Merrill Audio Element 118 Power Amplifier Monoblocks

The Element 118 power amplifier monoblocks are the products which define and encapsulate our deeply considered thinking about music reproduction especially with regard to speed.

Why is Merrill Audio so focused on speed?

Let us consider for a moment the musical score. Perhaps one of Bach’s cello suites. We have some notes. The notes follow one another in most cases without a break. Sometimes the composer has given us a rest but otherwise the notes proceed inexorably, perfectly. But then the musician, the cellist in our example, must play these notes and when the cellist plays the notes there is a certain problem: within the score the notes proceed in unbroken progression, but it takes time for the musician to move between them.? The musician has to translate this perfection of unbroken progression onto something physical ? the instrument, and the instrument is of a certain size and there is a physical distance between these notes, which is greater the farther they are apart in pitch. A big conundrum for the musician who must convey the seamlessness of the score in the physical realm. It requires work, time and especially:

Speed. Reactivity, impulse, body quickness, faster than thinking. Possibly human musicians are some of the fastest reacting creatures on the planet.

Consider a great rock guitarist, like Brian May. He almost seems to be ahead of the music, even though he has the physical instrument with its fingerboard of a certain length, that takes time to traverse. It is as if he is on top of the notes, waiting for them. Speed, readiness.

When we go to a live concert, whether we realise it or not, whether the music be fast or slow, we are in the presence of speed, and extraordinary deftness. It is an essential part of our experience. It is defining.

At Merrill Audio we make musical instruments, not machines. We make amplifiers that are essentially musical and a big part of that musicality is their speed. This matter of reaction time has been a huge part of our cost-no-object approach to research and development and the ultimate result of that is: The Element 118 monoblock power amplifiers.

That feeling, when you are settling into your seat in the 5th row at Carnegie Hall. The air itself is charged; anticipation, presence – something is about to happen, something extraordinary. That is what we want you to experience in your own home with the Elelement 118 power amplifier monoblocks, before the needle hits the groove, or the laser shines, or the signal arrives from the DAC. Magic, the palpable electric charge of anticipation.

And when the instrument ? your Element 118 power amplifiers play we want to be on top of the music, in a ready state, awake, alert, able to move with the deftness and reactivity of the great musician.

For the technically inclined – there are some problems with traditional amplifier designs that mitigate against this vital impression and expression of speed, chiefly: what we call ‘overshoot’ and ‘ringing’.

What are overshoot and ringing?

Overshoot and ringing are related phenomena. Overshoot refers to the transitory values of any parameter that exceeds its final? desired steady state value during its transition from one value to another.

Ringing is an unwanted oscillation of a voltage or current. It happens when an electrical pulse causes the parasitic capacitances and inductances in the circuit (i.e. those that are not part of the design, but just by-products of the materials used to construct the circuit) to resonate at their characteristic frequency.

In other words: capacitance load can produce out of band ‘bursts’ which then produce resonant artifacts in components. These are kinds of distortion and, at Merrill Audio, we don’t want them, because they mitigate against our desired, ‘absolute black’ noise floor and ready state. We want to avoid having components tied up in anomalous resonant energy modes because this reduces their efficiency and speed. But completely eliminating the issue is difficult. Nevertheless this is what we have done.

The result is one of the purest, quietest, and fastest? amplifiers available ? The Element 118 Power Monoblock Amplifier ? just music, nothing else