Portal Audio Panache Integrated
Amplifier
PA-wha?
 Chances are you've never heard
of the audio company Portal Audio or its high-performance 100Wpc integrated amplifier, the
Panache, before. It's a new company -- sort of.
Actually, the company is new but it's the
culmination of one man's experience in specialty audio. That man is Joe Abrams, whose
career in high-end audio is more or less as old as the high end itself. Interestingly
enough, it was never Abrams' intention to be an audio manufacturer -- what he really
wanted to be was an actor.
"My degree was in English and Theater Arts,"
Abrams told me. "I originally got into acting because I thought it would be a great
way to meet women. Once I found the love of my life [the couple has just celebrated
their 30th anniversary], I fell out of love with acting and just drifted organically
into one of my other loves -- what we used to call stereo."
In 1972, Abrams took a job at an appliance company that was
starting a hi-fi department and began to learn what customers wanted (and weren't getting)
from mainstream hi-fi companies. Later he took a job at Warehouse Sound, a mail-order
stereo retailer (remember kids, this was pre-Internet). In 1979, Abrams answered an ad in
the San Francisco paper for what he terms "a small company no one had ever heard of,
called Monster Cable" and became their first national sales manager. He then worked
for Sumiko, helping the company develop and market some of its best-regarded early
offerings, such as Tweak, the Talisman cartridges, and the MMT tonearm. From 1987 through
1991, Abrams worked with Threshold, helping Nelson Pass establish a healthy national
distribution platform. When he joined the company, it already had a "budget"
power amplifier that was being marketed under the name Forte, but it was treated like an
ugly stepchild -- there were even Threshold dealers who weren't aware of its
existence.
"I don't consider myself the father of Forte, since it
existed before I got there, but I certainly played an avuncular role, nurturing it and
helping it develop into a presence in the marketplace. I understood the Forte -- it
fit into my personal philosophy of offering an awful lot of performance at a price that
was pretty reasonable."
Abrams spent the '90s living in Oregon, working first for
TARA Labs, later for MIT, and, ultimately, as an independent audio marketing consultant.
While Abrams was helping other companies strategize their marketing plans, he noticed what
he terms "a crying need for affordable, high-performance gear."
So even though Abrams didn't really want to be an audio
manufacturer -- heck, somebody has to do it. Enter Portal and its first offering,
the Panache.
Portal is an Internet retailer, which means you can't hear
its products in a local store. It does, however, offer a 60-day money-back satisfaction
guarantee. If you're not comfortable with this, you should shop at a local specialty store
-- that sort of face-to-face community presence is one of the strengths of a local shop.
Abrams understands this, but he couldn't produce the Panache at its current price and
support a typical dealer margin, so he went the direct-sales route. If you think you might
want to give the Panache a try, call Portal at (888) 737-HIFI -- Abrams is the guy who'll
be answering the phone. He's also the guy who'll box it and ship it out -- just like he'll
personally listen to and certify the sound quality of every unit he sells.
The maker's rage to order
The Panache is a compact black box (17"W x 5"H x
11.5"D) that weighs in at a hefty 33 pounds. The 17"-wide faceplate hides the
side-mounted heatsinks from the front and features a sparse three knobs (source, volume,
and balance). The only other adornment on the front is Portal's silk-screened logo, a
large power switch with an inset LED, and the headphone jack.
The Panache combines a passive line-level preamp with a
bipolar transistor-driven dual-mono amplifier -- a classic complementary-symmetry A/AB
design with a current-source differential pair followed by a common emitter going to a
Darlington-configuration output stage. If that sounds too much like tech gobbledygook, all
it means is that it’s a tried-and-true solid-state amp circuit that uses pairs of
transistors in such a way that the circuit's current and delivery is enhanced. The Panache
is rated 100Wpc, but can probably deliver up to four times that upon demand.
Internal component quality is generally high: The input
selector, balance control, and attenuator are all sourced from Alps; the point-to-point
wiring -- what there is of it -- is 14AWG OFC with foamed polyethylene dielectric; the
custom-built 425VA toroidal transformer has separate windings and separate rectifier
bridges for each channel; and each channel has 40,000 MFD of capacitor filtering.
 That's all first-tier stuff --
so why do I say generally good? All of that has a significant sonic payoff, so
Portal doesn't stint on it. But the company doesn't spend money on "audio
jewelry." The Panache sports RCA inputs and binding posts that are "good
enough," but not prestigious. They're solidly built and sound good, so that's not
"skimping," merely maximizing the benefits-to-cost ratio. The rear panel has
five pairs of gold-plated RCA inputs (four line-level inputs and a tape-out), two pairs of
gold-plated five-way binding posts, and a centrally mounted IEC power cord socket.
The headphone jack is connected directly to the output of
the amp, although protected by a buffering circuit. Most headphone accommodations these
days are powered by an IC chipset, so this is a real boon to headphone lovers. The output
has extremely low impedance and enough power to drive pretty much any
high-performance headset, even Sennheiser HD 600s and AKG K-1000s.
The sole artificer
In some ways, the Panache is an odd duck. It doesn't have
remote control in a world where making people get up and adjust the volume seems
positively outrageous. And that passive preamp/heavy-duty power-amp combination strikes
some people as strange as well.
Blame Joe Abrams.
"I'm not an engineer, or a production expert, or an
accountant. When I pondered what the market needed, I didn't commission a focus group. I
thought about what I would like, how I would like it to work, which tradeoffs I'd be
willing to live with, and what a reasonable person might pay for all that."
Seems reasonable. Care to 'splain your choices?
"When it comes to building an excellent-sounding
active line stage on the cheap, it's not hard, it's impossible! So I reckoned we'd
build a passive line stage using the same level of parts you'd find in very high-end
preamps. The traditional problem with passive preamps is they have very high output
impedance, and what a solid-state amp generally wants is low input impedance. And on top
of that, the signal has to travel from preamp to amp over a length of reactive
interconnect cable -- no wonder most of them sound lifeless and lack dynamics.
"So we connected the output of this preamp directly to
the input of a high-gain solid-state amp designed expressly to receive that specific
signal. I'm not saying it's perfect, it's just functionally better than anything remotely
in its price class.
"The Panache is a variation of a tried-and-true
circuit. When it was produced previously, it used two sets of output transistors to
produce 100W -- each transistor is rated at 100W, 12A -- but we decided to double that and
use eight, instead of four. Instead of using a 300VA toroidal transformer, we use one
that's rated 425. Some people would call that overkill, but that's what my listening tests
told me we needed to do."
You may be wondering who did the circuit design for Portal,
since Abrams doesn't claim to be an engineer. Join the club. Abrams is
uncharacteristically quiet on the subject. "I knew I'd need to have an experienced
designer do the circuit, so I set out to hire one. I got lucky -- a very dear friend
offered to donate the design, as long as I didn't complicate his life by naming him.
"That design was an important starting place, but it
then took Ted Bennett [of TIBI, a well-respected specialty-electronics manufacturing
facility] and myself a long time to turn that design into the Panache. We started with a
rough prototype, and it had to go back and forth between my home and TIBI many, many times
before we finalized the design, because the final arbiter is listening."
But Joe, no remote control?
"I'm the guy in the company who gets to talk to
customers and they tell you what they like and don't like and what they want -- boy, do
they tell you! I didn't include a remote on the Panache because I wouldn't want to
pay the extra for it -- or to sacrifice quality anywhere in the basic design in order to
include it. People are tolerating the fact that I made that choice, but they sure let me
know it doesn't make them happy."
It was the spirit that we sought
For all of Abrams' talk about how unique the Panache is,
sonically, it's a real me-too product. It sounds just like all the other $4000 separates I
listen to in the course of reviewing high-end gear -- except that it only costs $1795. Oh
sure, you have to lower your expectations in certain areas -- you don't get remote control
or name-brand binding posts or a flashy faceplate -- but Portal really does deliver the
musical experience intact.
The sound is big, full of propulsive energy, and
packed with detail. It can give you the thundering thrill-ride of a big band blowing full
tilt or reproduce the delicate shimmer of a single, silver harp string. But it's the
sounds in the midrange that are most engaging -- from a single whisper to a massed-string
section, there's magic in the middle.
I'm not trying to claim the Panache obviates the need for
everything else; it's good, it ain't perfect. But Abrams' tune-by-ear philosophy
has produced a product where the sonic compromises are very carefully chosen. As a single
unit, it probably sounds far better than its component parts -- which, after all, is the
whole secret to compromise: Choose wisely.
Besides, in some ways, the Panache easily delivers stuff
even expensive separates struggle with. Silence, for instance. Silence is more than simply
freedom from audible hum -- that's something you almost never encounter these days. The
ultra-low-level noise I'm talking about is buried almost below the threshold of
human hearing. It creates a subtle awareness that your equipment's "on" and it
obscures low-level detail and adds coarseness to the sound. (Abrams credits this to the
Panache's headphone circuit, "When your ear is only an inch away from your
soundsource, you can hear everything, so we had to make sure there was nothing
there to hear.")
In its absence, the Panache produces a liquid, detailed
sound that conveys musical emotion like crazy. You might think, That's crazy, how
does silence convey emotion? Take the new Sony Classical Legacy release of Glenn
Gould's two career-defining recordings of The Goldberg Variations [S3K 87703], for
instance. Bach's instrumental music is frequently cited as logical and bloodless, but
Gould's 1981 performance puts the lie to that. Logical, yes; orderly, yes; but by playing
up the extremes of dynamic contrast and by stretching time to its limits, Gould managed to
reveal the hot blood rushing through Bach's supposedly icy veins. Anything that slights
those contrasts by limiting those swings robs the music of its heat. The best hi-fi (the
Krell CAST system, the new x-series Ayre, Linn's Klimax Twin, to name a few contenders)
preserves those changes down to the most subtle shadings. So does the Panache.
That midrange magic is particularly noticeable, as you'd
guess, on music with words. The human ear/brain connection is particularly tuned to the
sound of the voice, but as complex as simply reproducing voice is, combining it with music
makes the job a hundred times more difficult -- all those subtle time/tone/pitch cues just
get a lot more mooshed up. So, in for a penny, in for a pound -- I cued "All I Need
is the Girl" from the Frank Sinatra/Duke Ellington collaboration Albert A. Meets
Edward K [Warner Brothers 47243]. Ahhh. That's what I'm talking about!
After singing with the Ellington band, there's a
moment where Sinatra drops the map and takes off into uncharted territory, stretching the
beat like a rubber band as the band sails on without him. Again, it's all about those
contrasts. The tension created between Sinatra's elision and the band's adherence to the
song's metric structure is delicious. Lose any of it and the whole structure
collapses -- not into incoherence, but into something ordinary. It's not just poetry that
gets lost in translation.
Pretty much everything I audition these days ultimately
gets the Stravinsky test. The Barenboim/CSO Le Sacre du Printemps [Teldec 8573
81702-2] isn't just a fantastic combination of performance and engineering, it's a wicked
test of a stereo's mettle. The Panache delivered its savage intensity intact. The amp
effortlessly extracted deep, deep bass out of the Roman Audio Centurions (a surprisingly
difficult speaker to drive well) and the house shuddered with the complex polyrhythms of
the ballet. But as impressive as all that power and fury are, what makes the Teldec disc
shine above most recordings is the delicacy with which it captures the ambiance of
Orchestra Hall's "intimate vastness." Sure, it's big enough to house a symphony,
but by today's standards, it's almost tiny (just 2600 seats). That produces a distinctive
sound and the Panache does a superb job of capturing the CSO's huge sound within its
confines, a very difficult balancing act indeed.
Ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
The $1499 Arcam DiVA A85 integrated amp seemed like a
logical point of comparison for the Panache. It, too, had impressed me with its overall
performance and the intelligent compromises it made in the process of packing a gallon's
worth of performance into its one-quart price.
Like the Portal amp, the Arcam boasts world-class build
quality and superb sound for a reasonable price. However, the A85 boasts not only an
active preamplifier, but also software-controlled microprocessor capabilities, which
include remote control and some degree of equalization. If you're looking for all the mod
cons, the Arcam is definitely the way to go.
Head to head on the pure sound front, the answer is less
clear. Both integrateds are hard to fault. If you're looking for good, natural, believable
sound, you'd probably be happy no matter which one you took home. There are differences,
however.
On JVC's XRCD2 remastering of Munch's classic Daphnis
& Chloë [JVCXR-0222-2], both amps reveal the luscious sound of the BSO, with lots
of deep bass and delicate, ethereal choral swells. However, although they are close to
being clones tonally, there's a sense with the Panache of hearing even deeper into the sound.
There's a greater sense of Symphony Hall's space and a far greater illusion of the
orchestra's having both breadth and depth.
The Panache has soundstaging to a greater extent than the
A85 -- it certainly isn't as though the Portal has it and the Arcam does not, simply that
the Panache stretches the picture more completely into a three-dimensional model than the
British amp. The phrase "There's more there there" has been overused in
audio criticism and, besides, it's not really applicable here. It would be more accurate
to say, "There's more there, so there!"
Similarly, I found Rodney Crowell's "Telephone
Road" from The Houston Kid [SUG-CD-1065] to have a more headlong drive
with the Portal. Again, this is a subtle distinction. The Arcam's presentation of the song
was full bodied and full range. When I reviewed the amp for SoundStage! I cited the
Crowell album for its superb sound and believable presentation through the Arcam. Few
people would complain about this.
But the Portal Panache made it rock so hard it left
me breathless. Some people don't get the whole concept of timing as it applies to
hi-fi -- all I can say is they should hear what the Panache does with a driving song like
"Telephone Road." It doesn't just march forward on its beat, it lurches forward,
swaying slightly within the beat the way a gear-tooth rocks as it engages the inner pitch
of its opposing gear. The greater your resolution, the more you notice the play between
the two -- and it works the same way with rhythm in music as it does optically with a
physical process. The Panache shows you just how complex a musical performance truly is.
Not everyone will want that much resolution, however. The
Arcam always sounds good, partially because it smoothes over those really tiny lurches and
pauses. Give the Panache a borderline bad recording and you may notice details you
wouldn't with the A85. Maybe you can’t handle the truth.
There are other reasons you might prefer the Arcam. Its
microprocessor and its flexibility make it easy to live with and increase its range of
usefulness. It can drive two sets of loudspeakers. It has preamp outputs. Its active
preamp can drive long cables. Its remote lets you set it up out of reach (or behind closed
doors with a remote relay). It's $300 cheaper.
Actually, the two amps represent two very different choices
within the category "high-end integrated amp."
A summer sound and sound alone
The Portal Panache is an integrated amplifier designed to
bring the highest levels of audio performance to a price point where audiophiles normally
have to settle for less. In this, it has succeeded admirably. It is simple and, while not
cheap, it is certainly worth every penny it costs and then some.
It may not be the right amp for you. It lacks a remote and
tone controls. And that's probably as good a set of clues as you could get concerning the
Portal. If you think those are important enough that you couldn't live without them --
pass the Panache by. But if you resent every cent you spend that doesn't make a sonic
difference, if you're eating PB&J sandwiches out of a brown paper sack so you can
afford a better sounding hi-fi, the Panache is what you've been saving for.
Good news, audiophiles. There's a "new"
manufacturer on the scene -- one who came by his old-school high-end philosophy the hard
way. The Portal Panache lets you buy a $4000 set of separates for slightly under half
price -- and new to boot. Thanks to Portal's Joe Abrams, you too can have a friend
in the business.
Not too shabby for a guy who wanted to be an actor.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
Portal Audio Panache Integrated Amplifier
Price: $1795 USD.
Warranty: 60-day money-back satisfaction guarantee; three years, parts and labor.
Portal Audio
6626 Charter Hills Rd.
Charlotte, NC 28277
Phone: (888) 737-HIFI
Website: www.portalaudio.com/panache.html
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