Arylic A50 Review (wireless amplifier)

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

This company seems to be trying to benefit from Auralic's good name. For that reason alone, I would avoid them. (What others do is up to them, of course.)

How can anyone now. The veil was lived in 1939 Oz.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

Lifted

 

[pma]

The result is horrible in both noise and distortion. I have never met and never measured anything behaving so poorly. On the other hand, I rarely have a chance to meet this kind of consumer products.

 

[YSC]

Didn’t it expect it to be so broken even with the headless grade

 

[Helicopter]

This company seems to be trying to benefit from Auralic's good name. For that reason alone, I would avoid them. (What others do is up to them, of course.)

Huh, probably true, but I keep seeing 'acryllic.'

 

[Billy Budapest]

Champagne was $70, pizza $55, tip $45. I figured I needed to cover a few hours of the waitress' time based on the way things looked when I picked them up.

Me, my wife, and daughter spent $89 for sushi tonight. It normally would have been a $60 meal but these delivery services slap on many additional fees.

 

[Billy Budapest]

People seem to forget that the most common THD spec for amps is 1% (-40dB), which is what John Atkinson still uses to determine amp wattage. Next common is 0.1% (-60dB), which is about what this achieves. AVRs usually get a hair more brave and tout 0.08% (-62dB), of which I have no idea why they do this.

With the music sources and speakers typically used with this amp, I have no doubt the vast majority of customers of this product don’t hear any issues with respect to noise/distortion. I don’t like the speaker connection, but for <$200 to get AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth, DLNA/UPNP, and use their app for (Amazon Music, Tidal, iHeartRadio, etc.), it seems like an awesome little package. Their app also seems to allow multi-device streaming. The 50W 4ohm rating however will mean home theater enthusiasts maybe shouldn’t consider it.

On another note, they have a preamp with (besides other things) AirPlay and optical out, does anyone know of other ~$200 options? I see purchase help requests decently often where they want this (setup where they want to keep their amp/DAC and just add AirPlay support).

I think what Atkinson does is arbitrarily define “clipping” as occurring when an amp reaches 1% THD, and then again arbitrarily defines the wattage at that 1% level of distortion as the amp’s “rated power.”

 

[restorer-john]

I think what Atkinson does is arbitrarily define “clipping” as occurring when an amp reaches 1% THD, and then again arbitrarily defines the wattage at that 1% level of distortion as the amp’s “rated power.”

You need a line in the sand number.

The onset of visible waveform clipping (where the term originates) occurs typically at levels much lower than 1% and closer to 0.1%. I use 0.1% THD+N (-60dB) as it is convenient, still high fidelity enough to not get laughed out of the audiophile playground and also happens to be nice and easy on my THD analyzer/meter.

 

[Killingbeans]

How is this product rated at 4 stars on Amazon, are they unable to discern what sounds horrible?

They buy it for the streaming functionality. Convenience is the best feature to offer if you want to sell something in truckloads

Also, as far as I understand, a lot of pop music is mastered to sound non-offensive on crappy gear.

THD+N of 0.15% is still far below what would make most people turn sourface.

 

[pma]

Technically, clipping is not about distortion number. The most reliable method to find clipping point is to observe distortion spectrum and rise input amplitude. At the moment when high harmonics start to rise and to have uniform amplitude, you have the clipping point. It can be as early as at 0.01% THD for solid state or as late as 5% for tubes. It is a technical phenomenon, not about audibility.

 

[trl]

Ayrlic A50

How is this product rated at 4 stars on Amazon, are they unable to discern what sounds horrible?

Because not many are concerned about the SINAD, given that they don't really hear the differences...well, most of them. Howver, here's from a 3-star rating: "[...] My biggest gripe.. a small 20W exterior amp makes a 1000% difference in speaker output vs just using this 50W +50 W unit itself.[...]". So this guy was probably "feeling" the differences in THD when maxed out the volume pot.

 

[trl]

0.1% was achievable in 1949 by Harold Leak's range of amplifiers.

http://44bx.com/leak/PointOne2.html

I do like the following paragraph from the above link:
< "How are these extraordinary results achieved?"
The short answer is: " By the proper application of heavy negative voltage feedback over an entire three-stage amplifier" >

However, there are still few companies out there telling to their customers that negative-feedback is a really bad thing and their "audiophile" audio equipment (without negative-feedback, or maybe too less of it) are sounding "better" than the ones using negative-feedback.

 

[abdo123]

So @amirm, are you now drawing a line in the sand at ~0.14% THD+N at 5W and terminating the review for any amplifer going forward? I can see -60dB (0.1%) (the red section) as being a nice cutoff, where you can rule out further wasting of review time.

I was a little bit surprised he terminated the review early, but honestly 5W @ 1KHz is really supposed to show an amplifier at their best light .

 

[restorer-john]

I do like the following paragraph from the above link:
< "How are these extraordinary results achieved?"
The short answer is: " By the proper application of heavy negative voltage feedback over an entire three-stage amplifier" >

I love reading about the endeavours of ardent engineers from the past. We can learn a great deal and remind ourselves things haven't really changed that much and there's nothing really new under the sun.

I recently came across a pair of Leak Point ones and a preamplifier in a local town HiFi store. Unfortunately, the store had been recently flooded and the Leaks spent a lot of time (several days) under 8ft of dirty water. The owner was keeping them purely for display purposes. I'd have serious concerns for the power transformers so I didn't make an offer he couldn't refuse.

 

[pavuol]

Audioholic review:
The A50 does come with a pretty decent DAC with the STA326. To give you an idea of how good it is, go to the Qobuz store online and look at their recommendations for full digital amplifiers. Two out of four of them use the STA326 DAC.

So it points out probably to this comparison from 2016 (?)...
{Topping model discontinued as of now)

 

[pavuol]

As it happens, the company had also contacted me offering to send me samples and such. I forwarded the above measurement to them and they expressed surprise. They asked me for firmware revision (?) and such which made no sense. I gave them the serial number and never heard back.

Anyway, I like the idea of amp performance upgradable via FW.. I think we should be more patient and give some more time to programmers.

 

[3125b]

Since this will probably be used mainly for casual listening with budget speakers, the performance seems sufficient.

As far as power ratings at THD goes: I once (unfortunately can‘t remember where) saw one specced at 10% ... wich seems optimistic.

 

[trl]

Audioholic review:
The A50 does come with a pretty decent DAC with the STA326. To give you an idea of how good it is, go to the Qobuz store online and look at their recommendations for full digital amplifiers. Two out of four of them use the STA326 DAC.

So it points out probably to this comparison from 2016 (?)...
{Topping model discontinued as of now)

As per below picture, I guess than Topping MX3 has a different chip amp inside, so we can't compare it with the Arylic A50. And Topping MX3 @5W measures a bit better than TDA7498e specs (0.04% THD+N).

Source: https://www.st.com/resource/en/datasheet/tda7498e.pdf

I was a little bit surprised he terminated the review early, but honestly 5W @ 1KHz is really supposed to show an amplifier at their best light .

Probably due to the above graph and after reading the ST326 datasheet. However, look that up to 20W RMS per channel the STA326 performs well, so probably for a small bedroom and with sensitive speakers connected might do OK after all.

 

[pavuol]

As per below picture, I guess than Topping MX3 has a different chip amp inside, so we can't compare it with the Arylic A50.

There is Topping VX2 mentioned in that old comparison however..

 

[trl]

Ehhh, you're right.

I can't find anything about VX2...yet, perhaps it does have an ST326 inside, just no idea about how it actually measures.