Integrated Amplifiers

For a brand name that appears on very diverse products, from grand pianos to outboard motors, it’s amazing that Yamaha has little in the way of high-end head-fi – the company was a very early adopter of planar-magnetic headphone technology, after all. The HA-L7A DAC/headphone amp is the second product launched to address that deficiency, following on from the YH-5000SE headphone, which garnered an EISA Award last year and is a spiritual successor to the legendary HP-1 from ’76.

Conceived as the ‘command centre’ of a modern high-end system, T+A’s powerful all-in-one system embraces CD and streamed audio, in all its flavours, and radio too...

Looking for a simple, no-frills, ‘straight wire with gain’ amplification solution? If so, it’s a case of ‘move right along, please – nothing to see here’, for T+A’s R 2500 R, available in black or silver at £12,905, is a prime example of large-scale integration in the quest for one of those ‘just add speakers’ systems. Yes, you could connect other source components to it, thanks to a choice of analogue and digital inputs – but really, why would you want to?

PS Audio’s new Stellar Strata MK2 amplifier looks – at first glance – identical to the original Stellar Strata [HFN Mar ’21], save the ‘MK2’ lettering now added to its fascia. The slender chassis, offered in silver or black and a feature of all Stellar series hardware, is retained, as is the slim text display, right-side volume rotary and headphone output of its predecessor. So from the off, it’s clear that any changes made for this second-generation design are under the hood.

Integrated amplifiers are ten a penny, but not when you get into five figures. Often, at this point, consumers and manufacturers pivot toward pre/power systems, pursuing gains in performance and functionality in favour of the simplicity that comes from a one-box design. Yet high-end integrateds do exist, as illustrated by the Diablo 333, starting at £24,500, from Denmark-based Gryphon Audio.

First seen in 2023 at Munich's High-End show, Chord Electronics' Ultima Integrated is steadily finding its way into selected hi-fi emporia. Based around John Franks' tried-and-tested amplifier architecture [see PM's boxout, p65], it's the entry point to the Ultima family, whose rollout began with the flagship Ultima monoblocks .

HiFi Rose delighted, and in some cases flabbergasted, hi-fi enthusiasts with its RA180 [HFN Jul '22], an amplifier that looked like it had just escaped from the pages of Gibson-Sterling's steampunk classic The Difference Engine. Boasting lots of knobs and dials on the outside, and novel GaN FETs in its Class D power amp on the inside, it was undeniably 'something else'. It was quite an unexpected product from the Seoul-based brand too, as up to that point HiFi Rose was principally known for streamers and DACs with very large touchscreens [HFN Jun '21 and Mar '22].

Canor Audio, based in Slovakia, is certainly not the most famous of hi-fi brands, but has been around for longer than many will realise. And, cunningly, it sidesteps the minefield of online rage surrounding tube versus solid-state amplification by manufacturing hybrid amps, a solid-state design, and fully fledged tube products. Canor is clearly smart enough to hedge its bets.