Integrated Amplifiers

Rega's integrated dresses to impress

Rega Elicit The latest amp under this name is a sophisticated performer with singularly purposeful rhythmic flow The original Elicit, we were astonished to be reminded, appeared in 1990. Any resemblance to the current amp is superficial at most, as this design is new in concept, specification and design. It’s an 80-watt-rated amp built into a familiar-looking Rega case. In common with most current Rega electronics, it incorporates a heatsink on the underside: but since that’s not adequate in that position for two 80-watt channels there are also internal heatsinks at each side of the chassis.

Count on Cantata Jason Kennedy looks at the matching 50-watt integrated for our favourite CD player of 2010. Can Resolution Audio shine with its amps, too? Last year we had some bad news. Resolution Audio discontinued one of our favourite CD players, the Opus 21. The good news, however, was that it replaced it with the Cantata Music Centre, which went on to win several HFC awards in our 2010 Awards issue.

There’s something very reassuring about a high-end integrated amplifier. While stacks of black boxes might have been the done thing in the early eighties, in today’s world, the trend is to downsize, but music fans don’t want to hear anyless of their beloved recordings. The so-called ‘super-integrated’ breed ticks all these boxes; it’s big but not too big, and promises a sound to rival some more expensive pre/power amplifier combinations. Roksan, lest we forget, has always made fine-sounding amplification; it has a distinctly muscular-but-musical character that covers more bases than some rival designs, many of which tend to be one or the other.

Despite the burgeoning popularity of the one-stop shop hi-fi component – to which one need only add speakers for a complete system covering all modern, non-physical digital media requirements – not everyone wants that degree of convergence and will happily settle for an integrated amp with on-board DAC and a decent phono stage. Canada’s Moon by Simaudio has, perhaps inevitably, just cracked that particular nut with the introduction of the Moon 240i integrated amp/DAC – essentially the company’s highly regarded Nēo Ace streaming integrated amp minus the streaming bit and a helpful £710 from the Ace’s asking price. As such, the £1,990 240i represents a new entry point for Moon’s neatly tiered integrated amp range, which peaks – via the 340i and 600i – with the 2x 175W 700i. We’re some way from that with the 240i, which quotes a more modest 50 Class A/B Watts per channel but, as ever, this is only a rough guide to speaker-driving ability and no guide at all to sound quality, an area in which Moon amps usually excel.

Sugden Mystro From a brand with a long pedigree, the Mystro could well be the answer to all your amplifier needs We’re not sure how to pronounce the name, but we are sure that this is a Sugden unlike those we’re familiar with. For over four decades (!) the firm has been synonymous with low-power Class A amplifiers. This one changes everything, offering 50 watts of Class AB power from an all-new circuit. Mind you, in many ways it harks back to yesteryear, offering as it does a mere three-line inputs plus phono, single speaker outputs, no preamp or even ‘tape’ output, and remote control for volume only.