My Kinki Studio EX-B7 mono power amplifiers always sounded superb and, as far as I knew, were the highest quality within this brand’s “Extreme” series. The next step within this brand was well beyond my budget in the form of the “Stunning” series, which includes the 790 preamplifier and the 791 power amplifier.
Although very happy with the EX-B7 monos, I got a little antsy when I saw a post about the Vinshine x Kinki Dazzle integrated amplifier. Vinshine was completely unfamiliar to me, but what did Kinki Studio have to do with it?
It turns out Kinki Studio has released a new integrated amplifier called Dazzle, which roughly translates to “blinding.” My interest was piqued, and I delved deeper into its features.
The Dazzle is available in silver or dark gray, as shown here. The standard Dazzle is already a very well-designed and built amplifier, featuring a low-resonance chassis borrowed from the Stunning series, excellent quality components, and built with the Kinki Studio philosophy. Kinki Studio’s designer/owner, Ivan Liu, has a soft spot for the Swiss Goldmund brand and designs Kinki Studio equipment to reflect those sonic qualities, but with a better price-performance ratio.
Besides the standard Dazzle, there is also a DE (de luxe) version with, among other things, a better power inlet, binding posts, and an extra RCA input that allows you to bypass the preamp. To the best of my knowledge, the standard and DE versions are not available in the Netherlands.
The most comprehensive version, and fortunately available in the Netherlands, is the Vinshine Colobration edition. It has improvements to further enhance the sound, somewhat reminiscent of the KTE versions of Holo Audio equipment.
The Vinshine modifications include:
Six high-end fuses from ShoonTH, cryogenically treated (120 hours at -196 C)- Exact Express FLAME Series internal wiring
- ShoonTH OFC speaker binding posts, cryogenically treated
- ShoonTH AC power inlet, cryogenically treated
Aside from the Vinshine modifications, the Dazzle is already an excellently designed amplifier. The amplifier is fully dual-mono. Two 800W transformers serve as power supply, primarily for the power amplification stage, and on top of that, two 25VA transformers are located on the power supply board in the center of the amplifier for the lower-power components. A total of eight sets of fast, low-noise power supply lines originate from the various transformers, which individually power the control functions, display, protection, preamplifier, and power amplifier stages.
The power supply is equipped with generous capacitance capacitors. Each channel is has four 6800 µF specially selected capacitors.
Uniquely, each capacitor is equipped with a 10 µF Vishay MKP film parallel capacitor. This technique is often used in loudspeaker crossovers; a small parallel capacitor is much faster than a large one with a lot of capacitance, thus contributing to the system’s speed. I say unique because I have not seen this before in an amplifier power supply, but I could be completely wrong.
All internal circuit boards are 3µm thick gold-plated, including the preamplifier section. The design ensures ultra-short signal paths, which is why the preamplifier board is mounted close to the inputs on the rear of the cabinet. There are three RCA inputs and two XLR inputs. RCA input three is dual, with one of them serving as a preamplifier bypass. This function must be activated separately via the remote control.
The volume control works with the high-end MUSES 72320 module with electronically switched ladder with precision resistors and adjusts the volume in steps of 1 dB. A particularly useful feature of this control is that you can’t just suddenly drive the amplifier at full power. If you hold down the + or – buttons on the remote control, the volume increases or decreases a maximum of 10 dB and then stops automatically. A very safe option for an amplifier with this much power!
The remote control is an all-metal beauty and is the same color as the amplifier. The battery cover is held in place by four small magnets, a clever design.
After the preamplification, Kinki’s own newly designed SSCLD module (Super Symmetry Current Linear Drive) delivers ultra-wide bandwidth, high dynamic range, high and very fast voltage changes, and ultra-low distortion. The coupling to the preamplification is fully DC, so there are no capacitances in the signal path.
The power amplifier uses twelve Exicon MOSFETs per channel, ensuring low output impedance, high power output, and therefore absolute control over the speakers.
The specifications are excellent due to the above construction, and that’s actually an understatement. Consider the 300W into 8Ω and 560W into 4Ω. Distortion is very low at 0.0054%, and the signal-to-noise ratio is less than -115dB at 1kHz.
The first 15W are Class A, and if you don’t play too loudly, that’s sufficient to maintain Class A performance all over. The designer heatsinks on both sides of the Dazzle don’t get all that hot, though I expected them to be warmer for Class A, but that apparently says something about the heatsinks’ effectiveness.
The Dazzle is truly built to last ten generations, and it weighs a hefty 33kg, partly due to the heavy, low-resonance chassis and the enormous transformers. It’s not a device you can easily slide into a hi-fi rack, and for me, it was practically impossible to handle. Jos from Magna Hifi was fortunately very helpful again in completing this job, priceless
All those great specs and design philosophies are nice, but do they actually result in a good-sounding amplifier? I can’t make it any more exciting than a YES. The Dazzle sounds truly phenomenal, and you can hear it from the moment you turn it on. Even fresh out of the box, you can already hear its qualities. But as usual, I let any audio device run in for a long time, and after a few days of running, the sound has truly matured!
I’d already read quite a bit about it, of course, and one of the things the Dazzle apparently does very well is its bass response. And indeed, the control and layering in the bass response are top-notch. The midrange is powerful, very open, and rich in detail with a wonderful glow. Not so much warm, but with the necessary body. The treble is velvety-smooth when needed, but the midrange and treble can also be very dynamic; the drive of this amplifier is truly fantastic. The small details are perfectly placed in the room, each in its own place. The 3D effect is also very impressive; the soundstage is deeper and wider than anything I’ve ever heard here before—spaciousness at its finest!
What’s striking is that even if you’re not sitting in the center, you can still hear both speakers clearly.
It’s always amazing that such a beast of an amplifier, especially considering its weight and power, can so captivatingly render such wonderfully light-footed, delicate, and fragile music. When I heard the Audio-GD Master 10 back then , I had a similar experience: a ballerina with enormous muscles. The same is true here, only a few hundred percent better in my opinion.
Incidentally, I read in a review that the bizarrely good and controlled bass reproduction comes at the expense of the midrange/highs, which supposedly results in less distinct timbre and texture of voices and instruments. I was, of course, paying specific attention to this, but apparently I have a different Dazzle at home. With the best will in the world, I can’t agree with this.
Of course, I’m not the only one who finds this Vinshine x Kinki Dazzle amplifier truly amazing. 6 Moons, not just any website, has named the Dazzle “Product of the Year 2025.”
This time, there’s no list of songs with highlights, simply because everything I play sounds so damn good. There’s a great sense of calm in the sound, which is wonderful. But when it comes to dynamics, this device delivers it plenty. The resolution and transparency are high, every detail is mercilessly unraveled and perfectly placed in the room. For example, two guitars that used to be heard on the right side of the soundstage now find their own place even better in terms of depth and width; the placement is spot on.
The Dazzle has all the features I expect from an amplifier. And you can bet that the price of this powerhouse would be three times higher if it were built in Europe. It currently costs just under €8,300 in the Netherlands, which is a lot of money on itself, but just calculate for yourself what a European-built Dazzle would cost.
So, is it recommended? Absolutely! My blind purchase turned out to be a bull’s-eye. If you’re planning to buy an integrated amplifier, you have to put the Dazzle on your wish list. Even if you’re planning on using a separate preamp/power amp, I’d venture to say the Dazzle will still fare very well in a comparison…
PRODUCT PAGE VINSHINE X KINKI DAZZLE
PRODUCT PAGE VINSHINE X KINKI DAZZLE AT MAGNA HIFI
Equipment used:
AEZ nanotec Power Strada #308 / Iego 8075BK copper-rhodium power cables
Purecable nanoPWR 309 power cable (used 1x on the Rockna Wavedream Reference)
Purecable 8-way Nano Block with iFi AC iPurifier
TP-Link switch TL-SG105 on SOtM sPS 500 power supply *
AEZ Carbon / MFP8 IE ethernet cables
Rockna Wavedream Reference Signature
Grimm SQM XLR interconnect
Vinshine x Kinki Studio Dazzle integrated amplifier
AEZ nanotec SP#79 PTC1 / Furutech FP202(R) speaker cable
Xanadu HRS22YH-MG on Liedtke-Metalldesign LM REFERENZ-X stands with Stack Audio Auva 100
*Note: Most of the listening hours were made with the TP-Link TL-SG105 switch on a SOtM sPS500 power supply. Later also with a Vinshine X LHY SW-10pro switch which you can already see in the case, more about which later.
