Norge Reference 2000 Stereo Amplifier

Any opinions on Norge Reference 2000 Stereo Amplifier.
Tech2 has a vague review at Tech2.com India > Norge Reference 2000 Stereo Amplifier > Reviews > HiFi & TV > Home
The amp is not yet listed on the Norge site.
I called them up asking for a Bangalore dist, but they don't have an active one.

~dich

guys....

anyone has used norge products? How are they when compared to the marantz or yamaha as far as stereo is concerned?

As far as stereo is concerned, Norge is second to none whatsoever!!! It outperforms the very best !!

The brands you mentioned pale in comparision, one just pays for the "brand" .

Hi,
I purchased a Norge Reference 2000 ampli two months back and paired it with Mourdant Short Avant 906i. I find the sound amazing. This is my first experience with a Hi Fi set up , so won't be able to tell you how it stacks against something else... but I've palyed my entire CD collection (mostly gazals, hindi film, light classical and some western classical) and every type of music played well.
Cribs - it doesn't come with a remote, looks are so-so.
Pros - I stay in Mumbai, so if something conks, I can take it to their factory and get it fixed.

My decision to go for Norge was mainly due to Mr Shyam Bajaj (owner of Norge Audiosystems). He gave me a demo in his small factory cum demo room. Since I wanted to audition with my speakers, he said I could take it home and if I was not satisifed after playing it at home, he would take the ampli back.
I guess that confidence worked for me.

Not much of a tech review... but hope it's helpful in some way..

I am considering to buy Preamp and Power Amp of Pulz . How does it compare to Norge?

I wrote this review of a Norge 4242 amplifier amazing piece of equipment, i have met Mr Shyam Bajaj and his design principles are very sound. You wont regret buying norge. He is also a very nice person as well who supports his customers completely. I have been to his office where my 4242 amp was assembled in front of me in 3 hours.


Review of Norge 4242 stereo integrated amplifier

This unit has a output of 42 W Rms @4ohms per channel from 20hz to 20 kHz + or -1db


Exterior design

the unit has a simple and uncluttered front panel with basic controls of bass treble tone control on/off input selectors for DVD ,auxiliary and tape with the corresponding RCA inputs in the rear .the build quality of the unit is good and made with metal chassis the front panel has a red LED that glows when the power is turned on .

Room and other equipment used in this review



1)Speakers onkyo SKF101 speakers connected with van den hul skyline hybrid cable bi wiring mode distance between speakers APP-3.0 meters speakers angled at 45 degrees from listener as per Dolby and ITU recommendations for LR speaker positioning sensitivity 87/db per watt meter

2)Source unit Onkyo DVS757 THX certified DVD audio and video player .


3)Interconnects -front left and right Van den hul D102 III hybrid cables terminated with local connectors cables connected as per VDH website recommendations on ground end marking.
4)Room data- hollow room of around 3000 Cu feet without acoustic treatment and sparingly furnished listening distance app 10 feet from speaker .

On plugging in the amp it had a mute of 3 sec before the power comes on leaving it on for a minute or so I then proceeded to play various tracks from commercial CD 's like bacradi blast 3 (virgin ) Titanic score (Sony music) Fiza (tips) for some time the amp seemed very dull and unresponsive but after a period of 45 min the amp started to open and the details started coming though there was excellent control on the speakers during the loudest peaks in the recording ex on fiza in the 1st track the female lead vocals would sound shrill and thin on many other systems due to the high pitch and vocal freq of the singer but the presentation was controlled and precise without a loss of any high freq detail which is generally associated with flat freq freq reproduction of sound in many cases.Then moving on to the audio file test disc of opus 3 revealed a very broad and open sound stage and immaculate stereo separation and positioning between the speakers while maintaining the timbre of the instruments mainly the depth and range of piano tracks.

I then proceeded to use multichannel film sources and their recordings to test the dynamic capabilities of the system starting of with nayak(shemaroo Dolby digital 5.1) revealed a increased amount of detail and better playback of the high freq and bass in the 60hz region dialogue when mixed down to stereo sounded clear and crisp in spite of the dominating sound field created by the music and effects similar results were found on Gladiator signature selection dream works (DTS 6.1 ES discrete) and Die another day MGM (DTS ES 6.1) where the dynamics and fidelity were equal to a well aligned multiplex when scaled down to the current room size.
Then stepping up on the source resolution I used the DVD audio disc of Eagles Hotel California (Warner) played back in stereo at 24 bit 192 KHz resolution the highest resolution PCM playback format in the world today the amp responded extremely well to the dynamic drum and guitar passages on "Hotel California" and reproduced the exceptional detail in tracks like” New kid in town" and "Wasted time " and revealed subtle music cues unheard before. I have not tested the MLP version(DVD audio) part of this disc as it involves a stage of packing and unpacking of audio data compared to pcm which is not compressed in any way.



Now the negative aspects of the amp

1) The speaker terminal are spring clips and not binding posts which poses a problem when uses high quality speaker cable

2) Audible cross talk between inputs when the volume id turned up fully requires better shielding within might cause problems when many sources are connected .

3) A remote might have been good at least for the volume.

4)Phono input might be a great addition

5) No instruction manual

6)It is heavy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

7) Better quality RCA jacks to be provided .

Overall this amp is a great value for money and with a very sound design except for a few minor flaws this amp is very revealing about the sources it is connected to it so the amp will show that your X cd player or Y DVD player might be bad in certain audio aspects so don’t blame the amp overall a good product with a Made in India stamp

You found Norge better than Marantz? Wow.. I'm pretty amazed. Please eleaborate on the models compared and what was the rest of the equipment. Thanks.

i cannot comment on the quality of the amps since i haven't got the chance to hear them... but i have to mention that mr shayam bajaj is a thorough gentleman, he bothers to reply your mails personally, gives you sound advice .....follows up..

Congrats, Lakshmant on your purchase & may it give you many hours of pleasure.
You could have asked Mr Bajaj to provide Binding posts & better quality gold plated RCA jacks when you Amp was being assembled-would'nt have cost you much extra.
Do post your experience after the Amp has broken in properly-it then shld sound smoother & more detailed.

I purchased these amps 2 years ago and they are with my brother now, they work very nicely.

Laksh