Yamaha A-S1000 amplifier test

Yamaha has made an excellent amplifier, which you can respect even more when you get to know its reasonable price.

Yamaha has long been regarded as a leader in loudspeakers and components for surround sound applications, but in recent years the Japanese have made a new foray into the hi-i market . First came the Soavo series of speakers, and now the company has developed a series of integrated amplifiers and universal players.

Yamaha A-S1000 amplifier

FEATURES

Yamaha has long been considered a leader in the manufacture of speakers and components for surround sound applications, but in recent years the Japanese have made a new foray into the hi-i . Yamaha first launched the Soavo series of speakers, and now the company has developed a series of integrated amplifiers and all-in-one turntables.

The construction principle, the output stage, power supply and B-section are inherited by the “hero” of the review from the flagship of the line of new Yamaha amplifiers, the model A-S2000. The amplifying circuits are based on the patented Floating Point Power Amplii er technology, which uses a completely balanced circuit and DC voltage power supplies, isolated from a common “ground. The positive and negative portions of one channel, along with the power and negative feedback taps, are isolated from each other. The engineers abandoned the push-pull principle and used transistors of the same polarity in the termination stage, further symmetrizing the circuitry. The power supply includes a big transformer with a W-shaped core and four capacities of 18K each. The voltage is equalized by 12 parallel regulators in the four outputs. The switched phono stage cartridge MM/MS and telephone amplifier are mounted separately from the rest of the circuit.

Even the tone-block and channel-balance nodes are done differently in the A-S1000. instead of including the chips in series and having a button to shorten the signal path to bypass the controllers, the Japanese have wired all the controllers in parallel, reducing the noise.

On the rear panel there are 6 line inputs, including phono with cartridge type switch, output from preamplifier and output to recording device. Two sets of large gold-plated acoustic terminals originally arranged diagonally.

SOUNDS

The amp gives the signature Yamaha sound with luxurious dynamics, but compared to units from past ranges there are noticeable improvements in handling the delicate matter of the timbre palette. The timbre structure is crisp, clean and uncluttered. The low-frequency base of the sound is reproduced with depth and density, with excellent attack and amplitude. On dynamic bass bursts especially the extraordinary power reserve of the amplifier is felt. The low-frequency voices of the instruments sound very textured and all the transients are processed clearly and quickly. The extended top is airy and suitably bright, the plumes of cymbals and delicate percussion come out in great detail without overshadowing the rest of the score. The middle part at moderate volume is sounded rather neutrally, with the increasing of sound level one can notice a little bit dryness in the timbre of woodwinds, and there are some harsh notes in the voices of strings and jazz “copper”, but all these are minor flaws.

The A-S1000’s stereo image is slightly forward, but shifted as a whole the back layers of the scene are also close and clearly visible. The soloing instruments look enlarged, but this just adds to the effect, and it never comes down to grotesque overdimensionality. If there’s anything that breaks the perfect composition, it’s the slightly oversized bass band instruments, which the amplifier sometimes moves out of the back echelons of the stage into the foreground.

Price: 38 000 Dollars.

Bow Technologies ZZ-8 CD player was used as a signal source. The amplifier significantly lowers the source level in the tweeter, and slightly in the bass. The amplifier’s ACL roll-off in the bass begins at 50-60 Hz -0/55 Hz .3dB at 20Hz , in the tweeter from -5kHz -0.6dB at 20kHz . Amplifier THD at 1kHz is less than 0.035%, THD source 0.008% . The amp barely changes the harmonics above third, it even smoothes them out a bit over the entire frequency range. The whole effect of the amplifier on the signal comes down to separation of the third harmonic in the whole range, so that it becomes the maximum in THD, as well as some increase in the second harmonic in HF.

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