Concert Fidelity electronics are designed and built by hand in Japan in the best artisan traditions of that country with a perfectionist’s fanatic attention to detail and a purist’s pursuit of optimized simplicity as the means of achieving the most musically authentic results.


Incidentally, achieving Concert Fidelity’s level of circuit optimization and simplification requires a deeper understanding of audio circuits — what is essential versus what is best eliminated — than does implementing complex circuits which contain numerous compensatory components, but once our “surprisingly simple” designs are heard, it is difficult to go back to more complex amplifiers with their colorations and limitations.

As a case in point, the sound of the best tube electronics should be that of the tubes themselves, and our vacuum tube products reveal tube differences to a greater degree than we have ever heard elsewhere. This results in achieving “transparency,” allowing the source material to be revealed in all its emotionally involving glory, without hi-fi enhancements, artificial warmth, muddiness, distortion, or glare.

Concert Fidelity goes to perfectionist and no-holds-bared approach in design and manufacture because we feel that discriminating customers will notice the subtle design touches and will readily hear the difference they make in expressive nuance and musical enjoyment.

Our highly optimized and simplified circuits, innovative and perfectionist layout techniques, carefully specified and matched parts, and custom transformers which may be the world’s best, allow you to hear transient speed and low-frequency extension akin to solid state along with purity, delicacy, and musicality akin to single-ended triodes. With our electronics, you will hear, superiority in the following areas, without even being analytical or conscious:

･resolution of harmonic complexity
･microdynamic expression
･transient speed for resolving rhythmic nuances
･extension and speed in low frequencies
･resolution of complex musical textures
･resolution of soundstage details, along with better presence of individual images

Masataka Tsuda, founder and chief designer of Concert Fidelity, has over 45 years’ experience in vacuum tube and solid state amplifier design. He combines a profound understanding of audio circuits, which allows him to see where many typical design “conventions”;do not make sense, with uncannily creative inspirations and a perfectionist’s drive to pursue the limits of circuit simplification and purity in sound.

Tsuda believes that true depth of musical expression can only be experienced through circuits which do not try to artificially manipulate the signal in any way. His proprietary Direct Signal Path Technology (DSPT) is inspired by his goal to minimize the amount of time music signal spends in circuit, so that it retains the energy and life inherent in the original material.
Circuits, selection of parts, and layout are optimized so that all unnecessary compensating circuitry can be eliminated and the simplest circuitry can suffice, thus causing the least signal degradation. The result of his perfectionist drive for simplification is amplifiers of extreme transparency and the musical expressiveness of the very best SET’s without their weaknesse.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Masataka Tsuda's designs push the state-of-the-art forward, in both solid-state and vacuum tube design arenas."
- Dick Olsher, The Absolute Sound Magazine and Enjoy the Music.com Review Magazine -

"Concert Fidelity has been a crucial part of my music listening experience and restoration mastering work for many years now. My CF-080 line stage, DAC-040 D/A Converter and playback amplifiers (all designed by Concert Fidelity's Masataka Tsuda) have never failed to amaze me. Whether I'm working on remastering Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Phil Collins, Crosby- Stills & Nash or just listening to music for pleasure, the Concert Fidelity gear I use is my state-of-the-art benchmark for audiophile excellence. I would be lost without it."
- Steve Hoffman, Mastering Engineer -

Concert Fidelity’s amps and preamps are often said to be excellent-sounding, but I feel that this description is inappropriate. It would be more appropriate to describe our amps as having almost zero loss, or as adding almost nothing to the original signal. There is no way that an audio circuit can improve upon an incoming signal in the course of amplification.

The signal can only be degraded, and the less the degradation, the better the circuit. Whenever a good part is discovered, and a good sonic result is produced, my next goal is to figure out how that part might be eliminated, which will, without fail, make the sound even better! Concert Fidelity’s philosophy is to add absolutely nothing superfluous to the circuit; to transmit neither more nor less than the original recorded signal.

The sound of tube amps is often characterized as being soft, warm, mellow, or sweet, but that is merely a description of a large number of tube designs, and not an inherent quality of tubes. A well-designed tube amp should not sound anything but neutral and transparent, a far-cry from the stereotype. If designed and implemented properly, the sound of a good amplifier can transcend the particular amplifying device it employs.

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