Review on Yamaha A-S301BL Integrated Stereo Amplifier - Enhanced Natural Sound | Black by Greg Mcnealey

I was a little wary of buying as almost all the purchases I checked were made by people replacing equipment older than I was, some by up to ten years years. But don't let the reviews put you off; It's actually a pretty cool music amp with decent performance and clean sound. It's the same size as a modern A/V receiver with 7 small amps, but it only has two, but two large, powerful amplifiers, arranged symmetrically and supported by huge aluminum heatsinks and a massive transformer. It's mostly analog and completely old school music. The bezel is aluminum as advertised, but if you're thinking of a Macbook Pro, you'll be disappointed. I haven't taken it apart, but it feels like some sort of aluminum veneer with a plastic backing. The handles are also too light and flimsy to be made from solid billet aluminum. I bought this primarily to listen to vinyl and wanted a receiver with a moving magnet phono input and decent current handling. It can drive 4 ohm speakers without destroying the amp, which is pretty impressive. There's a switch for that on the back labeled 4 ohms, so you know it's not just hype. This receiver also has an optical input for TV/PS4 and a coaxial digital input for Blu-ray players. There is no HDMI, no ATMOS, no Dolby, no radio tuner, no DSP, no THX, no certified anything, no DLNA, no WiFi, no Ethernet, no Bluetooth, no streaming of any kind. It's just 2 very powerful amplifiers that hooked up to a massive transformer that weighs about 15 pounds and some filters. That's all. On the plus side, without all these gimmicks, this thing probably won't become obsolete anytime soon, as the tech inside is already over 20 years out of date. But just because it's old technology doesn't mean it's bad. The sound is smooth, nostalgic, analog, just like vinyl. There's a mode where you can even bypass filters and switches for an even more precise sound. I usually listen to indie rock and sometimes ragtime on vinyl and that's what I use. I've paired it with Elac Debut 6.2 2.0 bookshelf speakers and the combination is amazing.