Designed by company founder, owner and chief designer, John Franks, the Ultima Integrated maintains the company's unique aesthetic we've come to know from the Kent, England-based manufacturer. The metalwork is precision-machined from solid aircraft-grade aluminium, including Chord Electronics' iconic Integra Legs. The upper panel (lid) features Chord Electronics' established vented design, with a newly redesigned logo-engraved dimmable LED light ring, giving distinctive visual appeal day or night. It's also available in a choice of Jett Black or Argent Silver, while the amplifier can also be specified with a highly polished black acrylic side block option at no additional cost.

The new Ultima Integrated shares the same all-new 28-mm-thick front panel seen in the recently introduced Ultima PRE 3 preamp. The new frontage offers a perfectly symmetrical aesthetic, centered on a spherical power on/off control that uses the company's familiar (dimmable) polychromatic lighting, which offers a clear and simple indication of the amplifier's playing status. The power sphere is flanked by a newly designed combined volume and input selector, plus a combined balance and AV bypass control.

The Ultima Integrated features the company's latest dual-feed-forward error-correction topology, and proprietary ultra-high-frequency power supplies. Franks tells us the advanced error-correction topology, which monitors and immediately corrects signals before the output stage, is key to the four-input ULTIMA Integrated, and “offers astonishing signal accuracy for unrivalled fidelity from a one-box integrated device.” The Ultima Integrated offers four inputs, one fully balanced and three unbalanced, with individual buffering and are selectively filtered against potential ingress from radio frequency interference. In addition to its four inputs, AV bypass and balanced outputs, the amplifier's rear panel also contains high-quality loudspeaker terminals, a 12 V trigger and a 10 A C-19-type IEC. Selection switching is via microprocessor-controlled sealed relays. 

Chord Electronics' Ultima Integrated is the first new integrated amplifier for the company in seven years and is the only full-width model in the company's range. Each amplifier is hand-built at the riverside Kent factory, The Pumphouse, over several days, with each build overseen by a dedicated engineer.

John Franks told StereoNET:

The new Ultima Integrated offers levels of performance not yet seen in any integrated amplifier. It features no fewer than four separate high-power line input phase-corrected power supplies working in harmony to give this new amplifier the high energy power levels and fast transient power that Chord Electronics' products are known for.

The Chord Electronics Ultima Integrated is available to pre-order now, with shipping expected around September 2023. It will sell for £8,500 in the UK.

For more information visit Chord Electronics