Steven Stone

Once upon a time, audiophiles used to get very excited about power amplifiers. They would obsess about the minutiae of an amp's sonic character and its ability to successfully drive 2ohm loads. Times change. Now amplifiers are among the least sexy components in a home theater. Most videophiles would concur with the concept that amplifiers should be heard, but not seen. Within the new world order of home theaters, amplifiers have been relegated to a supporting role.

We all long for big, bodacious home theater systems. Unfortunately, many of us, especially urban dwellers, find ourselves shoehorning 100 pounds of gear into a 10-pound space. Some videophiles even resort to pitiful little satellite speakers the size of Ping-Pong balls.

Most power amplifiers are primarily differentiated by their size and color. Eventually, even an amplifier fetishist grows weary of digging for the minute variations that make each amplifier special. Perhaps that's why it's so refreshing to discover an amp that embraces some truly unique new technology. Bel Canto, a small company located in darkest Minnesota, has managed to find a way to manufacture a digital amplifier, dubbed the eVo2, whose performance rivals that of more conventional analog designs.

Back in the bad old days of early digital sound, most CD players produced horrendous amounts of jitter—mistiming of the bits in the digital bitstream. Some high-end audio companies came up with devices for reducing jitter that were often referred to as "jitter boxes." Audio Alchemy was among the most well-known of these specialty makers. AA ceased operations long ago, but one of their principal designers, Doug Goldberg, has created a similar device for Camelot Technology called the Dragon 5.1 Plus. It promises to do for DVD players what the Audio Alchemy box did for CD players: make them sound a lot better.