Pearl Audio has been an authorized Boulder dealer in Portland since 2018. We represent Boulder's integrated amplifiers, preamplifiers, power amplifiers and phono stages, and we plan, deliver and install every system ourselves.
Of all the electronics in our store, Boulder is the one that reproduces a recording most nearly as it was made in the studio. That is where the company came from. Jeff Nelson built amplifiers and consoles for recording and broadcast before he built anything for the home, and the first Boulder amplifier, the 500 of 1984, went into studios, broadcast facilities and loudspeaker makers' laboratories. His standard came from that work: equipment that alters a recording does not get used a second time.
Nothing is added to flatter the music and nothing is smoothed over. A fine recording sounds like one, and so does a poor one. If that is what you want from a system, this is the amplification we would play for you first.
Boulder amplifiers are made to an unusual standard. The chassis, heat sinks and even the knobs are machined from solid aluminum in Boulder's own factory in Louisville, Colorado, the circuit boards are built in the same building, and every unit is tested and listened to before it ships. They are bought once and kept.
We became a Boulder dealer in 2018, around the time the 1100 Series arrived. Its faceplates are machined with the contour lines of the mountains above the town of Boulder, and that detail landed close to home: John Loranger, Pearl Audio's owner, used to live in Colorado and had been up to the Flatirons many times.
There is a second mountain range on a Boulder amplifier, and it is easy to miss. Look at the side panels in the photograph above. The vents are rows of machined slots with rounded ends, and when light falls across them the pattern reads as a line of peaks. For someone who loved the Colorado mountains, it was one more reason to like the amplifiers before a note had been played.
Tell us which pieces interest you and we will set them up in a listening room for your appointment, with loudspeakers that show what the amplifier is doing. Bring recordings you know well; with Boulder, the differences between them are the point. See the Boulder range.
Boulder is balanced-only: there are no single-ended inputs or outputs anywhere in the range. That is a strength, and it has to be planned for, so we choose the sources and cables around it before anything is delivered. For a single-ended source, Boulder makes an adapter cable. For a turntable, we set the phono stage's loading to suit your cartridge. Where several Boulder components are used together, we configure Boulder Link and network control so the whole system turns on in the right order from one button.
Boulder's amplifiers have the current to drive demanding loudspeakers. If you are matching an amplifier to loudspeakers you already own, tell us the model and the size of the room and we will advise on where in the range to look.
These are substantial pieces, and the larger amplifiers are heavy. We deliver and install them ourselves in the Portland area, place them where they have the ventilation they need, connect and configure the system, and listen with you before we leave.
To hear Boulder in Portland, call (503) 222-2599 or arrange an audition.
