Four people to carry it

When my MA9500 arrived, it needed four people to carry it. I did not know what to do with a box that size; it was serious real estate. Then I opened it.

Box in a box, and inside it the amplifier, screwed with heavy bolts to a wooden base. Even the plastics were hand-wrapped around the amplifier and every piece that came with it. Nothing like consumer electronics: it felt tailor-made, the same experience as one of my Corneliani suits.

For hours I just looked at it, trying to understand how a piece of electronics could look so astonishing and so authoritative in a living room. It dominated everything else. But a finance man knows that packaging is a promise, not a return, and I wanted to see whether this one would be kept.

It was kept for years. Through every change of speakers, cables and sources it was my constant, unfolding every detail I needed to evaluate, compare and choose, and it never ever failed me. Hand-built in-house in New York for over 75 years, it is a device built for sound; it is made of sound.

The crate told me how it was made. Years of music told me why.