![]() ![]() Loudness controls used to be common, but like tone controls, have since become scarce. The parade of features continues with bass, treble, and loudness controls. There’s a blast from the past-when a respectable audio system had open-reel and cassette tape machines. But wait, there’s even more! The Line 2 and 3 inputs have both record and playback jacks, so you can connect a tape deck. Lots of folks today have 2.1 speaker setups (two satellite speakers and a subwoofer), and the A-S801 supports that arrangement-smart again. And it has a single line-level output jack for connecting a subwoofer. In addition to the digital inputs, the A-S801 has five analog line inputs (labeled Line 1, 2, 3, CD, and Tuner), and even a moving-magnet phono input. So you don’t need a separate power supply for the YBA-11-clever. A separate cord is provided, with a USB Type A connector on one end and a small coaxial connector like you see on many power supply cords on the other. But wait! There’s also a USB Type A jack, the type you find on computers. That lets devices such as smartphones and tablets (except iOS devices that don’t support aptX) connect wirelessly-a shrewd design feature, since many music lovers have large collections of music files on their portable devices. And you can add aptX Bluetooth connectivity by plugging Yamaha’s $49.95 YBA-11 Bluetooth wireless adapter into the digital coaxial input jack. There are three digital inputs: asynchronous USB 2.0 on a USB Type B connector, coaxial on an RCA connector, and optical on a TosLink connector, which together will accommodate most digital sources. Status lights on the front panel indicate the sampling rate and DSD speed of a digital file being played. That range encompasses most of the computer-audio files available today. Its internal DAC uses an ESS Technology 32-bit ES9010K2M chip to play PCM files up to 384kHz/32-bit and DSD files up to DSD128. The Yamaha A-S801 may be inexpensive but its feature set is amazingly rich. And that’s just what we have here: a 100Wpc integrated amplifier with an built-in DAC, priced at $899. While I can appreciate the ultra-high-priced spread, I can’t afford it I think it’s more interesting when a manufacturer offers a component with tons of capabilities at a bargain price. ![]() Sometimes reviews of expensive, advancing-the-art gear lead us to think that’s where all the interesting developments take place. ![]()
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