Integrated Amplifiers

Tomorrow's world Peachtree Audio’s next-gen iDecco offers an amp, multi-input DAC, head amp and iPod dock all for £1,000 and Ed Selley just loves a good deal. . . Peachtree Audio has already graced the pages of Hi-Fi Choice, when we reviewed the Nova integrated amplifier and DAC.

Heavy metal The TP106VR+ is the flagship integrated in a new range of valve products from Slovakian brand Canor. Ed Selley feels the glow Canor is a new arrival in the UK but we have seen some of its handiwork before. The Slovakian based company used to be known as Edgar and its very distinctive wood fronted electronics featured a few years ago. These products are still available but were rebranded as Canor in 2007 and were joined by a range of more conventionally styled units that use valve topology.

Musical update This Creek amp claims a variety of technical improvements over the original. Richard Black investigates how this works out in sonic terms Rather to our surprise, we find it’s over five years since we first set eyes and ears on the original Creek Evolution amp. Amplifier design may not have made any revolutionary leaps in that time (at least, conventional amplifier design like Creek’s – switching amps have progressed rather more), but it’s natural that a manufacturer would find a few tweaks to apply that could justify adding a ‘2’ to the model name. Extra, extra One of the changes is a practical one, adding an ‘AV direct’ inputwhich bypasses the volume control, allowing the Evo 2 to be used as a power amp.

Brio benchmark Rega's new compact Brio-R amp uses a circuit design originally conceived in the late sixties. Jason Kennedy examines the modern classic The Brio-R is new in more ways than its remote handset, for a start it’s a totally new circuit, albeit one that was originally conceived in the late sixties. Rega designer Terry Bateman discovered the circuit as a result of buying and reading a large collection of second-hand Wireless World magazines and noticing that the previous owner, engineer Mike Howell, had circled particular articles. These articles led him to a design which was published in 1970, but to Terry’s knowledge never put into production.

Electrocompaniet ECI 5 MkII Big and powerful, but calm and unfussed almost to a near-Buddhist extent It’s certainly imposing, and its non-standard width of 470mm may require some thought about siting it, but then maybe that’s just indicative of the Electrocompaniet way of doing things – not by anyone else’s book. The company has a long history of being original, going back to the days in the 1970s, when its genesis lay in Matti Otala’s documenting of TID: Transient Intermodulation Distortion. TID is now largely water under the bridge, component and design developments having ensured its demise as an issue in any decent audio amp, but Electrocompaniet continues to take an individual line on audio electronics and has a strong following as a result. Control of the unit is individual, too.

Moon I3. 3 Lots of upgrade options, great build and we liked the internal DAC, but a little expensive taken just as an amp This is one of a growing number of integrated amps to include a digital input, either as standard or, as in this case, as an optional extra. It makes a lot of sense: you don’t need a huge amount of circuitry to make a pretty decent DAC and if you’ve got a case and power supply already it’s quite a simple addition. Electrical, optical and USB connections are provided, with the actual conversion being done by a good-quality, recent DAC chip supported by good passive components and onboard supply regulation.

Audiophile Airplay The first integrated amp to work with Apple Airplay is the claim, but is it audiophile? Jason Kennedy fires up his iTunes to find out Streaming digital music from your computer is a great idea, but it’s also a challenging one for the non-technical. Setting up such systems is getting a lot easier, but Apple’s Airplay is about as easy as streaming can be. All you need is an Apple touchscreen device or computer and an Airplay receiver, then you can play whatever is on the source wirelessly through the receiver. By combining the interface with the source cuts out a whole stage from regular wi-fi streaming systems.