Burmester 032 Integrated Amplifier

Design

The heat sinks in typical Burmester design keep the 032 cool even under full power. The chromed control element is located on the front in between the attractive heat sinks the front. This mid-section milled from solid brass encompasses the display circuitry and protects it effectively against any unwanted spurious noise radiating on parts of the amplifier processing audio signals. The solid rotary knob switches both channels identically via an incremental encoder.

Handmade

During assembly the transistors are carefully connected to the generously dimensioned heat sinks on both sides via a massive block of copper which takes care of optimal heat distribution and dissipation. The driver stages are installed on a separate internal heat sink. This prevents working point drift of the driver stages due to large thermal fluctuations in the heat sinks of the amplification stages. In the final assembly step the high-chrome control element is gently connected to the complex innards of the integrated amp.

The sound of the 032 has been highly praised for its warm musicality yet detailed imaging. The 032 is second to none in its capability to draw minute musical details from the world’s best speakers even at very high volume levels.

Home Theatre

The 032 is already prepped for future home theater applications. It offers a home theater throughput circuit which bypasses the preamp-section and routes signals directly to the power amp. In the future, this through-put can also be controlled by the new Burmester Link interface.

The Concept

The 032 offers balanced circuit design and is completely DC coupled. There are no distorting coupling capacitors in the signal path. An intelligent protection circuit outside of the signal path monitors the working condition for overheating, DC offset and overloading. A special feature of the 032 is its extremely high damping factor. This high damping factor in connection with the capability to quickly deliver very large currents (rise time at 4Ω is only 1.5 μS) give the amp a wide response and the ability to effortlessly control virtually any loudspeaker over its full frequency range. With its mighty 650 VA power supply the 032 is able to deliver continuous high currents and thus drive speakers with low impedance and complex loads. The large external heat sinks in typical Burmester design provide optimal cooling. The frequency response is practically load-independent. The sound of the 032 is characterized by excellent spatial resolution, natural musical warmth and negligible distortion. The transistors of the output stages are connected to the oversized heat sinks at the housing sides via a massive block of copper which guarantees the best heat abortion and dissipation. The driver stages, however, are located on a separate internal heat sink. This keeps wide temperature fluctuations of the power stage heat sinks from affecting the operating points of the driver stages. Internal wiring for the power supply of the amplification stages and the signal transfer to the speaker terminals of the 032 consists of 10 mm2 high-purity copper wire. This makes sure that the high currents of the power amplifier reach the massive output binding posts without loss. For the signal-carrying conductors we consciously did not use copper rails, which have become all the rage recently, to avoid for example any unwanted micro phonic effects.