Rowlands

If you ever meet Jeff Rowland you will find him to be very calm, low key, humble and approachable I don't get the feeling he cares to play the games with reviewers to get his stuff reviewed; it speaks for itself. Jeff has a huge following overseas too. I recently purchased a pair of his old Model 9tiHC monoblocks that are old by today's standard but have always been a favorite solid state of mine. I like the Pass, but in AZ it adds to my A/C expense in the summer; they are hot!

I once switched from Rowland components to Pass components and thought it was a nice upgrade. I later switched from the Pass to a Rowland integrated and while the presentation was different, it wasn't a downgrade. From this I conclude that Rowland and Pass both make great quality, musically satisfying equipment.

Rowland popularity slump in North America was partially caused by JRDG's adoption of class D for its highest end amplifiers. The new series of high bias class A/B amps from Rowland might cure the popularity slump. M625 stereo is already out, and a new M725 mono has been said to be out before year end. Looks like no more higher end class D amps from JRDG. G.

They seem like a very low keyed business . None of the dealers in my area have ever sold there gear and reviews are few and far between . The word around our audio club is that they sound excellent in some systems and poor in others .

rowland equipment has a refinement in its build quality and its sound that is, at least to me, somewhat "european" in effect. you look at the beautiful internal layout of the new 625 amplifier on the web site, and then you go hear it on a really top-notch pair of speakers, and what you may find is a very relaxed quality but with emphasis on very subtle details.
And every time i went to the dealer to hear an amp or a preamp i was
probably more frustrated than coming away from other stores; there was little leeway on the price and at the same time a tremendous motivation on my part in trying to figure out where the heck i was going to find the money. a good example of this is when the model 8 stereo amp came out at over $12k when other top brands were going for $7k-$9k. and then the rowland 9 monoblocks were as massive as they were completely insanely priced at the time they were made available. i never got to even hear them as a result (a shame). as such many of us will never experience that level of performance, and then time moved on and JRDG had to, instead of building on that theme, turn elsewhere and see if they could get the job done without the elegance and expense of those huge gleaming boxes.
so as they have struggled with trying to make the very best components possible, so have the rest of us struggled with trying to keep up with the price structures that rowland gear demands. i would love a criterion preamp but i had to settle for something else in the meanwhile costing far less, but that still has excellent sound.
maybe someday...