Lab: Paul Miller

Even if the title isn't familiar, you'll know The March Of Progress by Rudolph Zallinger. Published in a 1965 volume of Life Nature Library and depicting 25 million years of human evolution as a series of side-on illustrations, from the ape-like Pliopithecus to modern man, it popped into my mind when I unboxed PS Audio's Aspen FR5.

If you were to attend a classic car show and make a beeline for the enthusiasts exhibiting vehicles made by mass-market manufacturers, it would be easy to predict the kinds of designs you'd see on display. Most space would be given over to the noteworthy models: the big-engined ones, the sporty or luxury variants, the rare limited editions. And yet the bread-and-butter models that carried sales reps up and down the land and took many of us to school as children are largely forgotten. They were workhorses, used until the end of their lives and then replaced.

With that large screen on show, it's clear the £2799 RAS-5000 is not a back-to-basics Rotel amp. Offering multiple streaming options and smart connectivity, including HDMI eARC, this is a receiver to tempt both hi-fi newbies and hardcore traditionalists. Of course, there are many HDMI-kitted rivals out there, including the Cambridge Audio EVO 150 , Marantz Model 40n , and Yamaha R-N2000A to name just a few. And like the latter two, Rotel's all-in-one packs all its 'modern' functionality into a full-sized housing that will be familiar to followers of the brand. Neither is this a one-off, as the 2x220W/4ohm-rated RAS-5000 is a bigger, more capable brother to the slender S14 streaming amplifier (£1799) launched at the tail-end of 2022.

Think valve amplifiers, and the chances are the image brought to mind is that of a minimalist device, with little apart from a source selector, volume control and output stage. And when we're talking about valve preamplifiers, things might be even simpler. Well, clearly that particular memo went straight into the junk folder at McIntosh Labs' HQ in upstate New York, as the new £11,995 C2800 valve preamp is anything but minimalist.