Review: Ken Kessler

Many moons ago I learned about the lack of sense in making predictions, as they usually prove wrong. Despite this I’m happy to posit that we are entering two ‘Golden Ages’. The first appears to be that of superb integrated amps appearing in a flood, including the Marantz Model 10 [HFN Jun ’25], D’Agostino’s Pendulum [HFN Jul ’25] and the Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 600.2 [HFN Aug ’25]. But they are all high-end units. By contrast, the Quad 3 has a list price of only £1249, and it blew me away.

Shall we first dispense with the debate about what constitutes ‘expensive’? Just as ‘luxury’ means anything more than you need, ‘expensive’ means anything more than you’re prepared or able to spend. I’m not about to gloss over the fact that £18,000 for a stereo amplifier isn’t chicken feed to most of us, even in a world of amplifiers costing 30 times that amount.

With the HD Phono, Nagra has joined a rather select group. By my estimation, there are but a half-dozen manufacturers of phono stages costing above £50,000. At a heady £68,500, the all-valve Nagra HD Phono is about as expensive and exclusive as it gets, and for that amount of money you expect to get everything. And you do.

You don’t have to be a marketing analyst with a subscription to the Financial Times to understand why SACD might win the format war. Clearly, the SACD crew has delivered more hardware and (most importantly) in the order of ten times more software than DVD-Audio, according to the estimates of music vendors I’ve canvassed. All of which makes the arrival of a high-end SACD player with a mid-range price point something worth considering.