Integrated Amplifiers

Two disparate thoughts crossed my mind after a mere two minutes with Aavik’s I-188 integrated amplifier. The first was a whiff of familiarity when I saw that Flemming E. Rasmussen, the semi-retired founder of Gryphon Audio, was involved in Aavik. The other was seeing reports from the AXPONA show in Chicago suggesting there was a discernible boom in high-end integrated amps, especially among older audiophiles who are downsizing, rather than post-Gen-Xers who shun clutte.

Flying in the face of received hi-fi wisdom that presumes absolute sonic purity is best achieved with separate pre/power amplifiers, integrated amplifiers are having something of a renaissance. Aside from the entry-level and mid-market, where one-box amplification has always been the go-to choice, there’s now a good selection of high-end models from the likes of Rotel’s Michi X3 S2 [HFN Jan ’24], starting from just under £6000, to the massive Dan D’Agostino Momentum MxV [also HFN Jan ’24], yours for just short of £100k when fully loaded with DAC and phono modules.

While not a household name in the UK, the Warsaw-based Unitra brand caused quite a stir in its native Poland when revived in 2021. Its storied past played a role in this, but so did the reimagined products themselves, thanks to their nostalgia-inducing 1970s aesthetic. Moreover, while the new Unitra designs are predictably more up-to-date under the hood, they sport some idiosyncratic features. The monochrome E ink display of the CSH-801 CD player is an illustration of this, as are the remote-actuated lever switches on the £4499 WSH-805 auditioned here.

In its hi-fi heyday, Philips was one of those audio brands that seemed to delight in being unconventional. Be it in styling or engineering, its products were usually distinctive, which delighted some but confused just as many. Neither is it necessarily an advantage when the equipment has to be combined with units from other brands to form a system. Philips receivers in the early 1970s, often made in the firm’s factories in Finland, were difficult to build a system around if you wanted to use anything other than Philips source components and loudspeakers.

In the wake of well-established products such as the Sonos Amp and Bluesound’s Powernode, we’ve seen a slew of compact all-in-one amplifiers from brands including Denon, Marantz [HFN Aug ’24] and WiiM [HFN Nov ’24]. Now Chinese company Eversolo enters the fray with an offering that, while not the most affordable of its ilk, is keenly priced if you consider its extensive list of features. The Eversolo Play, at £599, even boasts a touchscreen displaying the Android-based interface also found on the brand’s DMP-A10 [HFN May ’25] and DMP-A8 [HFN May ’24] streaming DAC/preamps.

In high-end hi-fi, it’s common to see the phrase ‘two-man lift’ applied to heavyweight loudspeakers, amplifiers and subwoofers. Yet the top-of-the-line InPoL Legacy from Italian manufacturer Pathos goes one (well, two) better. This integrated amplifier, priced £51,995, arrives in a purpose-built wooden crate on wheels, along with two metal ‘pull-up’ bars that slide underneath the chassis once the crate has been disassembled. It’s then a four-person job to lift the bars and manoeuvre this 140kg beast into position.

You know where you stand with Rotel. This is a long-running company, still family-owned after almost 70 years, and with a commitment to spending money on what’s on the inside of its products rather than the cosmetics. It still winds its own transformers, and tightly specifies other components it buys in. Its halo brand, Michi, has striking looks [HFN Apr ’25 & May ’24] – from the originals with their Japanese lacquered side-panels to the understated chic of the black-on-black current generation – but the core products remain plain and simple [HFN Apr ’22], looking functional to the point where some might even consider them dour.