Review, Part 2: Listening to the MONAD A100 Monoblocks

This is Part 2 of a two-part review on the MONAD A100 monoblocks, so if you missed Part 1, you might want to go back and read it here. Now, with that little piece of business out of the way, I’m going to jump into Part 2 of this review, listening to music, which is my favorite part.

But first, before diving in, I should probably take a minute to tell you about my system and the gear used for this review. My current reference system consists of two sets of speakers, the DeVore gibbon Super Nines and a pair of restored ElectrostaticSolutions QUAD ESL 57s. I used both speakers in the review, but mostly the QUADs.

I have several amplifiers in house, including the Pass Labs XA30.8, the First Watt SIT-3, and my current favorite, the PureAudio ONE Integrated. Since this is a review of the MONAD A100 monoblocks, I used it paired with an LTA microZOTL MZ3 preamp.

The analog source was my AMG V12 with an AMG 12jT Turbo Tonearm and the DS Audio Master1 Optical Cartridge System. The digital source was the BorderPatrol DAC SEI with an Innuos server/streamer. All of the cables were Audience FrontRow, and I used the HB Cable Design Power Slave Marble for power conditioning.

Listening to Music

When I first listened to the MONAD A100 monoblocks I was not totally wowed. Now if you have been reading me for a while, you know that’s not necessarily a negative. When products wow me right off the bat I often find that the very things that wowed me begin to annoy me over time.

At first, I wasn’t that sure what people found so special about these amps. I promise you, however, that it wasn’t long before I quit evaluating the amps and became emersed in Sarah Jarosz’s Follow Me Down album. It turns out that what is so special about these monoblocks is that they make recorded music sound absolutely beautiful.

I swear the music sounds like you are sitting in the venue listening to a live performance, and I go to live concerts fairly often. There are a lot of things I’m about to write regarding this amp, but they can all be summed up by saying the music is beautiful and involving music with them in my system.

So, I think I’ve made it clear that I like these amps. In fact, I like them a lot. Somehow, when matched with the QUAD ESL 57s, my system pulls off this magical and most convincing trick of taking recorded music and making it sound the most like live music that I have ever heard.

A Couple of Examples

I’ve never heard an amplifier with such a scale. It can play passages and instruments that are as small as let’s say a triangle should be and make it sound realistic. Then it can fill my room with a piano that sounds life-sized. I’m not just talking about dynamics, I’m referring to the illusion of the actual space the instrument seems to occupy in the venue.

Speaking of the piano, there is no better instrument for hearing the amps’ abilities to reproduce the harmonics of music. With these monoblocks in my system, there is an overall tonal balance that just lets me enjoy every instrument, as well as male and female vocalists. My system just sounded beautiful, organic and emotionally involving with the A100s.

What I Haven’t Talked About

Soundstage: I have experienced many different kinds of soundstages from audio systems. I have only heard one kind when listening to a live performance; it’s real. I never notice if it’s deep, wide or tall. I notice the music, the interplay of the instruments, and the harmonics and tones of the music. Most of all I notice the energy between the music and the audience. That’s what I get with these amps and the QUAD ESL 57s. I’m making no excuses here for not noticing an audiophile soundstage. The A100s and the QUADs gave me a real honest to goodness soundstage.

Bass, Midrange and Top End: Again this is not how we experience music, but most often it is how we as audiophiles experience recorded music. A few systems allow us to experience recorded music more like a live performance. So it is with the A100s and the QUADs; they drew me into the music. As I listened to Lenord Cohen’s Live in Dublin I was overwhelmed by the interplay between his voice and the female singers. I was blown away by the sound of the Hammond B3 with Leslie speakers. Yes, the bass will shock or wow you, but when the performance demands it and not because of the system’s speed or slam.

Conclusion

After I have written my show reports, I always go to the AVShowrooms website and watch Peter and Terry’s Reviewer’s View video. At the end of these videos, they always share what they most wanted to take home from the show.

In the 2019 Capital AudioFest video, Terry said she most wanted to take Robin Wyatt’s (Robyatt Audio) whole room home. I completely agreed, and while I couldn’t have the whole room, I did buy the ESL 57 speakers and the Butler Audio Monad A100s.

Yes, there are systems that cost nearly a million dollars that The Audio Company puts together for shows. You can find numerous show reports online about their rooms at shows. I know we always enjoy listening to their show systems and reporting on them. No doubt their systems are much better in a huge room.

Still, now that I am 65 years old, the A100s/ESL 57s are the amp/speaker combo that I want to listen to in my retirement years. When I was 20 and listening to my stacked QUADs, I never dreamed that they could sound like this!

Price: The current retail price for the MONAD A100s is $19,000/pair. Robyatt Audio is the exclusive North American dealer for these monoblocks.