Étude Solid State Power Amplifier by Chord Electronics

The multi-award winning Chord Electronics Choral family of products has never sounded so good. Welcome Étude to the table, a 150w Class AB stereo power amplifier featuring the first fundamentally new topology since Chord Electronics’ inception in 1989, using highly advanced technologies seen within the aerospace industry.

The Choral Étude has been designed to both compliment and exploit the full potential of the multi-award winning DAVE DAC, which has preamp functionality, and the brand new topology has even faster power delivery than exiting designs, offering unrivalled dynamics, life-like delivery of transient information, plus effortless control over loudspeaker drive units.

The design for Étude is based upon multi-feedback and dual feed-forward error-correction amplifier technology that intelligently adjusts and compensates the individual linearity of the 250-watt lateral structure high-power proprietary MOSFETs. Internally there are three individual high frequency switch mode power supply units, one for each active power rail and a final for the auxiliary rails. When paired with advanced internal shielding, active cooled plenum chamber design, and custom Chord Electronics MOSFETs, you have Étude, an world class extremely fast crystal clear amplifier.

Although the amplifier is conservatively rated at 150W into 4Ω, if you run Étude in bridged mono mode you can increase this to 300W into 4Ω.

Features:

• Class AB Sliding Bias
• HF Switch Mode Power Supply
• Proprietary Chord MOSFETs
• Fully Balanced Circuitry
• Fan Cooled
• Solid Aluminum Chassis
• Bridgeable to 300w – 4Ω
• Inputs:
  • 1x Stereo Pair of Gold Plated Unbalanced RCA Inputs
  • 1x Stereo Pair of Gold Plated Balanced XLR Inputs
  • 1x 12v Trigger Input – Chord Electronics Auto Start
• Outputs:
  • 1x Pair of High Quality, High Current, Gold Plated Type Speaker Terminals

Hi-Fi World
“The principles behind this amp may go back nearly 40 years, but good ideas can’t be kept down – especially when Chord Electronics’ engineering talents are allowed to bring them into the twenty-first century. Such work has paid off; what we have here is a solid-state amp that transcends its modest physical dimensions in terms of the scale of music reproduction it can muster. Its speed, meanwhile, makes for pace and timing that grip your attention and won’t let go. Small, powerful and impressive.”

https://jaguaraudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/chord-etude-review-hifi-world.pdf

Audioxpress
“Chord Electronics has chosen High End 2018 to unveil a brand new analogue amplifier topology design, the company’s first for nearly 30 years. Although many improvements have been introduced along the way, the new Choral Etude stereo power amp provides a glimpse of what’s coming for the British company, “highly advanced, it heralds a new era for powerful, wide bandwidth, low noise and low distortion amplifiers,” Chord states.”

https://audioxpress.com/news/chord-electronics-introduces-new-choral-etude-stereo-power-amplifier

• Output Power:
  • 150w RMS per channel @ 0.05% distortion into 4Ω
• Frequency Range: 5Hz – 100kHz +/- 0.5dB
• Gain: 30dB
• Channel Separation: Better than 95dB
• Input Impedance: 100kΩ Unbalanced/Balanced
• Input Capacitance: <30pf
• Output Impedance: 0.02Ω
• Output Inductance: 2.6μH
• Dimensions: 6.7cm (H) 33.5cm (W) 17.5 (D)

Etude-User-Manual