Alborada

The Alborada mono power amplifier is one of our flagships. With its competitive price and 234-Watts total output per mono-block, it is one of the greatest tube amplifiers in the market. What makes the Alborada so special is the use of a pair of giant type 211 power tubes configured as triodes coupled with a specially designed output transformer. Benefiting from an uncommonly direct and short signal path and a simple circuit executed with premium quality parts, the Alborada's dramatic performance belies its modest price. Harmonic structure, sound stage, dynamic contrastsand dramatic impact are all reproduced with remarkable fidelity to the live event. Never imposing distractions, the Alborada's invite the listener to enjoy the musical performance. Consistent with Lua's design philosophy that circuits should be kept as simple as possible, the Alborada works its magic with just 5 vacuum tubes. A composite triode input stage is directly coupled to a cathode-coupled phase inverter, followed by a pair of EL 34s, operating in an ultra linear configuration, as drivers for the pair of 211's. Limited negative feedback is applied to the circuit to reduce distortion and provide a sufficiently high and especially linear damping factor within the audible frequency range to control most real-world speaker systems. For a lot of users the 211 is not the easiest of tubes in terms of technology and handling. Lua initially selects a quartet of matched pairs. Then the best pairs will be burned in for a couple of days and then re-selected to give the pairs with the lowest distortion. It is therefore hardly surprising that the measured data for these amplifiers are outstanding. Variations on this simple circuit especially the modified SEL-version have provided the blueprint for many superb sounding Lua products in the past. The latest benefits from recent advances achieved in our flagship range of products. 150 W/sine/8 ohms with less than ≤ 0.35% at 1kHz is a perfect result for such a big tube. But what is more interesting is the fact that this big amplifier is able to reproduce the smallest signals below 1 W output absolutely perfectly and dynamics as great as from 10 to 100 watts within the shortest time. At 1Watt output, a bandwidth from 5Hz-70kHz and a distortion of less than 0.08 % is realised. The use of only a single coupling capacitor in power stage endows the Alborada with a perfectly natural sound without any coloration.