Next year, the company will be celebrating its 40th year, and if it makes something better than the I70 integrated amplifier to celebrate that anniversary, it’s going to be one of the best products on the planet because this tidy one-box, line-level 50W amplifier is already one of the best in the business!

Rolling its own transformers gives Jadis an advantage when it comes to new valve designs. Jadis worked with the valve-designers to produce an output transformer that perfectly suits the characteristics of the valves, and the I70 is the result. Other brands will invariably look to the KT170 as the output power valve of choice, but will ultimately have to wait until their transformer makers design a unit that suits the KT170, or go for an off-the-shelf kludge.

To listen to the I70 is to fall in love with music all over again. This is a wonderful sounding integrated amplifier, a near-perfect blend of insight into the system and into the music itself. There’s a sense of rightness about everything from the imaging to the dynamic range to the vividness of those living souls that seem to appear in front of you whenever the I70 is playing.

Whether it’s the focus of a string quartet or a raw and raucous 1970s proto-punk band, the I70 handles that music like a conservator; just letting the music be itself for a while. It doesn’t fall into that warm and softly spoken sound we associate with valve amps and it doesn’t sound slow, stentorian and statesman-like; it’s fast, resolving and most of all fun.

It’s not just the soundstaging, or the dynamic range, or the detail or the articulation (all of which are superb). It’s not about the micro-dynamics and filigree bits of music that are communicated so well here. It’s not even about that outstanding leading-edge precision and speed. It’s how all those things combine in an organic manner to make so satisfying a musical experience you just want more.

It just makes music the way you always expected it could sound when played through damn fine audio equipment; with panache, energy, speed, precision, detail, scale and dynamic range.

The sound it makes is so beguiling, so enjoyable and so musically ‘right’ that I simply couldn’t help listen. This is quite simply one of the best sounding amplifiers I have ever heard.

Alan Sircom, Hi-Fi+, Issue 209, February 2023

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