I was hoping to wait for the IOTAXV amp to be tested by Amir to get his impression of the engineering quality and quality, but got tired of waiting, so I took a chance and ordered the $875 IOTAXV 7.1 4K HDR AV preamp yesterday. The past association with Nakamichi gives me a bit of confidence plus the good experiences noted in this thread are a plus for this small company. Ian offers free 4-5 day shipping, from the UK to Miami in my case, and from there it will take about a week and cost about $45 to get it to me in Panama.
The IOTAXV AVP has all the features I want including some DSP capability, and not a lot of extra crap I will never use. And I like the industrial classic black style - it looks like a good quality component. And quite frankly, after weeks of searching and reading in the internet, I could not find another AVP like it, especially for such a reasonable price. I will sell my Topping DX7s, another excellent component that I got for a good price via MassDrop. I don't listen to headphones, and I assume that the IOTAXV AVP will do just fine for my two-channel music listening pleasure.
For video, I will initially use only three channels of IOTAXV AVP with a pair of the new Wharefedale D320 bookshelves and a D300C center (pictured below), and perhaps add a sub or two and surround speakers later. The Wharfedales are getting good reviews, and they use bottom ports which should work better than rear-ported speakers in my very small room. I will eventually sell my excellent 8-y/o rear-ported Paradigm Atom v.6 bookshelf speakers - which now have rolled up socks in the ports because the room is small and they are very close to the wall.
Initially, I will use my vintage class AB amplifier - a Classé Model Seventy (70wpc) for L/R, and a Fosi TPA3116 monaural ChiFi amp for the center channel. Within a couple of months, I hope to order a pair of VTV Hypex amps with balanced XLR input - an NC252MP two-channel amp plus their matching NC250MP mono amp.
I like the Audiophonics amps with the same modules, but I prefer the 11" front-to-back size of the VTV amps vs. 14" for the Audiophonics units. The VTV Hypex amps are a bit more expensive than the Audiophonics equivalents, but VTV is an established U.S. company with free shipping. VTV stands for "Vacuum Tube Values" and they are primarily a vacuum tube retailer with a good reputation. It doesn't take a lot of engineering to stick a Hypex module in a high-quality case and make it work, so electronics quality is not an issue for me. VTV also offers custom Hypex builds, which might interest some ASR members. (I thought about buying a Ghent case and assembling my own amplifier, but the NC252MP modules are not sold to the DIY market and are difficult for DIY'ers to source.)
The IOTAXV amps look like good products (we will know for sure after Amir puts one to the test), but they are heavier - and I would need to get three to run in bridged mode (which I prefer not to do) to get power output similar to the Hypex amps. My time spent participating at ASR has increased my admiration of Hypex amps, and I am now more attracted to them rather than the heavier and less efficient traditional Class AB designs. And that is why I will eventually sell my big, heavy vintage Classé AB amplifier, an excellent component that I bought based on a nostalgia-based impulse last year. As I have done with a lot of audio gear over the years, I bought it used for a reasonable price, and can sell it for not much of a loss
I will write all of this up in a dedicated AVP-based thread when I get the gear and set it up, but I wanted to share my project's beginnings with the new group of IOTAXV owners here at ASR.
