Much to my surprise when expressing my need to replace my existing power amp due to an intermittent fault some months back, my good friend Gaynor, became immediately quite interested when I discussed the energy usage advantages of class D technology amplifiers. Her interest surprised me as she’s not generally hugely interested in hi-fi & such, however her partner Paul listens to a great deal of music each day using a very aged JVC integrated amp.
This matter was further discussed on her visit a couple of weeks back, when I mentioned I had settled on what I was buying & wuz shortly about to pull the trigger.
At the time I thought there should be a plethora of good options at a guess-timate budget of say £200 to £350 which she seemed happy with as a suggested spend. I offered to research this further for her & see what popped up as any likely contenders.
However once you get past the multitude of very pared down Chi-fi offerings with quite weedy real world power outputs & very little in the way of decent amount of input provision arrangements, there are far less on the market from more traditional/well established Hi-fi mfrs at the more affordable end of the price spectrum than I had expected.
I’ve been waiting until I had some further details from Gaynor re the amp it would be replacing & the speakers it would be driving, just to make sure power provision would at least be adequate from the new amp suggestions.
Here’s the amp it will be replacing >> JVC A-K10 Stereo Integrated Amplifier Manual | HiFi Engine
The good news is that no powerhouse is needed as t’ JVC amp is only rated at 25wpc, so suggestions that are rated at 30 to 50wpc in real world terms should be fine.
Some research has identified a couple of contenders with a slight budget revision that Gaynor is happy with of up to £450.
My prime contender soo far had been this >> Onkyo TXL20D (Black) | Network Stereo Receiver | Richer Sounds
Ticks all the boxes really, adequate power very good efficiency lots of network streaming options built in + DAB & internet radio & great connectivity including analogue/digital & HDMI options for easy integration of all the kit they run.
Richer Sounds were doing them for £430, but it looks like stocks have pretty much dried up unfortunately, with now only an open boxed unit from their store in Sheffield.
The other & up to now only obviously likely candidate is the Nad D 3020 v2
Nad state 30wpc into both 8 & 4 ohm loads, but Hi-Fi News have independently measured it at 50wpc into 8ohms & 58wpc into 4ohms, so should be more than enough grunt.
Just discussed the above amp with Gaynor & she seems quite keen & actually quite pleased at the relative simplicity & limited but quite adequate for their needs feature set. I also reckon it could be a better option than summat like t’ Onkyo in terms of long term ruggedness & reliability?
