Audio Research Reference 330M

MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER

- JASON VICTOR SERINUS

There’s no need to consult my notes. The memory of the sound of the Audio Research 330M monoblock amplifiers ($90,000/pair) at AXPONA 2025 is so vivid I can still recall what I heard and felt.

I sat front and center in a room sponsored by Quintessence Audio, before a system featuring Kubala-Sosna Realization cables, Critical Mass Maxxum-Ultra equipment racks and isolation, dCS Vivaldi APEX streaming DAC/Master Clock/Upsampler, Sonus faber Stradivari speakers, an Audio Research Ref 10 preamplifier, and the Audio Research Reference 330M monoblock amplifiers. The sound was so colorful, rich, and effortless—the images so convincing in size, weight, and timbre—that I felt my eyes open wide in amazement.

I’m still astonished—not just by the sound I heard but also by the fact that this huge, dynamic, airy presentation was delivered by a CD-quality (16/44.1) file of Reference Recordings’s fabled Minnesota Orchestra/Eiji Oue rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Danse Macabre. I’ve heard this recording, from the album Mephisto & Co., so many times and on so many systems that it has earned an “Oh no, not this one again!” rating in the Book of JVS. Yet, within seconds, all “hackneyed-warhorse” thoughts transformed into feelings of awe and respect—respect for the music itself, the hold-nothing-back performance, Keith O. Johnson’s engineering, and the joint achievement of Quintessence Audio and Audio Research.

This is a theme you will encounter frequently in this review: Whenever I heard the 330Ms playing “show tracks” I thought I knew inside out, I sat amazed at how much better and more involving they sounded. Larger images, a mind-blowingly stronger/firmer bass foundation, greater color saturation and transparency, spot-on timbres (from an upfront perspective, where colors are at their most intense), and more clarity, air, and depth.