Winner of the prestigious Blue Moon award from 6Moons. The Crayon CFA-1, designed in Austria and built in Germany, is unique in both design and sound. Managing to mimic the sound of some of the very best modern Single Ended Triode tube amplifiers, despite being a Mosfet based amplifier. With the Crayon you won’t get a romanticized version of reality, as with some tube amps and other solid state amps that attempt to mimic tubes. Instead you will hear crystal clear clarity and transparency. This quality is combined with the ability to portray the three dimensional palpability of musical instruments, along with emotion, in a way that usually only single ended triode tube amps can achieve. The following extracts from the editor of the 6Moons review make this clear.

“The Crayon Audio amp is a virtual stand-in for triodes in matters of depicting audible space…”

“…Versus my customary ModWright DM 36.5 | Yamamoto A-09S combo, the CFA-1 seemed to enjoy even faster rise times. This translated into hair-raising depictions of stringed instruments. Anything plucked had intense instantaneousness in which initial metallic violence, then the woody resonance and then the disbursing swarm of harmonics were even more real and compelling than over my tubed pre/power reference. Wondering whence this perception of greater realism arose, I guessed on superior speed and timing and just perhaps an even lower noise floor which gave the finest of fades a fraction more endurance.”

“…Switching to the Ancient Audio Lektor Prime CD player levelled the playing field between my reference Yamamoto A-09 single ended Triode Tube amplifier and the Crayon to an extent I have not before heard between tube and transistor amplifiers.”

“…the Crayon stages very powerfully into the far corners. The density of its images is equal in the center as it is at the outer edges”

“…it handles space, interrelatedness and flow, the intangible organic aspects writers default into poetry for to capture. Here the Crayon is the complete antithesis of any transistor amp I’ve ever heard. So, to prevent even the smallest chance of misunderstanding – if the Lektor Prime direct was my default source and a preamp not part of my inventory, I’d own the Crayon Audio CFA-1″

Part of the purity of the sound achieved by the CFA-1 is due to the fact that volume and input selection are performed entirely by software. Because of this certain components that would normally be in the signal path are no longer necessary. With those components removed, so is any detrimental effect they can have on the music. When you make a volume adjustment via the remote control the screen on the front of the amplifier lights up to show you the adjustment you’re making. When you are finished the screen goes blank again and the circuitry used to adjust the volume goes into sleep mode. The same applies when you use the remote to make an input selection.

The holes on the top of the amplifier are actually ‘chimneys’ which allow for very efficient heat dissipation and not simply part of the visual design.

Inputs are provided for Phono (Vinyl records), CD player, Tuner and Record in/out. Yes, you read that correctly, this amplifier contains a built in Phono stage which can be set to accept either Moving Magnet or Moving Coil cartridges. So if you have a good quality turntable or are thinking of adding one to your system, you have everything you need. Just plug the output from the Turntable directly into the CFA-1 and choose the correct setting.

All these features, combined with incredible sound quality are offered at only €3.000 for the 40 WPC version (capable of driving most medium to high-efficiency speakers) and €4.000 for the 90 WPC version which will easily drive most other speakers.

I have found the Crayon to be an extremely versatile amplifier with many speakers. Including the Analysis Audio Epsilon and Fujitsu Ten-Eclipse to name just two. Visit Crayon Audio