Out of the box, the Soloist-50 sounded very good indeed, however after a week of keeping the amp cooking away on the rack, the sound has become considerably better.  The slight brightness that was there first day has now completely gone and bass has become fuller and faster.

Adam (my technical guy) wowed by Clef Audio’s detail, swiftness, transparency, and intelligibility that’s normally only associated with integrated amps that cost around £5000 (and more!).  The midrange is how the Clef Soloist-50 won me over the most.  The ability to probe directly into the heart of the music, to uncover the essence of a performance, is made starkly apparent with the human voice. Play a well recorded album like Diana Krall – Live in Paris and the sound is very natural and genuine with Diana’s voice coming through with clear, concise articulation.

I tried the Clef with a fairly wide variety of speakers from under £4,000 Boenicke W5, all the way through to Maxonic TW1300 (£68,000), the sound has been consistency musical.  The shocking moment came when we hooked the Soloist -50 up with Magneplanar MG 3.7i, the Maggies do like a lot of power, normally around 200 watts upward but the 50 watts - Clef was able to drive the flat panel speakers to a crazy level without any sign of bottoming out.  The only note about speaker matching is the Clef has quite a high gain so a very high sensitive speaker owner may have some problems adjusting a suitable volume for a late night listening but I am talking 108 dB Maxonic horn speakers here! If your speakers have sensitivity of 94dB and below, I can confidently say that you will not have this problem.