What makes your equipment different?

We focus on the psychoacoustic aspects of the sound and design our equipment carefully to favour the listener's ear. By choosing the right electronic circuit topology and using carefully selected high grade components, we achieve transparent and effortless sound reproduction with great dynamic range. Our equipment uses the highest quality parts from sources like Vishay, Elna, Panasonic and Switchcraft. We select them very carefully and even perform single blind sound tests to confirm their quality. All our equipment is assembled by hand with great care.

Why the name "K.I.C.A.S"?

K.I.C.A.S is an acronym meaning for "Keep It Clean And Simple". The name refers to both the circuit topology and the sound reproduction. The amplifier circuit uses only discrete components in all stages (no op-amps inside!) and only few of them per channel. It is very simple circuit based on single-ended class-A topology with current feedback. This type of design offers low harmonic distortion and provides extremely fast impulse response. The circuit’s simplicity and the quality electronic components are the reason for the amplifier’s transparent sound reproduction.

Why your amplifiers are so basic when it comes to features?

We at Purity Audio believe in providing high quality sound reproduction above all. If it means sacrificing "features" - so be it. We don't want anything that is not absolutely necessary from the circuitry point of view to obstruct the sound.

Which amplifier should I chose?

If you’re looking at this and considering this question, then we feel quite comfortable giving you our opinion. It really boils down to the sound you prefer:

I’ve heard that equipment requires burn-in to sound its best. Is this true? How much burn-in does your equipment require?

Burn-in is a phenomenon relevant to some electronic equipment. In our equipment, we recommend a burn-in period of approximately 100 hours. Capacitors require this time to allow the film inside them to stabilize. Once their films settle, you will notice the equipment’s sonic control improve, most noticeably in the lower registers.

If the Caliente just boosts the bass to make the sound warmer, why not just add a bass boost feature to the K.I.C.A.S.?

The Caliente is not a bass-boosted version of the K.I.C.A.S. – while the Caliente does increase the bass frequencies to provide warmer tonality, (A major complaint about Solid State amplifiers is that they sound ‘cold’ and/or ‘clinical’ in their reproduction of music) it only boosts certain frequencies, and only by certain amounts to compensate for headphone ‘trail-off’ at lower frequencies (i.e. deep bass). This is not the same as a ‘bass boost’ feature which acts as a shelf boosting mechanism.