New Sigma Series Demonstration in Copenhagen

[skyblue]

Last night, Dave Nauber demonstrated the new Sigma Series in HifiKlubben, Copenhagen.

He gave a talk about various design tradeoffs in SSP unit. What kind of customers they were targeting and why the design looked like it did.

I think they are brilliant at Classé, not just jumping on every new feature, but rather, selecting the ones that matter to the most, and implementing those as good as possible. Economic principles applied to engineering if I may say so.

He then proceded to explain the engineering of the switch mode amplifiers, and how they switched and how that affected the sound quality. As a technical person that was great, and while I dont claim to understand all of it, I came away with the impression that they had indeed solved some hard problems brilliantly, and significantly better than the competition at this time.

Afterwards he demonstrated various songs using the Sigma SSP and the Amp2, driving to B&W 800 Diamond speakers.

Listening impressions: Very good. Very clear. The stereo Amp2 did a great job of handling the big B&W's. I own the Delta SSP800 and the B&W 800 Diamond myself, and I thought they did really well. Especially considering cost.

I also had the opportunity to chat with Dave between the sessions, especially comparing the Sigma to the Delta series. Dave said, that while the Delta CA-M600 was better, the difference was less than you would think (his words). The salesguy later said that the delta was clearly better in his opinion. Though, the size of commision may be a factor here

Finally they had a sourround demo, showing The Avengers. That sounded good, but its not really my thing.

As I understood it, the Sigma series are now available in the big Hifiklubben stores in Scandinavia. So I assume they will appear around Europe soonish?

So if you're in the market for something better than Denon, here's your chance. I think they hit a sweetspot price/performance wise. I might even get an amp myself, if I cant finance a set of M600s

Edit: As you can see on the photo, they made an app so you can remote control more or less everything. From song choice, to speaker crossover points. It worked flawlessly. Ios now, Android later.

Dave in action, dressed according to scandinavian customs (you can't be too fancy)

[bart]

Thanks for the review.
Seems like an interesting unit!

[skyblue]

Well I think they managed to push the sound quality/price ratio a good deal.

And so, if you're target try it out. I personally will probably stay with the more expensive M600, and some might want a cheaper option. But as Dave said: Its not far from the Delta series performance at less than half price. This is good for all of us

[harpyvan]

I'm a big fan of the Hifiklubben, visited it when I was in Sweden. Hope it'll come here too soon

[aarsoe]

Don't understand why you would pay for a set of speakers like the 800Di where one of the big selling points is extended bandwidth due to the diamond tweeter, and then use a switch mode based amplifier that have a very limited bandwidth according to Classé's own specs (10hz to 20Khz).
Maybe we don't need to pay for diamond tweeters now... Or what do you think?