IF YOU'RE GOING TO play with toys you want to play with Ferraris, not Hyundais. But a tech-head's life isn't all flashy gadgets and stratospherically priced kit, so although testing entry-level amplifiers may be a dirty job, someone's got to do it.
I'm a traditionalist when it comes to amps, and traditional thinking has it that bigger is better. But not everybody understands that. 'I don't listen to loud music,' people say. The point, however, is not being able to crank the volume up, it's having an amp that doesn't have to work hard to play at normal volumes. The more the amp has to strain because of low wattage, the worse the sound.
First in to bat was the $2,280 Onkyo TX-SR500, which hardly impressed me on emerging from the box. The volume knob felt cheap and flimsy, as did the casing. Features were minimal, but on the other hand, amps, like most things hi-tech, often suffer from featuritus. Manufacturers overload products with bells and whistles you'll never use simply because they make you feel you're getting your money's worth. The bottom line with an amp is sound quality. The bottom line with the Onkyo? Imagining a sack full of wet cats would be harsh, but let's just say it wasn't pretty.
Next came the $2,680 Pioneer VSX-D511. The unit felt more robustly built than the Onkyo, but lacked the front connection ports common to most amps. Is that a big deal? Yes, if you have a video camera or game console you want to connect and disconnect without having to go behind your system. I also had problems hooking up the Pioneer. It has some innovative clips for attaching speaker cables that looked like they would be easier to use than standard clips, but I could not persuade the cables to make a connection. In the end, I was reduced to testing the Pioneer using headphones only, having used both to assess the other units, and concluded the sound was fuller and less strained than that of the Onkyo.
The $2,580 Denon 1603 is reasonably well put together and had a good many features for an entry-level amp - most being attributes you might even use. The 1603 features a cinema-sound processor supposed to improve the intelligibility of dialogue, although I didn't notice a huge difference. One small feature that caught my eye was an optical in port on the front of the amp: if you can connect a game console with an optical cable you have surround sound! To my ears, the Denon had a cleaner, more neutral and less strained sound than the other models.
Last was the $2,380 Sony STR-DE685. Sony seems to be one of the those brands people love or hate, thought of as a safe, reliable make or an overpriced label bought as a fashion accessory. I am inclined to side with the latter, but my first utterance when I pulled this amp from the box was, 'Wow!' The connect-ions on the back were impressive. The machine had provision for not only every sort of accessory imaginable, it even had in and out ports for RGB video connect-ions. That's something you don't see on many high-end amps, let alone entry-level models. The Sony's sound was also impressive; I can't say it was the most neutral, but it was the pick of the bunch.