Review on YAMAHA A-S501BL: Powerful Natural Sound Integrated Stereo Amplifier in Black by Wendy Garcia

The A-S501 is my first Yamaha integrated amplifier. It's incredibly easy to set up compared to a home theater receiver. Just plug in your audio source and speakers, plug in and play! The sound quality is fantastic for the price. With the right speakers, you can hear every detail from a whisper to a faithfully reproduced roar (I use a pair of Klipsch RP-3 towers). The Yamaha A-S501 beats my Sony, Onkyo and Pioneer receivers for the same price with less distortion, better dynamics and a wider soundstage. I have a few minor complaints: 1: The knobs and knobs are plastic. The volume and function selector has a metal cap, but there's plastic underneath. With the black block, you don't see the volume setting because the knob has an almost invisible notch to indicate the level. I put white tape on the notch to see what the volume is. 2: There is only one coaxial and one optical input, the USB port on the back is for power only. USB does not deliver power when "Pure Direct" is busy.3: The Yamaha DAC is just average. I added an external DAC connected to the Yamaha CD analog input to make digital sources sound better (SMSL M100 for $79). Well this is a sweet sounding amp that made me want to play my entire music library to hear what I was missing.