The whole amplifier is designed as if it was made of three separate elements.
1- Power supply: made with a 600VA transformer for each channel. The bridge rectifier is made with ultra-fast discrete diodes of 50A each. The filtering capacity is 16800µF per branch so the amplifier has a total of 67200µf filter. At switch-on mode the electric current is limited by resistors variable with the temperature that right after are excluded from the signal path.2- Amplifier: fully dual-mono for ground connections and power supplies too. The digital stages to control the volume chips are also optocoupled. The PCB copper tracks have a thickness double the standard to ensure the passage of large electricity currents. The PCB routing has been carefully studied to optimize the signal paths and maintain the symmetry of the stages.3- Preamplifier: as for the amps, the preamp stages are dual-mono. Immediately behind the input connectors are placed the channel switching relays followed by a discrete component buffer to isolate the amplifier from the source. The maximum acceptable input voltage is about 6VRMS. The buffers, balanced on both inputs and outputs, drive in class A the four chips of volume for each channel. The latter, as in the case of the Puccini, are simply strings of resistances without any operational within them. This choice was made to have no kind of global feedback in the Maestro. After the volume control we have the real preamp stage that amplifies up to about 12db.
The three elements described above are physically housed on three separate boards so it’s like having a separate power supply, preamp and power amp.The Maestro Anniversary is also available in RR version with analog volume attenuation based on relays and resistors for a further increase in the sound performance.Available in natural aluminium and satin black.