Luxman’s L550Ax

We had terrific success with the L-550A II  when we started importing Luxman in 2007; many audiophiles & music lovers loved its combination of state of the art technology, such as ODNF, which eliminates noise & distortion without screwing up the sound quality.  It won many Golden Ear awards from The Absolute Sound and even made the cover of TAS in December 2007.

Five years later, we are delighted to receive its successor – the L550Ax.  While the MK II series grabbed a derivative of the input selector from the 80’th Anniversary C-1000f preamplifier. The X series has gone one better and  used a version of the LECUA 1000 attenuator, also first introduced in the C-1000f – a discrete volume control is a huge improvement over the motorized potentiometer found in earlier Luxman integrated amplifiers; it is perfectly balanced at all volume settings and is remarkably neutral sounding at all volume settings.

The LECUA* attenuator is designed to electrically block both electromagnetic (EMI) as well as radio frequency (RFI), so that no noise is allowed into the delicate audio signal. The output signal is attenuated without introducing artifacts inherent to conventional volume controls, thereby resulting in constant output impedance, high signal-to-noise ratio, a uniform frequency response and lower distortion.
* LECUA = Luxman Electronic Control Unit Amplification

ODNF*  has been updated to version 3.0A; now three passes are made of the audio signal, which applies negative feedback only where distortion is present, without introducing any phase distortion.  This loss-less audio circuit enables the amplifier to retrieve every musical nuance & detail captured by the recording engineers.

* ODNF = Only Distortion Negative Feedback

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The L550Ax is available now and sells for $5400.