This Demo BAT REX 3 Tube Power Amplifier - Stereo is ready for a Private Listening Session!
The Bat REX 3 Tube power amplifier is the culmination of Balanced Audio Technology engineer Victor Khomenko’s two-plus decades of research into creating the ultimate vacuum-tube power amp.
The symmetrical single-ended bridge design featuring four of BAT’s signature triode 6C33C tubes with zero global feedback and an extremely short signal path that maintains a linear response in both frequency and phase domains, REX 3 delivers 80 watts per channel in stereo mode or 160 watts in full triode mode when configured as a monoblock pair. Its custom-made output transformers are made to BAT’s exact specification and have a wide-bandwidth frequency response from 5Hz up to 300kHz.
Think of REX 3 as two single-ended amplifiers per channel, with their waveforms summed at the output transformer. No direct current flows through the latter, allowing the output transformer to be a truly wide-bandwidth design all the while reducing low-frequency distortion. REX 3 extends the benefits of vacuum-tube current sources to include both the first and second gain stages of the circuit design. Hence, the linearity of the gain stage improves, the adjustments for the first and second gain stages become independent, and the tube current source components operate at a lower stress level.
Just as BAT worked closely with Cardas Audio to improve its second-generation preamplifier and DAC output transformers, the company also selected an entirely new internal interconnect—constructed of the finest Cardas Audio Litz wiring— for the REX 3 power amplifier. Put simply, it is by far is the most expensive wire BAT has used in any component. Nothing was spared in the development of the REX 3 system. To complement Cardas Audio’s wiring, BAT chose the finest copper-foil oil capacitors to replace its long-term oil caps. Sonically, the result combines BAT’s hallmark naturalism with inimitable insight into musical textures, details, and expression.
