AT A GLANCE Plus
Unimpeachable sound quality
Impressive power and dynamic ability
Chromecast built-in, AirPlay, and Spotify Connect support
Minus
No phono input or headphone output
No native streaming (requires smartphone, tablet or similar)
THE VERDICT
Flexible streaming options enhance the appeal of this sleek-looking integrated amplifier/DAC with serious audiophile pedigree and performance.
Primare is a small audio component manufacturer in Sweden founded by an industrial designer from Denmark. The Malmö-based firm's quirky high-end electronics have found favor among in-the-know audiophiles for nearly thirty years. Recently, a new line of streaming-centric components was introduced that appear custom-made to broaden Primare's appeal, and if the entry-level Prisma I15 integrated amplifier/DAC ("streamplifier," as I like to call them) they've supplied us for review here is any indication, the move will succeed.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Top-tier tonal accuracy and dynamic ability
Amazingly compact for performance level
On-board EQ offers flexible placement options
Minus
Relatively tight sweet spot
No on-board streaming, digital inputs, or DSP
THE VERDICT
Elac's powered-speaker is highly compact, yet capable enough to satisfy serious listeners.
Active loudspeakers, or speakers with built-in amplification, have long been box-office poison in the U.S. market. That's because we Americans like our big receivers, choosing them based on power ratings, and then hooking them up to conventional, passive speakers using garden-hose speaker wire. When you add up the market segments that simply won't consider active speakers, including owners of receivers lacking preamp outputs and those who simply cannot get their heads around the whole powered-speaker concept, the issue becomes a non-starter.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Impressive power and sonics from a sub-compact design
Dynamic enough to handle a wide range of speakers
Useful Bass EQ/subwoofer filter options
Minus
Digital conversion does not extend to 32-bit/384kHz
THE VERDICT
The D 3045 is a surprisingly powerful compact integrated amplifier with an eminently capable onboard DAC that's equally at home on the desktop or component rack.
Five years ago, when I examined NAD's $399 D 3020, the progenitor of the D 3045 before us here, I liked it—a lot. The D 3020 was among the first of what I've come to call DAC-lifiers: small-ish integrated amps with onboard digital-to-analog facilities intended for audio-streaming or computer sources and projecting at least some level of audiophile sophistication.
Subwoofer Performance Features Build Quality Value
PRICE $1,499
AT A GLANCE Plus
Rich, full-range sound
Fine imaging
Great-looking and nicely finished
Minus
Center-channel not a perfect timbral match with towers
Subwoofer output and extension does not fully complement towers
THE VERDICT
This highly affordable Q Acoustics 5.1 package offers big, warm, dynamic stereo sound from compact towers, and good movie sound with or without the included sub.
Q Acoustics is a relatively new British loudspeaker manufacturer who has made a goodly amount of noise in the value/performance speaker arena for a dozen years now. I count the firm among the 21st-century flowering of affordable-speaker-makers catalyzed by partnerships with Chinese manufacturing firms and ever-more powerful and widely accessible computer-modeling design processes. The result of this confluence has been a bounty of excellent designs in the most competitive price ranges, from new and old names alike, that in the aggregate make the home-theater dollar go further than ever before.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Top-shelf sound reproduction
Enough power to handle nearly all loudspeakers
Price-no-object manufacturing and finish
Minus
Challenging input-identification ergonomics
No phono input
THE VERDICT
Cambridge Audio’s commemorative Edge A combines top-shelf sound with gorgeous industrial design. The price may be a cut above average, but the Edge A is no average integrated amp.
Do you really need a $5,000, 54-pound, two-channel integrated amplifier? Yes, of course you do. Especially if that integrated amplifier is the new Edge A from Cambridge Audio, a British firm with a long record of seriousness about sound reproduction. Cambridge’s gear has always struck me as a rigorously high-end/high-value proposition, but the Edge A looks, tastes, and smells more like a no-holds- barred statement design, the kind we’re more likely to expect from a company whose bottom line is that they don’t give a fig for the bottom line.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Reference-grade sonics
Outstanding digital audio performance up to 32-bit/384kHz
Gorgeous fit and finish and industrial design
Minus
Basic user interface
Comparatively limited onboard music streaming options
Ethernet connection can be finicky
THE VERDICT
The Micromega M-150 is a pricey, somewhat limited, but fine-sounding integrated amp with a super-slim form factor and surprising power.
Nominally, French firm Micromega would seem a deeply conflicted organization. Is it micro, or is it mega? We may never know. (For the record, “Micomégas” is an 18th-century, ur-science-fiction novella by that most French of Enlightenment figures, Voltaire.)
Either way, the south-of-Paris firm has an established record of filling niches in the ever-shifting digital-audiophile world, beginning with several notable high-end CD players. Today, like most such manufacturers, Micromega is redefining itself for the post-physical media age: Witness its latest M-One duo of streaming- capable, digital-input integrated amplifiers—streamplifiers, as I like to call them.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Class-leading DSP surround
5.1.2-channel Dolby Atmos/DTS:X decoding
Useful Scene memory feature
Wireless surround speaker (and multiroom) option via MusicCast speakers
Minus
No 9-channel (front- and rear-height) Atmos/DTS:X expansion option
Slow DLNA audio streaming respons
THE VERDICT
Yamaha’s unique DSP-surround technology sets apart what is otherwise still a strong A/V receiver in a highly competitive market niche.
I get to review a lot of A/V receivers. Familiarity breeding— well, familiarity— I confess that I tend to sort new examples into one of three classes. The flagship models cost a lot, pump out 140 or so watts from each of at least nine and often more channels, and they tend to cram in every conceivable feature. Entry-level jobs are cheap, five- or seven-channel affairs that usually top out at 65-or-so real watts per channel and incorporate more basic feature sets.
S 809 HCS Speaker System Performance Build Quality Value
S 810 Subwoofer Performance Features Ergonomics Value
PRICE $1,497 as reviewed
AT A GLANCE Plus
Top-grade Atmos imaging and ambience reproduction
Connector-less elevation speaker hookup
Unusually good center-speaker tonal match
Minus
Minor upper-mid constriction
Minimal contribution from subwoofer
THE VERDICT
This Jamo Atmos-ready system provides impressive immersion and solid value, though bass-heads will want to investigate the company’s more capable subwoofer offerings.
Jamo, the Danish speaker firm whose name rhymes with—well, not “ham-oh,” and not “Hey Moe!,” and certainly not orange—but with, more or less, “ma-mo,” has been quietly busy upon our shores for several decades now. That quiet became a bit noisier after the firm's acquisition by Klipsch in 2005 (both now part of the VOXX corporate group founded by car-fi stalwart Audiovox).
AT A GLANCE Plus
Outstanding sound quality
Very high standard of fit, finish, and industrial design
Generally excellent
ergonomics with well-conceived app
Minus
Premium pricing may scare off some buyers
Occasionally slow
volume-control response via iOS app
THE VERDICT
An excellent solution, for those who
can afford it, for a streaming/computer-audio system where sound quality is as important as features or user interface.
Is it an integrated amplifier with onboard wireless and network streaming, or an audio streamer with built-in amplification?
Yes. The Uniti Atom, from British iconoclast Naim Audio, is both of these, as well as a quarterback for
the company’s Mu-so wireless-
multiroom ecosystem (and a few other things mixed in). Like all Naim products since the brand’s inception in the mid-1970s, the Atom is distinctly different from most competing designs in both appearance and operation; the company’s proximity to the powerful vibrations of Stonehenge doubtless has something to do with this tradition. That said, the Atom is less different from its competition than many a previous design, because this sort
of streaming amp is what the classic stereo integrated amp seems to
have morphed into, here in the post-
physical-media 21st century. But perhaps the rest of the world has simply caught up, or caught sideways, to Naim.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Solid two-channel and multichannel power
3.1.2-channel Dolby Atmos/DTS:X virtual height effects
Excellent Audyssey MultEQ XT32 room correction
HEOS wireless multiroom
Minus
Wired multiroom limited to one zone
THE VERDICT
A fine seven-channel amp, attractive ergonomics, full 4K/HDR-readiness, and 5.2.2 Dolby Atmos and DTS:X make for a very competitive midrange option.
Denon’s new AVR-X3400H A/V receiver scored points with me even before I got it out of its box: The four-piece packaging foam (top/bottom front and back) allows for easy removal of a heavy-ish item without battling box flaps, splintering full end-cap pieces, or leaving a trail of Styrofoam crumbs behind. (Yes, I’m packing-material obsessive.) But let me not prejudge.