Dick Olsher had been devoted to tubes for 30 years when the solid-state EAR 834T arrived in his listening room. On his Magnepan panel speakers, which ask a lot of an amplifier, it "coaxed the best sound I've ever heard out of a pair of Maggies." That suited EAR's founder and designer, Tim de Paravicini, who held from the 1970s on that tubes and transistors can sound equally good. In the 834T, transistors feed the speaker through an output transformer, just as in a tube amp, and de Paravicini reasoned that a circuit with a tube amp's "genetic code" had to sound like one. Transformers that pass only a narrow range of frequencies tend to sound soft, and Olsher notes that de Paravicini's reach far above hearing. Ed Selley of Hi-Fi News says an EAR owner would know a de Paravicini design "by the bass alone," which he hears as "deep, controlled and Amarone-dry" under a warm midrange. EAR suits listeners who want tube tone with a firm grip on the bass.

The 834P phono stage is the usual way in, and de Paravicini said it sold very well all over the world. It takes moving-magnet cartridges directly and has built-in step-up transformers for moving coils. Tony Fafoglia of SoundStage! found that it ran cool, and US distributor Dan Meinwald estimated several years of use from a set of tubes. The version with a volume knob can drive a power amp on its own, and Fafoglia heard more forceful bass once he took his preamp out of the chain. If you do use a preamp, Meinwald suggested leaving that knob all the way up. If you own several cartridges, look at the solid-state 324, which puts a wide range of settings on its front panel. Robert H. Levi of Positive Feedback called it "an LP time machine" and compared finding the right setting to locking in a cartridge's tracking angle. For amplification, Art Dudley of Stereophile ran the 890 with his Quad electrostatics, and a switch on top turns it into a monoblock with twice the power.

De Paravicini was schooled in England and spent seven years in South Africa, where he did repairs and consulting for a store that imported McIntosh and Luxman. Visiting Lux salesmen invited him to Japan, and in the 1970s he spent four years as Lux's chief amplifier designer, creating the C1000 preamp and M6000 power amp. Art Dudley writes that he perfected his craft with output transformers there. Back in England he started EAR, for Esoteric Audio Research. The 509 of 1977 was named for the single PL509 tube in it, and the habit stuck, so the 834 uses eight EL34s. In the 1980s he built record-cutting electronics for Island Records, and later a disc-cutting system for Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. He designed the A1 integrated for Musical Fidelity and consulted for Quad. The EAR 859 won a Stereo Sound award, and he said he sold more 859s in Japan in 1995–96 than all other valve amplifier makers combined. Steve Harris of Stereophile wrote that he had designed at least one of every part of a recording system, from microphones to tape recorders.