Integrated Amp Reviews

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Digital Processor ReviewsIntegrated Amp ReviewsSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Bel Canto Design Black ACI 600 integrated amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Mar 22, 2018  |  5 comments
When Michael McCormick, president of Bel Canto Design, suggested that I review their Black ACI 600 integrated amplifier, I accepted without hesitation. As wonderful as my reference system may sound, its dCS digital front end alone comprises four boxes and a web of cables complex enough to send many a spider spinning. Given the choice between connecting that front end to a pair of expensive, enormous monoblocks—with their similarly expensive AC cords and equipment racks/isolation platforms—or to a single, visually elegant, 45-lb box that costs $25,000, produces 300Wpc into 8 ohms, and requires only a single power cord and shelf, I think many an audiophile, even those with lots of money, might gravitate toward the latter.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Bel Canto Design C7R D/A receiver
Erick Lichte  |  Mar 20, 2013  |  7 comments
As a young music lover, I never knew there were such things as separate preamplifiers, amplifiers, and FM tuners. All I knew was that if I wanted to play music from my CD player, hook up my VCR to my stereo, or listen to the radio, I needed that magical device: a receiver. It was all I ever wanted.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Bel Canto e.One S300iu integrated amplifier
Wes Phillips  |  Jun 28, 2008  |  0 comments
After using Bel Canto's e.One DAC3 with the McIntosh Laboratory MS750 music server, I was so impressed that I wanted to hear Bel Canto's CD transports as well. But willing as Bel Canto president and CEO John Stronczer was to supply me with a CD-2, he suggested I audition the S300iu ($2195, footnote 1).
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Budget Component ReviewsIntegrated Amp ReviewsMedia Server Reviews
Bluesound PowerNode streaming integrated amplifier
Ken Micallef  |  May 27, 2022  |  0 comments
Old-school audiophiles like me cling to our vinyl records and CDs. We spin them on turntables and slide them into transports, which send electric signals through wires to solid state or tubed amplifiers—a string of hardware devices. But, despite our object-attached ways, we're quite aware that we are living in a software-enabled, Bluetooth-connected, Wi-Fi–facilitated world. Even our Milky Way galaxy is wireless; as that pontificator of everything galactic, scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, has proclaimed, "We're all connected."
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Boulder 865 integrated amplifier
Wes Phillips  |  Apr 13, 2009  |  0 comments
After Fred Kaplan reviewed Boulder Amplifiers' 810 line preamplifier and 860 power amplifier for the December 2007 Stereophile, John Atkinson requested that I listen to the 860 in my own system for a while. Never having reviewed any Boulder kit, I was curious.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Boulder 866 integrated amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Aug 20, 2021  |  13 comments
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "boulder"? I think of a rugged, mountainous landscape with jagged snow-capped peaks. I see images of the last time I drove up from sunny Boulder, Colorado, to Rocky Mountain National Park and discovered so much snow coming down that if we had dared walk too far in, our trail would have been covered with snow and we'd never have been able to find our way out. But how magical it was!
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Bow Technologies Wazoo integrated amplifier
Kalman Rubinson  |  Jun 09, 2007  |  First Published: Feb 09, 1999  |  0 comments
I hate all those automobile reviews that go on and on about a car's design aesthetics. C'mon, I can see what it looks like, even if only in the pictures. Just tell me things I can't appreciate without a run on the Autobahn.
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Brilliant CornersIntegrated Amp ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Brilliant Corners #12: Balanced Audio Technology VK-80i integrated amplifier, Ortofon Cadenza Bronze phono cartridge
Alex Halberstadt  |  Feb 21, 2024  |  31 comments
In 1976, a Soviet fighter pilot named Viktor Belenko made an emergency landing in Hokkaido, Japan. He was flying a MiG-25 supersonic interceptor jet and, upon touching down, requested political asylum. This proved to be a stroke of brilliant luck for the Americans. The MiG-25 remains one of the fastest and highest-flying aircraft ever produced, and Belenko's defection allowed them to have a tantalizing look at the technology inside.

Among the top-secret loot found inside the Soviet jet was a large, heavy triode vacuum tube used as a regulator in the power supply of the MiG's radio. It was known as the 6C33C. (The enormous electromagnetic pulse caused by a nuclear explosion would fry a transistor. Tubes were used in military equipment with such an eventuality in mind.)

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Integrated Amp Reviews
Bryston B-60R integrated amplifier
Lonnie Brownell  |  Jan 11, 2004  |  First Published: May 01, 1997  |  0 comments
Bryston is one of North America's most established hi-fi makers. Based not far from Toronto in Peterborough, Ontario, Bryston has been in business since 1962.
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Digital Processor ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
Bryston B100-DA SST DAC/integrated amplifier
Larry Greenhill  |  Apr 22, 2007  |  0 comments
Over the years, I have used and enjoyed in my audio system large, single-purpose components. Each of these chassis has had but one role: preamplifier, amplifier, digital-to-audio converter (DAC), etc. I guess I've been just a little suspicious of products with multiple functions crammed into a single small chassis; I've figured that the designer may have cut a corner that could affect the sound.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Bryston B1353 integrated amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Nov 22, 2021  |  11 comments
Out of the blue, a forever friend I hadn't spoken to in years called and asked me to join him at Riverside Church for a concert of William Basinski performing his renowned Disintegration Loops. Dedicated to the victims of 9/11, the work was completed as Basinski watched the airplanes crash into the World Trade Center from his Brooklyn rooftop.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Cambridge Audio CXA81 integrated amplifier
Ken Micallef  |  Dec 24, 2020  |  21 comments
During my tenure as a Stereophile writer, I've reviewed a lot of integrated amplifiers. The mostly moderately priced integrated machines I've reviewed have included the Heed Audio Elixir ($1195), Luxman SQ-N150 ($2795) and L-509X ($9495), NAD C 328 Hybrid Digital ($549), Octave Audio V 80 SE ($10,500), Rega Brio ($995), and Schiit Ragnarok 2 ($1799 as equipped). Regardless of price, all these integrated amplifiers engaged my senses and made engaging, dynamic, colorful music from LP grooves and ones and zeros.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Cambridge Audio Edge A integrated amplifier
Ken Micallef  |  Dec 20, 2018  |  14 comments
One summer in the mid-2000s I purchased a pair of Cambridge Audio components for my red-headed, tango-dancing Texas girlfriend. She quickly saw through my ruse to install some solid hi-fi in her New Jersey home away from home—but eventually she acquiesced, and soon Michael Martin Murphey (she), the Beatles (me), and Miles Davis (us) filled our weekends with music. Inspired by a Sam Tellig column I read around that time, I paired a Cambridge Azur integrated amplifier and CD player with a pair of Triangle Titus XS minimonitors. The sound produced by this quartet was clean, precise, and altogether pleasurable—for a total of about $1300.
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Integrated Amp ReviewsMedia Server Reviews
Cambridge Audio EVO 150 streaming integrated amplifier
Robert Schryer  |  Sep 21, 2021  |  54 comments
In 1968, I was a 2-year-old toddler living in Paris, France—my birthplace—on the 14th floor of a diplomat-occupied apartment complex overlooking the Seine. My dad, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was stationed in Paris, working security at the Canadian embassy. My mom and I were there with him.
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Integrated Amp Reviews
Cambridge Azur 851A integrated amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Feb 05, 2015  |  14 comments
The more integrated amps I review, the more I want to tell manufacturers: Please, skip the DAC, omit the phono stage, lose the Bluetooth—just give me the best sound quality, and the most vivid, most transparent line stage and control center (with pre-out) you can design. Make sure this line stage has appropriate gain, and high input and low output impedances. Give me at least four balanced and single-ended inputs. Make sure the volume, balance, and tone controls are durable and degrade the sound as little as possible. That way, I can add a DAC, server, phono stage, or Bluetooth, of any quality level, any time I choose.
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