{"id":31308,"date":"2022-04-15T12:42:48","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T10:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hifi-advice.com\/blog\/?p=31308"},"modified":"2022-04-25T10:28:41","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T08:28:41","slug":"western-electric-91e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hifi-advice.com\/blog\/amplifier-reviews\/integrated-amplifier-reviews\/western-electric-91e\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Electric 91E"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sample supplied by atube-hifiimport<\/a><\/h4>\n

Retail prices in the Netherlands (incl 21% VAT):
\n91E amplifier in Black or Champagne: 17.250 euro
\n91E amplifier in Nickel: 17.850 euro (as reviewed)
\nAlternate Output Transformer Block: 1.000 euro
\nMatched pair 300B: 1855 euro<\/h4>\n

The story of Western Electric in a nutshell<\/h3>\n

Western Electric was originally established in 1869. At that time, inventor Elisha Gray and entrepreneur Enos Barton each contributed $2,500 and opened a shop in Cleveland, OH to make electrical parts. Their move to Chicago paved the way for a storied future that included Bell Telephone, Bell Labs, AT&T, and Westrex.<\/p>\n

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In 1938, Western Electric manufactured the first type 300B electron tube. It was a breakthrough power triode, but in those days it hummed away from behind a curtain in early Hollywood sound systems. The same things that served moviegoers back then\u2014low noise, ultra-long life, sonic purity, and warmth\u2014made it a standout tube for music lovers and vintage audio collectors as the years passed.<\/p>\n

Deep into the age of the transistor, communities around the world in search of true, original, high-fidelity sound rediscovered the 300B and its exceptional performance. New amplifier designs brought the tube front and center but until recently, one could only rely on NOS 300-B tubes.<\/p>\n

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More recently, entrepreneur Charles Whitener, in partnership with AT&T, has recovered Western Electric and the Westrex Corporation and in 1997 resumed production of the first new 300-B triode tubes in Kansas City. They received universal praise and quickly became the gold standard.<\/p>\n

In 2003, the company moved production of the 300-B tubes to Huntsville, AL, and through those years it served the Department of Defense with electron tubes and test kits. Besides tubes, Western Electric has also designed and developed High-End audio amplifiers, CD players, phono preamplifiers, along with other audio components.<\/p>\n

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Today, the 300B is manufactured at the Rossville Works facility. This new factory home was custom-built to master the dozens of individual demands of tube making, from sealing the iconic glass bulb to the complex metallurgic processes within. Western Electric believes twenty-first-century listeners deserve twenty-first-century manufacturing standards.<\/p>\n

Also manufactured in the Rossville Works facility is the subject of this review,\u00a0the magnificent WE 91E integrated amplifier!<\/p>\n

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WE 91E<\/h3>\n

The 91E is a Class A, single-ended (SE), integrated amplifier that was inspired by its predecessor, the 91A. Compared to the original, the 91E offers double the power which is made possible by a completely new approach to SE amplifier design. Developed over five years, the 91E uses Western Electric\u2019s patented steered current source technology, the parallel feed constant current source (SCCS). The unique parallel feed topology contributes half of the AC current to the plate (anode) of the 300B by modulating quiescent current. As a result, half of the power dissipation occurs in the tube, allowing for a greater output power of 20 watts per channel. The design employs 2x ECC81 Tubes for the preamp section and 2x 300B tubes for the power section. Microprocessors automatically bias the 300B tube pair each time the amplifier is powered on and no manual adjustment is necessary.<\/p>\n

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Whereas most tube amplifiers use multi-tap output transformers with two or three windings, the 91E uses a dedicated, user-swappable output transformer block that is optimized for a particular load. Single impedance transformers maintain lower winding capacitance that is normally impaired with multi-tap transformers. The amplifier’s retail price includes a single transformer block that can be specified at 4 Ohm or 8 Ohm and users can also purchase an extra block at extra cost.<\/p>\n

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The 91E’s volume control is something special. A stepped logarithmic attenuator is used to mimic the response of human hearing. The attenuator consists of only discrete resistors in a ladder configuration that are switched in and out of the circuit to produce a logarithmic attenuation of the output signal. Unlike common potentiometer designs where 9 o’clock sounds loud and 12 o’clock yields pretty much the maximum volume level, the 91E’s logarithmic volume control feels linear in use. With the Care Orchestra Celestial Deep Breath Evo<\/a>, for instance, I found that the optimum volume level was often at a setting of 88-90.<\/p>\n

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Included is a solid, milled-from-aluminum infrared remote control that allows for quick adjustment of amplifier settings such as input levels, balance, and display dimming.<\/p>\n

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The front panel is graced with a beautiful and easy-to-read fully dimmable LCD display that shows the selected input, attenuator level, and a VU meter. The display also shows settings that can be adjusted by the included remote control.<\/p>\n

Around the back, there are 6 analog audio inputs and a Bluetooth antenna. The amplifier supports Bluetooth v4.2 with BC, MP3, AAC, FastStream, and APTX codecs up to 16 bit 96kHz. Besides a single set of speaker terminals, there are also Ethernet and USB Connections, but alas, these are implemented solely for the purpose of software & firmware updates.<\/p>\n

With a weight of 22 kgs and made entirely of machined aluminum, the amplifier is built very solidly but thanks to the handy crossbars on the sides, it can still be carried and maneuvered quite easily.<\/p>\n

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My review unit is in Nickel but the 91E amplifier is also available in Gold and Black.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Auto Switch-Off<\/h3>\n

I don’t usually have music playing continuously and tend to stop and start sessions divided over the day. Due to this, the 30-minute auto-shut-off made it hard to assess the amplifier’s long-term evolution of its sonic presentation. Every time I stepped away to work on the review, at some point, I heard “click” and the amp was off again. And it’s not advisable to switch on a tube amplifier right after it has been switched down. Presumably, this was not WE’s decision but invoked by EU law. Usually, this feature can be switched off but at the time of writing, I am not aware of the method for this for the 91E.<\/p>\n

In any event, this may be moot anyway because, throughout my sessions, I noted that the amplifier sounds great right from the very first minute after being switched on. The main aspect that I found to change as the listening proceeded is that the music gains fluidity and flow. But unlike many other tube amplifiers, there is never any lack of focus or solidity with the 91E, the amp simply always sounds fully alive from the get-go.<\/p>\n

Next: Listening<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Listening<\/h3>\n

I started my experience with the 91E in my secondary setup<\/a>, which normally consists of the Ayon CD-10 II<\/a> CD player and DAC, Ayon Spirit III<\/a> integrated amplifier, and Xavian Perla Esclusiva<\/a> speakers. For my first listening, however, I started with the Care Orchestra Spiritual Blue Evo and Celestial Deep Breath Evo<\/a> speakers and I will return to the Xavians at the end. Normally in this system, I use the ashamedly cheap Van Den Hul Skyline Hybrid speaker cables, simply because they provide such a natural balance while introducing very few sins of commission (but plenty of omission…). But for this occasion, I will start with the Driade Flow 405<\/a> speaker cable and my usual Siltech Paris interlink.<\/p>\n

Secondarily, I will also use the utterly revealing FoilFlex<\/a> interlinks and speaker cables, as well as my best CD transport, a modified and fully recapped Naim CD-3 connected with a Mad Scientist Black FCGD+ digital interlink<\/a> to the Denafrips Venus II<\/a> DAC.<\/p>\n

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Typical SET designs often yield lean or even soft bass when paired with speakers that are not particularly sensitive, such as the speakers that I am currently using.\u00a0 The 91E, however, has a remarkably solid and robust sound, not what you normally expect from a SET design. It’s also remarkably powerful for a SET design: 20 Watts instead of 7 Watts as normal for the 300B tube. This amplifier has the most powerful and impactful bass that I have heard yet from a pure single-ended design. With the 91E, the bass is not only solid and robust but also nicely full-bodied, but, contrary to my expectation, absolutely not of the fat kind. Rather, the bass is fast and precise, with a very good rhythmic quality. More amazingly, it is almost comparable to the Ayon Spirit III in terms of solidity and drive. Given that the Ayon is a KT-150 Push-Pull design capable of 65 Watts in Pentode mode, this is not what I expected. Dynamically, too, the 91E is rather surprising, again sounding more like a big push-pull amp than a small triode. The difference is that, unlike the Ayon and many other push-pull tube amplifiers, the 91E also has a gently-dosed warmth and relaxation, a delightful smoothness, and an utter lack of hardness even when pushed. The tonal balance is slightly dark with the top end subjectively rolling off, but otherwise, the amp is very linear and very neutral. The treble has just the right amount of friendliness but is clean, and just like the bass, free of blur. In terms of soundstaging, the 91E sounds bold and dense, with tightly-packed imaging within the soundstage, which further enhances its powerful delivery. The 91E offers very realistic body and very natural tonality and is particularly good at rendering flesh and blood bodies in 3D.<\/p>\n

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For all of its sonorous boldness, the 91E is not as free-flowing, nor is it quite as delicate or as intricately nuanced as some of the other SET amps I have heard from brands such as Line Magnetic<\/a> and Melody Audio<\/a>. But I should add that the purest and most direct sounding SET amplifiers that I heard are not based on the inherently smooth-sounding 300B tubes but are using 211s or 845s, or 805s. And fair is fair, in turn for their direct-coupled and super-explicit sound, these amplifiers do not usually have the bass power, drive, and solidity, nor the rich golden glow that the 91E with its 300Bs manages to balance with its authority so carefully.<\/p>\n

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The 91E uniquely offers separate output transformer modules for 4-Ohm and 8-Ohm loads. I have experienced make-or-break situations with some amplifiers between the 4- and 8-Ohm output, for instance with the Audio Research Ref 75 when connected to the Wilson Watt\/Puppy System 8, but the 91E drives both of the Care Orchestra speaker models equally well. Moreover, given that the larger Spiritual Blue Evo floorstanders are specified at 8 Ohms and the smaller Celestial Deep Breath monitors at 4 Ohms, given that the 91E came only with an 8-Ohm output module, one would suspect better synergy with the larger models. But judging from the subjective results, the opposite seems to be true, with the monitors sounding even more lively and expressive than the floorstanders. This is the same difference that I observed between these two speakers during their initial review and when used with both tube- and solid-state amplifiers. In other words, also with the 91E, the two models illustrate their inherent differences perfectly, the floorstanding model sounding more delicate and refined and the monitors sounding more all-out dynamic and partying.<\/p>\n

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Besides these inherent differences, there is no real distinction between them in terms of driveability that I can detect. Of course, these speakers have been designed differently, but my little experiment still goes to show that the amp seems to be a drive-it-all, and Ohmic values do not necessarily behave predictably.<\/p>\n

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With the much smaller Xavians, it’s evident that these speakers do not reach quite as deeply as the Care Orchestras, but the amplifier retains all of its signature solidity and fullness in body and tonality. This confirms that the 91E is most definitely not a lean or clinical-sounding amp!<\/p>\n

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It’s not only in terms of speaker impedance matching that the 91E seems to behave very even-handedly. The amp is also not fussy at all about cables. As described above it sounds fabulous with the Driade Flow 405, but it works equally well with the FoilFlex speaker cables and interlinks. Whereas these cables always elicit more transparency and resolution, most other amplifiers will start to sound a little thin with these cables. Not so the 91E, it does gain a little more definition but it still sounds utterly solid and authoritative.<\/p>\n

On the subject of power and authority, there is just nothing to give away that this amp is “limited” by its single pair of 300B’s. Clearly, the clever scheme to maximize the power output pays dividends. And it’s not only with delicate music or with my usual R&B, Jazz, and Soul diet that the amp works well, even Billie Eilish is pumped out with real gusto and plenty of energy.<\/p>\n

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Within seconds of starting “Bad Guy” I got a big grin on my face and my foot started fiercely tapping along. Oh, and the amplifier also goes plenty loud. Of course, there is a limit, but the 91E reaches it very gently by smoothly compressing the dynamics, and when pushed further, introducing smooth distortion rather than hard-clipping, while never becoming hard or edgy, not even when pushed to its limits. But before it reaches this point, let me assure you, it already goes more than loud enough to annoy the neighbors.<\/p>\n

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My recent discovery Vivaldi Jupiter on the Alpha label sounds beautifully organized and tonally rich and with plenty of weight in the massed strings and vocals. But with this recording, I feel that the amp could do with just a bit more incisiveness and expression from the upper midrange and up, which would further heighten the realism while being of particular benefit to the harpsichord in this recording.<\/p>\n

At this point, I should note that the speakers that I have used are all of medium sensitivity, the Care Orchestra monitors topping out at 91.5 dB. While the 91E drives all three speakers splendidly, I don’t doubt that it could have as yet undisclosed qualities to offer when driving actual high-sensitivity speakers such as horn designs.<\/p>\n

Feedback from the guys at A Tube Hifi Import<\/h3>\n

There is in our opinion nothing that beats the 300B sound. Especially with the WE300B tubes when used in different amplifiers such as the Melody AN300B MAX, the WE300B tubes create an almost different amplifier, this is how good they are. The sound is far more smooth, warm, and buttery but nonetheless far more detailed and stronger in the bass.<\/p>\n

The WE91E takes audiophile high-end listening, while remaining warm and pleasant as well as easy listening, to a whole other level. Because of its years of research and immaculate internal design, this is the most transparent and clear-sounding amplifier we have ever heard. Even when listening to different amplifiers in the same price range, some recordings image way farther away and we notice softer sounds that we haven’t heard before. Only with the WE91E, these are detectable.<\/p>\n

We are big fans of the Klipsch Heritage series and particularly the Cornwall and Klipschorn. In our experience, the WE91E is an absolute silent amplifier even when used on a high-sensitive system such as the Klipschorn at 105dB. This is rare when matching an amplifier to this speaker. Furthermore, we are in love with the stately design of the amplifier, the ‘tubes’ or handles on the side also make it relatively easy to move this amplifier. Very uncommon in tube amplifiers. Because this amplifier (as Mr. Punter noted) doesn’t have 3 bulky transformers like most tube amplifiers it is also relatively light at 23 kilos.<\/p>\n

Next: Back to Ayon and Bonus Listening<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Back to Ayon<\/h3>\n

Regular readers know that I am very content with the Spirit III. But going back to the Ayon turned out to be a sobering exercise. Ok, this amp is exceedingly powerful and when cranking the volume it just has no practical limit. The Xavians and my ears start protesting before the amp gives in. But the Ayon is really quite dry and matter-of-fact in comparison to the 91E. In some ways, it’s quite non-tube-like, actually. I’ve always known this but have accepted it because it also provides hugely entertaining solidity and drive.<\/p>\n

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The Ayon was always the undisputed master of bass solidity and all-out dynamics but if you will believe it, the 91E has very nearly the same impact and drive, and even fuller<\/em> bass! In terms of resolution, the two amps are comparable, as well as in soundstage density and focus. But the 91E has a considerably richer delivery, with greater liquidity and more smoothness.<\/p>\n

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Bonus Listening<\/h3>\n

It’s not long ago that my friend Niels (for regular readers, this is another Niels, so not the one with the Apogees and Magicos) swapped his Martin Logans for the beautiful Franco Serblin Accordo’s<\/a>. This was a great opportunity to also try the 91E at his place. After all, Niels was also there many years ago when this amplifier’s prototype was first shown at the Munich Audio show, and he was also eager to hear it. Niels’s system consists in the basis of a Jeff Rowland Aeris<\/a> DAC with PSU<\/a> and an Analog Domain M75D<\/a> integrated amplifier, driving the Accordos with Cardas Clear speaker cables.<\/p>\n

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While the amp sounded smooth and seductive when placed directly on the floor, it did gain speed, tightness, and expression when placed on the Artesania Krion Platform.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was reassuring to hear that the amplifier performed very similarly as in my own setup, and again with the emphasis on fullness and deep tonal saturation. In this system, too, the amp 91E had just the right amount of speed, sounding neither slow nor hurried but lusciously rich and smooth and at the same time solid and powerful. With the 300B tubes being inherently smooth and rich, as one would expect, any 300B-based amplifier will sound very different from a stereotypical transistor amplifier. And indeed, this is the case when comparing the WE91E to Niels’ own Analog Domain M75D. The latter does indeed sound tighter and more articulate as well as cleaner and more explicit. But that’s always the case when comparing transistors to tubes. The Analog Domain amp does nothing to hide its solid-state nature, which alone will be enough to put off those seeking tube goodness, but it does achieve admirable levels of transient snap, inner precision, and transparency. If one desires these aspects but combined with the benefits of tube amplification, then perhaps another SET amplifier might be a better choice.<\/p>\n

The 91E is perfect for those who prefer their amplifier to be a non-fussy musical eat-it-all. And if it is smoothness, richness, and deep tonal saturation that is desired, the 91E will absolutely deliver in spades, while having plenty of power to drive a very wide range of loudspeakers.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

The 91E has a remarkably solid and robust sound, not what you normally expect from a SET design. It’s also remarkably powerful for a SET design: 20 Watts instead of 7 Watts as normal for the 300B tube. This amplifier has the most powerful and impactful bass that I have heard yet from a SET amplifier using a single set of output tubes.<\/p>\n

Dynamically, too, the 91E is rather surprising, sounding more like a big push-pull amp than a small triode. The difference is that, unlike many other push-pull tube amplifiers, and for all of its solidity and boldness, the 91E also has a seductive and gently-dosed warmth, a delightful smoothness, and an utter lack of hardness or edge even when pushed.<\/p>\n

It’s arguably what the 300B’s are most famous for: that wondrously rich and deeply saturated midrange. The real beauty of the 91E in my view is that it blends robustness, solidity, and power with rich and deep tonal saturation and a smooth warm glow while remaining upbeat and dynamic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Associated Equipment<\/a><\/p>\n

External Links<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Manufacturer: westernelectric<\/a>
\nBenelux Distributor: A Tube Hifi Import<\/a><\/p>\n

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