Halcro Eclipse Mono

The rebirth of Halcro is one of the great stories in Australian hi-fi this year. Hailed in the early 2000s as creating the “best amplifier ever” cover shout, no less), the brand was mothballed after a change of ownership but is revived now by an enthusiastic team, with this magnificent Eclipse Mono as its first and statement product. And what a statement — these are monobloc power amps which cost $135,000 for the pair, rated output 550W into 4 ohms, with Halcro claiming incredibly that the Eclipse Mono has even lower distortion than the Halcro dm58, an amp that was independently proved to have less of these distortions than any other amplifier in the world. (THD at 1kHz of the Eclipse Mono is more than 140dB down, 0.00001%.)