution far out-performs C- and EI-core types in outboard power supply boxes. Also on display: custom-made super-wide-bandwidth output transformers, the most important (and expensive) part of any tube amp. Wound in-house and beefy in size, they ensure long tube life and contribute the desired “slam” any high-end system needs to reproduce music with convincing authority and presence. Point-to-point wiring throughout the entire signal path, ultra-quiet sealed relay inputs, bad-tube indicator LED lights, and the absence of any internal DAC or phonostage to prevent added complexity further check the audiophile boxes. 

Backed by a three-year manufacturer warranty, this 8.1 x 14.4 x 15.9-inch bruiser invites you to experience the warmth, musicality, and fullness of tube sound for a truly accessible cost that’s attracted rave reviews.

For more information on EVO 200 or any of PrimaLuna’s tube products, contact a Music Direct audio consultant at 312-433-0200. 

“The most significant result from the overall development and production concept of PrimaLuna products is their extremely advantageous price/sound quality ratio, which I consider to be unbeatable. For this reason, the split version of the EVO 200 pushes the boundaries of reproduction quality even further.”
—Watt Audio Magazine 

Building a Better Monoblock
In creating its monoblock amps, the design team at PrimaLuna faced a formidable challenge: How to match (or exceed) the sonic signature of its integrated and stereo amps in a set of monoblock amplifiers with twice the power. As many designers will attest, it’s quite easy to take a step backwards when creating a more powerful amplifier.

While many designers opt for larger transformers to double the output power, PrimaLuna team decided against that approach knowing that big output transformers sometimes don’t behave as well or sound as good as their smaller brethren. Instead, the company elected to use two discrete audio channels in one chassis and paralleled them at the loudspeaker terminals. Building an amp with two output transformers per monoblock amp is almost unheard of due to one simple reason. cost. 

Yet the sonic benefits are significant. This design adds a 16-ohm tap to each transformer which, when paralleled in this circuit design, resulted in an eight-ohm output. So, you now have three sets of speaker taps: two, four, and eight ohm to get a perfect "handshake" from the amps to your speakers. The ability to drive planer and ribbon speakers is unmatched. 

Of course, with this approach, you risk a percentage of power from one free-running transformer pushing into the other due to output-voltage differences caused by circuit tolerances and tube aging. To counter this problem, designers developed a specific cross-coupled positive/negative feedback scheme to balance out both channels — and lower distortion in the slipstream. In addition, newly designed pre-stages improved the drive capacity to the power tubes, resulting in lower distortion levels without the need for extra negative feedback. The circuit is now inherently more stable and virtually immune to drive imbalance and the distortions that accompany tube aging.

In sum: This innovative twin-channel-summing approach with cross-coupled positive/negative feedback results in surprisingly low harmonic distortion, further pushing the performance of all PrimaLuna mono amps.