Etude

The Étude is the power amplifier Choral was waiting for, and it carries the first fundamentally new circuit topology Chord had drawn since the company began in 1989. It gives 150 watts per channel into 4 ohms from a class AB design with multi-feedback and dual feed-forward error correction, which continuously measures the linearity of its own 250-watt lateral MOSFETs and corrects them before the signal leaves. Three separate high-frequency switching supplies feed it — one per active rail, one for the auxiliary — inside a cooled plenum chamber. It was built to be what DAVE drives, and in bridged mono it delivers 300 watts into 4 ohms if a pair is what the loudspeakers need. Three and a half kilos, half-width, five-year warranty.