Stereo receivers and stereo amps with digital inputs

iMark

Well-known member
I have always been a fan of stereo receivers. In the 80's I had a very nice Yamaha model (don't remember the number) and the heart of our stereo system is a Denon DRA-1000 (now over 10 years old). I like the idea of having a decent amplifier and tuner in one box. It saves space and they are hardly more expensive than amps by the same brand.

Stereo receivers have always been quite popular in NL but I hardly see them reviewed on this UK website. When browsing through the new Yamaha lineup I noticed that there are quite a few models but not for sale in the UK. There are the R-S300, R-S500 and the R-S700. They look very similar to the equivalent amps. The R-S500 costs about EUR 325 in NL, which seems a very good deal.

Is there any particular reason why stereo receivers are not popular in the UK?

Another thing that I find quite strange is that there are hardly any brands that offer a decent stereo amplifier with a quality built-in DAC. I'm sure all brands could produce one and market it as very good upgrade path for computer based music or as very simple upgrade to for an existing CDP or DVDP.
 

ID.

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Feb 22, 2010
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From what I can tell, receivers seem to be more popular in the U,S,

Not really big in Japan, although there are some made for the US market.

I know of a few amps with DACs at various price points, from what I can see the trend seems to be making the DAC section in a CDP usable (having digital inputs) which I assume is much easier/cheaper as the CDP already has DAC section so they just need to set it up with inputs, etc. while for an amp it means the extra cost of building one into an amp.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
This isn't quite true, there are more and more of them. Naim, Esoteric, Bryston... There's also ones like Peachtree. For a long time, until only a few years ago, there were very few dacs being made outside of cd players even in the very high end of the market!
 

The_Lhc

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Oct 16, 2008
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And that's what is happening, increasingly. Prior to the advent of network audio you didn't see integrated stereo amps or many standalone DACs because with the CDP being the only (usual) digital source it made more sense to keep the DAC in there. That isn't the case now, so more and more amps are being made with the DAC built-in, although there are always going to be those who prefer to keep the DAC seperate, either to give more digital inputs or to aid "upgradability" (ie, if you want a better DAC you don't need to replace the entire amp).
 

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