Boulder is a premiere luxury and high-performance audio manufacturer based in Lousiville, Colorado, and one of the last remaining “high-end” electronics manufacturer in North America to engineer and produce all aspects of its products in-house. Boulder was founded in 1984 as a manufacturer of broadcast and recording studio equipment, transitioning later to fine home audio electronics.
According to the company, the new 1100 Series offers a substantial advancement over the previous 1000 Series, with improvements in sound quality by way of better thermal management, ground paths, noise floor, and circuit layout. The increased use of surface-mount technology, manufactured on Boulder’s own surface-mount manufacturing machines and ovens, has also yielded improvements in noise radiation, propagation delay, parasitic capacitance and the elimination of lead inductance in affected circuits. It also offers improvements in unit-to-unit quality and consistency and long-term reliability.
Also new for the 1160 is the use of a 64-bit, multi-core ARM processor for all supervisory functions, including management of protection circuits, AC line monitoring, power, thermal detection, error notification, and HTML- or IP-based external control. This ARM processor will also enable the use of Boulder Net, an IP-based unit-to-unit detection, system layout, and communication architecture available to external control systems such as Savant or Crestron and application-based system controls. For units that are network connected, an HTML setup and control page is available by simply logging into the amplifier’s IP address via a browser.
Gain stages within the 1160 are Boulder’s proprietary 983, which are unique to the 1100 Series. 983 gain stages feature surface-mount mechanical design with board-mounted heat-sinking and provide the initial 20 dB of gain in a multi-stage design for exceptionally wide bandwidth. They combine discrete and monolithic design with a high-current output.
The 1160 utilizes 56 bipolar output devices (28 per channel), 48 filter capacitors and 2 toroidal power transformers to generate power output of up to 300 watts per channel into any load, enabling massive current swings and the ability to drive any loudspeaker to realistic audio levels.
The physical design of the 1160’s external casework has evolved, with the heatsinks’ hard corners and chamfers being replaced with small radii and curves. The front panel has also been changed to reflect Boulder’s local geography. The layered front panel design is actually a reproduction of the topographical map of Flagstaff Mountain, located directly west of Boulder, Colorado.
Continuous power output of the 1160 is 300W per channel into 8 ohms, with peak output power doubling into 4 ohms (600W), 2 ohms (1200W). All audio circuitry is full differentially balanced. Outputs include dual connections for bi-wiring. Full specifications for the 1160 details 0.0009% THD at 20-2 kHz, and 0.0048% THD at 20 kHz, with SNR at -127 dB, unweighted, 20 to 22 kHz (always at 8 ohms, 300W). Boulder also indicates crosstalk (L to R or R to L) to be greater than 120 dB. Input impedance is 100k ohms balanced and 50k ohms unbalanced, using 3-pin balanced XLR connectors on the inputs and two sets of 6 mm / .250-inch wingscrews for outputs.
The Boulder 1160 Stereo Power Amplifier supports 100-240 VAC. The suggested US retail price is $28,000. Export retail pricing will vary by country.
www.boulderamp.com
