"After over 35 years of work in the field of High End Audio, from the design and manufacturing of entire playback systems to the recording of over 300 acoustic concerts to gain further musical insights, the last thing that artist-designer Kostas Metaxas wanted to produce was “another box with transistors on a heatsink”. Kostas was dreaming of the most spectacular architecture, design and sculpture he had experienced and wanted to bring that emotional intensity, daring and seductive beauty to an audio amplifier."
The Solitaire is a straight 150WRMS Stereo Power Amplifier or can be offered like the IKARUS as a higher powered [150WRMS] Stereo Integrated Amplifier.
Machined from a solid block of either aircraft aluminium, copper or titanium, it’s totally bespoke and the modular electronics make it future-proof. Even the circuit boards can be CNC machined from 1mm solid silver coated clear polystyrene.
From the sensual, organic and striking casework [inspired by the stunning work in Sports cars of the 1950’s/60’s of Ercole Spada, as well as the architecture of Hadid, Gehry and Calatrava] to absolutely
every part of the amplifier including the circuit, topology, layout and casework has been developed by Kostas Metaxas. It is the logical evolution of his groundbreaking design concepts pioneered in the early 1980’s.
As a recording engineer, Metaxas also wanted to “voice it” for extremely realistic recording playback, to be able to reproduce all the nuance and emotion of a musical performance
It best embodies the sculptural design and “lack-of-sound” philosophy of Metaxas & Sins
FREQUENCY RESPONSE: DC - 5.0MHz (-3dB)
POWER OUTPUT: 150WRMS per channel into 8 Ohms with no more than 0.05% T.H.D.
DAMPING FACTOR: Greater than 500 wide band
SLEW RATE: Greater than 1000V/us small and large signal
T.H.D.: Less than 0.05% 20Hz-20KHz
I.M.D.(S.M.P.T.E.): Less than 0.05%
SIGNAL/NOISE: -117DBV unweighted input shorted
SENSITIVITY: 0.5VRMS in for 150WRMS out (28dB)
INPUT IMPEDANCE: 100kOhms in parallel with 11pF
"After over 35 years of work in the field of High End Audio, from the design and manufacturing of entire playback systems to the recording of over 300 acoustic concerts to gain further musical insights, the last thing that artist-designer Kostas Metaxas wanted to produce was “another box with transistors on a heatsink”. Kostas was dreaming of the most spectacular architecture, design and sculpture he had experienced and wanted to bring that emotional intensity, daring and seductive beauty to an audio amplifier."