Integrated Amp Reviews

That is a very attractive piece of gear, a bit of vintage Sansui.

midfi is sad

JVS...The first three paragraphs of this article speak to the essence of the experience better than any description I've ever read. I've shown it to several people who have asked "What is it with sitting in the dark listening to music?" Thank you so much for putting into words what I have been unable to express but have felt strongly over my lifetime of listening.

Interesting comments about Toscanini singing along with his orchestra. His intense shouts of encouragement can be heard in his 1951 Verdi Requiem recording (in the Dies Irae), and he hums along briefly in the final section of his last studio recording of Strauss' Death and Transfiguration.

So, it doesn't meet its claimed power ratings and it doesn't measure that well in some respects. But it sounds WONderful, blissfully so. That could well be. I might like it myself. But at the same time, I'm skeptical of components that don't measure well, and probably won't buy them, insofar as my budget allows. I trust components that are well designed and meet their power requirements, have low noise and distortion, and nice square waves. Measurements, for me, tend to confirm, or disconfirm, what a reviewer is saying, and certain aspects of measured performance, for me, correlate importantly with what I like. (I like 21 bits of resolution a lot more than 18, for example.) But all this also points up a fact which JVS and all of us need to face, which is that enjoyment of music isn't necessarily correlated, ever, with sound quality. I enjoyed listening to California Dreaming or Cast Your Fate to the Wind as a kid on transistor radio in the '60s as much as I now enjoy Strauss' Four Last Songs on my fine stereo or headphones. Maybe knowing that the amplifier wasn't that expensive or powerful freed our reviewer from worrying about critical listening so much and freed him to simply enjoy the music. Or maybe it does what poorly measuring tube amps do -- transport us back to the days of distorted sound in our childhood when we really enjoyed music.

Some companies have to learn the hard way that if something is to be shipped, it must be able to be tossed without incurring damage.

It is regrettable that there seems to be no obvious way to buy Shockwatch indicators in small quantities. Someone should choose to fix this.

USM Haller uses Shockwatch indicators on at least some of its furniture shipments. I do not know whether Herman Miller does, but they can tell just how many feet a crate was dropped onto a loading dock, by lookng at the damage. I once described damage to a chair to a Herman Miller support rep, and he said, "That requires a minimum drop of fifteen feet to a hard surface".

https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-5158/Damage-Indicators/Shockwatch-Indicators-50G?keywords=5158

Shockwatch® Indicators - 50G

... a few hundred dollars to buy a basic oscilloscope so that he (and we) could know if a relatively low-powered amplifier, such as this 404, is ever being driven into peak clipping when driving his Wilson speakers?

Also, should the simulated loudspeaker load, that JA1 uses for his tests, perhaps be revised to more closely emulate the impedance of a speaker such as the Wilson Alexia?
Up through the midrange, the impedance of the existing simulated load never drops below 6Ω, while the impedance of the Alexia approaches 2Ω at several points.

https://www.warnerclassics.com/release/brahms-violin-concerto-3

JVS

I've listened to the Moonriver and agree with you,
it is a lovely and powerful amplifier. As a result, I am considering purchasing the amp. However, since most of my
listening is via streamer. I am wondering if using
a Roon Nucleus, as the streamer, and connecting the Roon
via a USB cable to the onboard dac is a good idea? Or
would suggest a different approach. Thanks