There’s something coy about the way Arcam designed the packaging for its new A25 integrated amplifier ($1499, all prices in USD). It’s clean but utilitarian. Its labels are sparse but precisely informative. There are no diagrams, no claims about performance specifications, no lists of supported formats or connectivity options. There isn’t even any indication that the power stage relies on an amp topology that many people have never heard of or experienced: class G.
If you’ve been reading my stuff for any appreciable amount of time, what follows is going to read like a bit of a greatest-hits compilation, insofar as I can claim to have had any hits. It just feels like all of it needs to be repeated, perhaps with a slightly different approach that will hopefully sink in.
Sometimes, I like to approach a new review product as if I had encountered it in the wild, unawares, even if I know exactly what I’m getting ahead of time. And when I look at the packaging for Yamaha’s R-N1000A streaming stereo receiver ($1799.95, in USD) in that frame of mind, I have to admit that my first thought is to wonder whether this is a piece designed with the A/V market or the hi-fi crowd in mind.
Read more: Unboxing the Yamaha R-N1000A Streaming Stereo Receiver
As some of you know, I await the publication of my own hardware reviews like a kid anticipates Christmas—not because I want to re-read my own words, but because that’s when I finally get to see our measurement specialist Diego Estan’s objective data for the first time. I see those measurements when you do, dear reader, and not a minute before.
It’s getting a little difficult these days to sort out a piece of Marantz gear’s place in the overall product family by designation alone, but that’s where my complaints with the company’s current lineup begin and end. Its latest integrated amplifier, for example, is simply called the Model 50 ($1800, all prices USD). Is there anything in that title that indicates a sort of little sibling to the Model 30 ($2999) released in 2020?
Read more: Unboxing the Marantz Model 50 Integrated Amplifier
It seems that I’ve been misunderstood. That’s always a danger when you’re monologuing, but thankfully the SoundStage! Network is more of a slow, ongoing dialog between an incredibly motley crew. To wit: the most recent volley in my ongoing parley with SoundStage! Ultra editor Jason Thorpe is a piece titled “I’m Not an Oligarch!”—which is a response to my January editorial, “The Needs of the Many versus the Needs of the Reviewer.”
Read more: On the Nature of Stoics, Straw Men, and Solved Problems
Kicking off a relationship with openness and honesty is always a good policy, so I love it when manufacturers don’t try to hide (often economically necessary) offshore manufacturing with “Designed in _____” badging. And to be sure, there is a “Designed and Engineered in Canada” label on the packaging for PSB’s new Imagine B50 bookshelf speakers ($699/pair, all prices USD). But that’s just as quickly followed by a transparent and prominent “Made in China.”
Some years back, my dad and I found ourselves in a bit of a street race: our C7 Corvette versus a Ferrari F12berlinetta. $83,000 of automated-factory-line American plastic against $320,000 of hand-crafted Italian swank. V8 versus V12. Two of the finest front-engine GT cars ever developed going head-to-head. And we won. The F12berlinetta simply couldn’t keep up in the corners.
Read more: Price Categories for Hi-Fi Don’t Make (Much) Sense
Remember those old commercials where two people walking down the street in opposite directions—one obliviously carrying an open jar of peanut butter; the other mindlessly nomming a whole chocolate bar—slam into each other as absentminded people will do and invent Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Swap the peanut butter for a Bob Carver tube amp and the chocolate for something like a solid-state ChiFi amp from the likes of SoundArtist, and I have to think that meet-cute collision would result in something that looks like the Dayton Audio HTA200 hybrid integrated amplifier ($349.98, all prices USD).
Read more: Unboxing the Dayton Audio HTA200 Integrated Amplifier-DAC
I love the missives I receive from readers and listeners, and I give every one of them my individual attention. But it has to be said that they tend to fall into a few distinct categories, and some I like better than others. First are the people who disagree with me or have spotted a mistake (or seeming mistake). I truly love and appreciate those.
Read more: The Needs of the Many versus the Needs of the Reviewer