Integrated Amplifiers

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Review: Mark Craven, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jan 16, 2025  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2024
hfnoutstandingLeveraging key know-how from its flagship Apex amplifiers, and replacing the original Diablo integrated, the Diablo 333 is more powerful, more flexible and yet more devilish!

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.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  May 02, 2025  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2024
hfnoutstandingNaim Audio’s latest single-box solution takes the Uniti Nova, with its NP800 streaming platform, and swaps out the Class A/B amplifier for a higher power Class D engine

The term ‘game-changing’ is widely overused, but it’s fully justified in the case of Naim’s original Naim Uniti. Launched in 2009, it was in the vanguard of CD/streaming/amplifier products, a concept now more widely adopted in the past decade and a half. And in the 15 years since the original Naim Uniti appeared, the company has continuously developed the technology inside the series, not to mention spinning it off into component network players and its Mu-so network speaker systems.

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  May 27, 2025  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2024
hfnoutstandingA fusion of Yamaha’s hi-fi audio technologies with the proprietary Sound Field modes debuted on its AV hardware decades ago, the HA-L7A is a headphone amp with a twist

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.

Review: Jamie Biesemans  |  May 28, 2025  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2024
hfnedchoice Produced under the watchful eye of Monitor Audio, Blok’s modular ‘hi-fi furniture’ combines acoustic engineering with contemporary design.

As the EISA Awards jury noted this year [HFN Oct ’24], AV furniture is ‘often overlooked… but has a crucial part to play’. Monitor Audio would agree, and having acquired Blok in 2019, it has launched a redesigned Stax 2G system this summer. Retaining its predecessor’s wooden box-like supports and full-width shelves, the improved modular form-factor promises to be easier to configure and assemble.

Review: Mark Craven, Lab: Paul Miller  |  May 30, 2025  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2024
hfnoutstandingIndustry ‘disrupter’ WiiM continues its campaign to shake up the audio scene with another comprehensively-equipped streamer, this time with a Class D amp on board

If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone talking about WiiM in the last year I would easily be able to afford the £329 streaming amplifier auditioned here. Since its arrival in the UK in 2023, WiiM – the consumer-facing brand of California-based smart technology company Linkplay – has earned a reputation for compact, networked hi-fi products that combine wide feature sets and a forward-thinking control app, but at prices that would have seemed like science-fiction just a few years ago.

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 14, 2024
hfnoutstandingChord's first new integrated amplifier in some seven years combines no fewer than four switchmode PSUs and 125W of stereo power into a very stylish Ultima 3 preamp chassis

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 .

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Apr 23, 2025  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2024
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With the H600’s streaming/DAC platform at its heart the new H400 – dubbed the ‘Streamliner’ by Hegel – looks set to take over as the sweet spot of the range

When Hegel’s reference H600 integrated amplifier [HFN Oct ’23] arrived to replace the H590 [HFN Oct ’18] last summer, it didn’t require much insight into the hi-fi industry to guess that the H390 [HFN Aug ’19] would also be marching in the general direction of the exit soon enough. It’s taken a year, though, before the replacement H400 – aka the ‘Streamliner’ – eventually pulled into port.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Apr 23, 2025  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2024
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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?

Tim Jarman, Lab: Paul Miller  |  May 02, 2025  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2024
hfnvintage A child of the Rank Organisation, the Linton can trace its roots back to the Leak Delta 30 and Stereo 30 Plus before it. We travel back to Wharfedale’s (early ’70s) halcyon days

The Wharfedale Linton loudspeaker is one of those hi-fi products that seems to have been around forever. It has been produced in many forms and is still with us today in ‘Heritage’ guise. The original Linton, Super Linton and Linton 2 were all strong sellers in the 1960s and ’70s and many listeners will have heard, owned or borrowed a pair at some stage. Lesser known was Wharfedale’s complete Linton system, which was offered in hi-fi’s boom years of the early 1970s. It is the amplifier from the first version of this which we are looking at this month.

Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jul 08, 2024
hfnoutstandingTaking its cues from the industrial design and Darlington topology of the L-509X, the latest L-509Z variant demonstrates how subtle revisions can exert a big sonic impact

At first glance, since they look like twins, you might wonder what Luxman has done to the L-509X integrated amplifier [HFN Jan ’18] to justify the Z suffix. The pesky price increase from £8500 to £10,999 reflects six years of inflation and recent world turbulence, but don’t be fooled by nearly identical looks. The devil is in the details.

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  May 06, 2024
hfnoutstandingMore sober than the 'steampunk' styled RA180, and more powerful too, the new RA280 takes HiFi Rose's GaN FET-based Class D architecture into the audiophile zone

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].

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Apr 11, 2024
hfnoutstandingThis Slovakian design and production facility takes pride in its tube selection, in-house PCB 'milling' and other innovations. Here's the new flagship 'Premium Line' integrated

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.

Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Feb 19, 2024
hfnoutstandingFirst the Nu-Vista series, and now the iconic 'Class A' A1 integrated is reimagined by Musical Fidelity's new owners. How close to the original is this modern version?

Now that Heinz Lichtenegger, president of parent brand Audio Tuning, is comfortably behind the wheel of Musical Fidelity and the marque is churning out a steady flow of new products, including the rather notable Nu-Vista amplifiers [HFN Mar & Aug '23], it's good to see the full history of this British brand being revisited. The £1499 reissue of the 'griddle plate' A1 integrated amplifier is a case in point. Without losing sight of the past – or the original A1's flaws – it has been reworked by Simon Quarry, the engineer in charge of most new Musical Fidelity designs. The result is a fully symmetrical, Class A-biased amplifier that looks, and sounds, true to the original – it is not simply a vintage lookalike with unconvincing innards.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Feb 15, 2024
hfnoutstandingRotel's 'entry-level' Michi integrated, now in Series 2 guise, features multiple component updates – including switching to an ESS DAC – while retaining its huge power output

Listening to Rotel's Michi X3 Series 2 reminds me of that popular paranormal radio series Uncanny: I'm sure the amplifier's all-black, slightly menacing presence is in my listening room, though the sceptical view says it shouldn't exist. After all, some months back Rotel reorganised its distribution in mainland Europe, but with no mention of what was happening in the UK. A conversation with Rotel's distributor at the time, Bowers & Wilkins, had indicated that the lawyers were busy, and things were set to change.

Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Feb 12, 2024
hfnoutstandingThis new heavyweight integrated blends inspiration from D'Agostino's Momentum HD preamp and MxV power amp into an app-controlled design with modular upgrade path

Integrated amplifiers are a matter of lifestyle choice, and we've all heard the arguments about why they are either better or worse than separate pre/power combinations. Whatever the sales pitch, pro or anti, the bottom line is that you are choosing space-saving over possible audiophile preferences. With the Momentum MxV Integrated – the other one in the family being the less-costly Progression [HFN Nov '20] – founder and chief engineer Dan D'Agostino is giving you absolutely everything in a single box, for a heady £73,998 in silver or black.

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