Intrepid
Overview
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The Intrepid is a solid state, fully balanced power amplifier with five built-in channels. Many home audio amplifiers are grossly underpowered for serious music and home theater enthusiasts. Intrepid is fully capable of delivering 100 watts into 8 ohms, 200 watts into 4 ohms and even more into 2 ohms. The dynamic headroom of the Intrepid allows it to deliver even greater power than these steady state ratings. Intrepid has fully-balanced differential circuits, employing zero-feedback.
Intrepid controls include a front-panel Standby mode that mutes and reduces idling current to all channels. The control can also be activated through a remote control jack on the back of the chassis, which would bring a trigger signal from another unit, such as a Casablanca II or Casa Nova. Standby can also be activated by connecting the Intrepid's bi-directional RS-232 port to a computer or other control device, such as one by AMX or Crestron.
Each channel of Intrepid's amplification is made up of two mirror-imaged signal paths. Balanced signals are carried through as such; an unbalanced signal is cloned as it comes in, and this phase-inverted duplicate sent through two identical amplification pathways. Then, at the amp's output, the two signals are reconciled. Anything not perfectly "mirror imaged" between the two signals is discarded (called "common mode rejection"). Those discontinuities are noise picked up in the course of amplification. Eliminating noise this way preserves the integrity of the amplified signal.
