Inspired by the success of its A-70 integrated from 2012, Pioneer has trickled down the tech and combined it with a new close-coupled PSU in this DAC-equipped budget amp
Having recently achieved the grand old age of 80 years, the Pioneer Corporation is rightly celebrating the fact. While some believe that all Japanese companies are the same – faceless consumer electronics giants with sprawling factories full of robots, making generic white goods – anyone who's lived in Japan knows this couldn't be further from the truth. In practice, each organisation has its distinct identity and corporate culture, going about things in its own special way.
The company ups the ante by adding a 'just-add-speakers' solution to its Artera series, managing to squeeze streaming alongside CD replay into casework of pert proportions
So far, Quad's Artera family has comprised the Play (a combined CD transport, DAC and preamp) and the Stereo [HFN Nov '15], which is a power amp using the company's Current Dumping topology. Both solid-state components, not only are they compact and dapper but high functioning and lifestyle literate too – a feat that's trickier than it might seem. But not as tricky as folding all of the above (plus streaming) into a chassis with the same proportions as the other components in the Artera range.
Still billed as 'The World's Most Powerful Integrated Amplifier', Perreaux's MOSFET flagship has been tickled-up with a new digital input module. And more power too...?
Side-by-side, you'd be forgiven for seeing no changes between the Perreaux Eloquence 255i integrated amplifier and the earlier 250i [HFN Aug '12]. Same rotary, same display, same number of buttons – even the price would leave you clueless, the six years between them inflating the £5695 of the earlier unit to £6895 in standard, line-level-only trim. Given the recent drop in the value of Sterling, that alone could account for the increase, so full marks to Perreaux.
The style may be ‘retro’, but this powerful integrated amp from a Far East legend is no exercise in nostalgia: it lacks fashionable digital inputs, but has serious sonic appeal
OK, so it may help explain the whole ‘vinyl revival’ thing, from portable record players with greater tracking weight than a Caterpillar bulldozer to supermarket own-brand LPs, but looking to the past will only get you so far. Forget all that longer summers, colder winters and ‘jumpers for goalposts’ stuff: even nostalgia’s not what it used to be. Products must stand on their own merits in today’s competitive market.
British company Ferrograph, as its name suggests, has its origins in the production of tape recorders. After the Second World War it successfully marketed a series of professional machines based around the sturdy Wearite deck.
Having mastered this most difficult of components, it would have been relatively straightforward for Ferrograph to diversify into other lines. But its first integrated stereo amplifier is one of the most interesting.
We ran the scoop review of MF’s debut Nu-Vista unit over 15 years ago [HFN Aug ’98]. Now the company has this new nuvistor-equipped integrated amp, having recently found a company to make the requisite tube bases.
Blessedly, it eschews gadgetry offering just a remote, a switchable display of input and level, home theatre pass-through for one of the four line inputs and extra speaker terminals for bi-wiring.
The Nu-Vista 800 has a fascia machined from solid aluminium and sides fitted with attractive heatsink extrusions – it even comes with spikes for the feet and with cups too, to protect floor finishes.
In some ways the AX-5 represents a distillation of Ayre’s ‘purist’ philosophies, as it employs both the company’s ‘Diamond output circuit’ and the elaborately-designed volume control trickled down from its flagship KX-R Twenty preamplifier.
In the fully-balanced zero loop feedback AX-5 integrated, Ayre eliminated the preamp stage altogether and simply made the gain of the power amplifier directly adjustable using VGT (Variable Gain Transimpedance). The volume knob on the right of the fascia acts as an encoder to control a pair of motor-driven Shallco silver-contact rotary switches (one for each channel, conjoined using toothed belts), each of which contains dozens of hand-selected, low-noise resistors.
Volume level can be adjusted over a range of 69dB in 46 steps of 1.
Longstanding Slovakian tube specialist Canor is based in Prešov, in a purpose-built factory where it builds everything in-house and has developed a proprietary valve-testing and burn-in methodology. Valves that don’t measure up, we’re told, are returned to their makers for use in guitar amps and the like.
The company traded for many years as Edgar until changing its brand name to Canor at the end of 2007. Its inaugural integrated tube amp, the TP101 was first shown in 1995 at an exhibition in Brno.
Exposure Electronics was founded by John Farlowe in 1974 and has remained committed to two-channel music reproduction. The company is largely famous for its big blackpre/power amplifier combinations of the 1980s, when it sold to people who wanted punchy solid-state amps that sounded smoother and creamier than rival Naim products.
Nowadays, the sound hasn’t changed much but the size has, and most of its wares are more affordable products such as this one – Exposure’s top integrated. The 3010S2 series comprises a CD player, mono and stereo power amps, a preamplifier and a phono amp.
A 10W design from the final years of the valve era, the original Rogers Cadet appeared in 1958 as an amplifier and control unit combination for mounting inside a cabinet. Its stereo successor, the Cadet II, appeared in 1962 and proved equally popular.
With the version III, gain was increased so that magnetic cartridges like the Shure M44 and M75 series could be used. This was achieved by the use of special ECC807 valves and an extra stage, meaning that the Cadet III control unit became slightly wider.
The TA-1120 stereo amplifier was a step-ahead design which combined power, quality, reliability and compactness in a way that had not been seen before, but which in a few years would become ubiquitous across the ranges of Japan’s major hi-fi brands.
In 1968 the original TA-1120 was replaced by the TA-1120A, as tested here, the addition of a headphone socket and the removal of a ‘safety’ indicator light being the only obvious external clues as to which model is which. Revisions were also made to the preamplifier circuit.
The main selector lever gives a choice of phono 1 (MM) or tuner, along with a central position that selects a rotary control giving four further options, eg, mic, tape head, second MM turntable and line-level auxiliary input, which can be used to connect a CD player.
Germany’s T+A has spent the last couple of years developing a completely new range of all-solid-state electronics: its ‘HV Series’.
Built into an all-aluminium case, the PA 3000 HV amplifier’s individual sub-assemblies are screened in separate chambers. An upper compartment houses the preamplifier and voltage amplifier stages, while the electronic control processor and circuitry for driving the display screen – fed by a separate power supply arrangement – sits in a recess machined out of the 40mm-thick aluminium front panel. A 10mm-thick dividing wall shields the top section from the left/right current amplifier stages and the unit’s massive power supply is in a lower compartment.
The Editor’s review briefing included the warnings: ‘It’s 29kg – you may need help in unpacking it’ and ‘The S-550i is a remarkably dense amplifier, probably the most self-effacing yet monstrously powerful integrated we’ve ever tested. ’
This new flagship integrated, replaces the FBI while the S-300i remains as Krell’s entry-level integrated at £2795. The S-550i is a true ‘big brother’: the sonic resemblance is uncanny save for a brutal power delivery.
While the front panel suggests minimalism, that’s only because all minor settings are relegated to a menu system, eg, balance setting and input trim, which can also be accessed by the full-function remote.
Yes, those valves – made in-house – really are a foot tall! And they radiate substantial heat once the SXI has been powered up for a few minutes, but KR Audio’s amplifiers are beautifully engineered.
The company is based in Prague, founded by electronics engineer the late Dr Ricardo Kron in 1992. It’s a boutique firm of only a dozen or so people – skilled artisans who blow the glass and hand-craft the tubes.
Such is the transparency of KR Audio’s Kronzilla amplifiers that at least of couple of German recording studios use them in mastering suites.
If proof were needed of Bryston’s mettle for embracing the modern world beyond purist two-channel analogue pursuits, it’s the B135 SST2 C-Series Integrated Amplifier. While the unit reviewed here is two-channel, purist and analogue, it can be fitted with a DAC module for £1575 that adds two coaxial and two Toslink inputs.
Other options include a £500 universal remote and an MM-only phono stage for £650. Bryston offers neither MC nor USB.