This is a review and detailed measurements of the Audio Control Rialto 600 DAC and integrated amplifier with remote control. It is on kind loan from a member and (I think) costs US $849.
NOTE: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Audio Control. Our business is custom integration of electronics and Audio Control is a regular supplier of electronics to that market. Feel free to read as much bias as you like into my commentary and review. I should add that we have had incredibly positive relationship with Audio Control with their support being first class.
This is a compact amplifier with rich set of features especially for the CI (Custom Install) market:
I was most impressed by the back side of Rialto 600 amp:
In the CI market, this amp would be buried some place that no one would see. So to have those beefy speaker terminals was a pleasant surprise. Even more so was the thought that has gone into this for the intended market. Flip the high pass filter dip switch and a nice green LED lights up telling you that this is happening. A life saver in custom situations where mistakes can be costly to cure.
Inclusion of Toslink means a common application is to take the sound from a TV and drive proper set of speakers instead of a soundbar.
A small fan underneath quietly recirculates air which again, is a key needed feature in custom installs where these boxes are buried some place with no air flow. The fan kept the unit cool with the bottom getting somewhat warm. Without it, it would be cooking.
Overall impressions at this point were very positive for the intended market.
Audio Control Rialto 600 Measurements
Using the supplied remote, I set the volume to max and adjusted the analog input drive to get 5 watts out into 4 ohm as I normally do:
Ah, those are quite elevated distortion bars, pushing the ranking for Rialto 600 pretty low in all amplifiers tested to date:
Next, I switched to digital input to see if that is better:
It is not. I thought I change things around and set the input to maximum digital and use the volume control on the amp to reduce power and see what happens:
Shoot, this is even worse. However volume control is implemented, it is not a high fidelity design. So for the rest of the tests I will stick with analog input.
Let's get the other bit of bad news out of the way:
Even with filters disabled, there is that high pass filter with ringing. Turning on the 80 Hz filter just pushes the frequency up. Good news is that the response is load independent as seen with 4 and 8 ohm loads producing the same response.
Crosstalk was strange in the way the bleed was constant with frequency:
We hardly ever see this.
SNR is decent:
Good news is the copious amount of power in this small package:
Specifications are exceeded:
And 8 ohm:
Conclusions
Clearly this amplifier doesn't have the performance we aspire for in this forum and for non-custom applications. Frequency response needs to be flat, and distortion much lower. For custom install, the feature set is very nice although that frequency response error may be a problem there as well. Positives are good cooling with a lot of power.
For our readers, the Rialto 600 is not something I can recommend. Shame, as the feature set is great to have even in our situations.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
NOTE: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Audio Control. Our business is custom integration of electronics and Audio Control is a regular supplier of electronics to that market. Feel free to read as much bias as you like into my commentary and review. I should add that we have had incredibly positive relationship with Audio Control with their support being first class.
This is a compact amplifier with rich set of features especially for the CI (Custom Install) market:
I was most impressed by the back side of Rialto 600 amp:
In the CI market, this amp would be buried some place that no one would see. So to have those beefy speaker terminals was a pleasant surprise. Even more so was the thought that has gone into this for the intended market. Flip the high pass filter dip switch and a nice green LED lights up telling you that this is happening. A life saver in custom situations where mistakes can be costly to cure.
Inclusion of Toslink means a common application is to take the sound from a TV and drive proper set of speakers instead of a soundbar.
A small fan underneath quietly recirculates air which again, is a key needed feature in custom installs where these boxes are buried some place with no air flow. The fan kept the unit cool with the bottom getting somewhat warm. Without it, it would be cooking.
Overall impressions at this point were very positive for the intended market.
Audio Control Rialto 600 Measurements
Using the supplied remote, I set the volume to max and adjusted the analog input drive to get 5 watts out into 4 ohm as I normally do:
Ah, those are quite elevated distortion bars, pushing the ranking for Rialto 600 pretty low in all amplifiers tested to date:
Next, I switched to digital input to see if that is better:
It is not. I thought I change things around and set the input to maximum digital and use the volume control on the amp to reduce power and see what happens:
Shoot, this is even worse. However volume control is implemented, it is not a high fidelity design. So for the rest of the tests I will stick with analog input.
Let's get the other bit of bad news out of the way:
Even with filters disabled, there is that high pass filter with ringing. Turning on the 80 Hz filter just pushes the frequency up. Good news is that the response is load independent as seen with 4 and 8 ohm loads producing the same response.
Crosstalk was strange in the way the bleed was constant with frequency:
We hardly ever see this.
SNR is decent:
Good news is the copious amount of power in this small package:
Specifications are exceeded:
And 8 ohm:
Conclusions
Clearly this amplifier doesn't have the performance we aspire for in this forum and for non-custom applications. Frequency response needs to be flat, and distortion much lower. For custom install, the feature set is very nice although that frequency response error may be a problem there as well. Positives are good cooling with a lot of power.
For our readers, the Rialto 600 is not something I can recommend. Shame, as the feature set is great to have even in our situations.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
