Vincent Audio SV-737

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

- KEN MICALLEF

Founded in 1995 by Uwe Bartel, Vincent Audio is owned by Sintron Distribution GmbH. Vincent launched its LS-1 preamplifier and D-150 hybrid stereo power amplifier the year the company was founded.

Vincent “offers two ‘electrical concepts,’” states the Vincent website. “One side is solid state transistor products. The other is a hybrid technology featuring vacuum tubes on the input stages combined with solid state transistors in the output stage.”

The Vincent Audio SV-737 integrated amplifier ($3499.95) is on the hybrid side. It has a “class-A/AB” output stage—biased to deliver 10W in class-A—said to be capable of 180Wpc into 8 ohms (10Wpc of that in class-A) or 300Wpc into 4 ohms. The SV-737 does digital, with a Burr-Brown PCM5102 DAC chip capable of PCM playback up to 24-bit/192kHz via TosLink or coaxial S/PDIF connections. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are also included. There is no USB input.

“All [Vincent] products are designed and engineered in Germany,” Frank Blöhbaum, engineering consultant to Vincent and a leading member of the design team, told me in an email. “Product manufacturing takes place in China, Germany, or a combination of the two. We have no unit which is 100% produced in Germany. Only the SA-T7, the SP-T700, and the new KHV-200 have final assembly in Germany.” The SV-737 is manufactured in China.

The SV-737 is big. It weighs 47lb. Its casework is aluminum. The exterior is imposing, like a newly christened battleship. I found the matte black finish, thick faceplate, and hefty control knobs impressive, and I liked the little porthole that reveals a tube inside.

An Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft tube