YAMAHAA-S501 Integrated Amplifier - Black

Ordered this Yamaha A-S501 Integrated Amplifier - Black as my Denon RCDN8 had given up the ghost after only 3 years and I cannot live without my music. Ordered in the evening and Amazon delivered next day for only and extra £6. Brilliant.Had an Arcam amp, Marantz CD, Denon Tuner, Sony Minidisk, Technics Tape deck for 20 years and sounded superb through my Mordaunt Short floors tanders, but streamed a lot using my squeezebox, so CD, tuner and tape were not used much and kit was taking up a lot of room so decided to get rid and replace with the aforementioned Denon.Big mistake. Don;t get me wrong the Denon RCDN8 really was very good indeed sonically, felt solid, and was nice and compact, but constantly had problems losing wifi/signal when streaming and was shall we say was a bit glitchy.I've always had a soft spot for Yamaha hi-fi, they are always built solidly, look good and most importantly of course sound good. Out of the box, wow, it's meaty, feels really well built, nice solid push on/off switch, ample connections, built-in DAC and I personally like it's looks, it's a bit retro i.e. how amps looked years ago, big and rectangular.I hooked in my squeezebox, via coaxial digital lead, as I suspected that the DAC in the amp would be better than the one in the squeezebox and fired up the AS501 and played both internet radio and mp3s.Very, very impressed and pleased with the sound that came out of my floor standing Mordaunt Short speakers, crisp and clean vocals with a terrific sound stage and enough bass to make the most of my speakers and played everything I through at it with aplomb. Maybe not bassy enough for some peoples tastes or types of music, but to my ears, a delight to hear things I never heard in tracks played on the Denon and that I have not heard since my wonderful old Arcam.After a couple of days, I got a Yamaha CDS300 CD player, after deliberating between it and a Marantz 6005 or a cheaper 5005. Fired it up and put in a Churches CD and it sounded exactly as I hoped it would with the AS501 amp, awesome. Nice and pacy, detailed and a delight to listen to.At the price I paid for this Yamaha amp, £189, it is an absolute bargain and no doubt would give some much more costly amps a pretty good run for their money. I can say that I would recommend this amp to anyone and hopefully it will last as long as my Arcam did.Great bit of kit Yamaha

I purchased the Yamaha A-S501 Integrated Amplifier about three months ago with a very specific and limited purpose in mind. Over the years my music collection has gone from record to CD and now to FLAC. Instead of housing my collection in racks it is now neatly stored on a single hard drive (backed up, obviously). My entire CD collection has been ripped to FLAC and now I buy downloads over physical discs if I can. Storage is not the only issue that prompted the move to digital music. Ecologically the footprint of the audio file is insignificant in comparison with a physical item. Sites like Bandcamp enable artists to distribute a wealth of music cheaply and easily and most labels now have an option to buy music in lossless digital formats.I use a Mid-2010 iMac running Audirvana+ software and use a fibre optic cable to connect the iMac and Amp. In playing FLAC files on the iMac through Audirvana+ via the optic cable the audio reaches the amp in the most pure, unfiltered (unaltered), state possible. The 501 uses a Ti-Burr-Brown PCM 5102 DAC to convert the digital signal to an analogue one. Once through the amp the audio finds it’s voice through a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 685 S2.This review is ONLY written in the light of this. I make no judgment on the way the unit handles vinyl, CDs, cassettes or multi channel DVD / Bluray audio. If you have a computer or other 2 channel digital set up this review may be of interest. If not then it probably won’t be of much use to you. - Sorry.The unadulterated audio stream from the Mac was what made me settle on the A-S501. The one feature it has, and which most of it’s competitors lack, is the option to use the ’Pure Direct’ pathway which bypasses the amplifiers internal filters and outputs the audio in as pure an audio stream as possible. With the advent of digital recordings being made available at studio master quality (24bit) it seems ridiculous to do anything but try to reproduce the audio in it’s purest form.So how does it sound? Fantastic.The sound stage produced with this set up is broad and the music expansive. Listening to HD Nils Frahm albums or Max Richter is quite breath taking. The space between instruments and the sound detail as notes dissolve is quite staggering. At the pure, unhurried end of the musical style spectrum the amp handles the files precisely and allows the listener to become immersed in the audio experience. To me the whole point of audio equipment is to reproduce the sound of the original without colouring it or intruding on the listening experience and this is exactly what the A-S501 does.Many perceived amplifier issues seem to stem not from the unit itself but from the mastering of the piece of music under consideration. The Arctic Monkeys are notorious for producing ‘hot’ (over loud) albums whilst some elctro albums seem to have a slightly base heavy production that overpowers the rest of the instrumentation. The separate Bass and Treble knobs allow for easy sound correction whether it be as a result of the production or of the acoustics in the listening room.I have the ‘Loudness’ filter set one level up as I find this sounds about right to counter the dreadful production of CDs in the late Eighties / early Nineties. While many bands have had their back catalogue successfully re-mastered (Talking heads come to mind) many that have not sound a little flat or under produced. Personally I feel the early Pixies material suffers from it’s original mastering in the digital age. By turning the ‘Pure Direct’ mode off the loudness setting compensates for the historical sound of the track’s production by boosting the Bass frequencies a little (obviously this is only a personal preference, I’m sure Frank, Kim and the boys would say their stuff sounds just fine as it is).Whether listening to Zbigniew Preisner, Sonic Youth, Nils Økland, Alva Noto, Lamb, Champion Jack Dupree or Motörhead the Yamaha A-S501 Integrated Amplifier produces a transparent listening experience and, to me at least, is a joy to listen to.I am very pleased with this amp. I particularly like the way it integrates with a digital feed. Lossless digital music files are the future. The days of the physical format are numbered and Yamaha obviously had half an eye on this development when designing this unit. If you are thinking of organising your music digitally the A-S501 is certainly worth considering, especially as the sound quality and features are exceptional for the price.

The amplifier was dispatched within a couple of days of ordering, and pleased to see source is based close to home, should there be a future problem. But that would be very unlucky, for it quickly became clear that the product is extremely well made, and even comes with a decent product manual. It replaces my 38 year old lovely Technics SU-8077 amp, and is of almost the same size, so fitted into existing space well.I loved the bare wire speaker connections, a better design than my previous.I listened to Roger Waters "Amused to Death" (standard version) as my test record. I'm SURE I could hear even more!! It sounds absolutely superb. After a few hours of use, there is barely any heat detectable from the casing.I miss the LED output Watt meters of the Technics.The remote control actually turns the volume knob on the Yamaha, and marking this with a gold line did help give visual reference of how far the volume knob was turned.I liked that this amp also has the "Pure Direct Straight DC" sound switching. I'm less convinced by the variable loudness control, though it's not something I use much. I think a simple boost button for bass preferable, if ever that need arises.Overall, I am delighted to have found the Yamaha A-S501 a superb amplifier and a worthy living room replacement. It's a quality product and represents quite amazing value. It sounds superb to my ears, and with a good remote control, I can now sit back even more comfortably.