Onkyo A-9510 Amplifier

For the first sight the amplifier A-9510 has a number of features calculated for audiophile part of potential clients. A compensated input is offered for vinyl record's lovers, to which you can connect a pick-up with flexible magnet or flexible coil (a selector of pick-up MM/MC). You can suppose that connectors of this input will be gild. But you will meet a little disappointment here: only CD player input has such connectors. Pressing Source Direct button leads to exclusion of timbre and balance control, loudness scheme from the chain of signal passing - enjoy the original sound in accordance with sound producer's idea. The terminals for acoustic connection are not equivalent too. "A" systems can be connected by cables of diameter up to 5 mm (!) that, you see, is not common. The second pair can only be connected by much thinner cable. The amplifier A-9510 is conceived as a central block of system, which single elements are combined by double wire of remote control. Such wires, offered by many firms, require a sequential connection of all blocks with a help of special cables. In Onkyo the wire is called Remote Interface, and its abbreviated name "RI" must be in all combine devices. Certainly, the lack of opportunity for joint use of devices from different producers with such wires seriously reduces the possibilities of remote control and presents certain problems in control. So, you are offered to make a right choice: if you want to have a full remote control, you should buy all the blocks of the one firm. The measured range of timbre and loudness regulation is a bit less than it is declared in the instruction (a lack of 1 dB at the stated frequencies 100 HZ and 10 kHz). The timbre is corresponded to the specification only when lifting at low frequencies, in all other cases a real meaning is 2-3 dB less. The identity of amplitude channels is very good. Imbalance while controlling timbre and volume (motorized drive) is almost absent. Now let talk about one interesting feature of the amplifier. Usually, timbre regulations work equally at every volume level and an excessive increase may cause distortion. In A-9510 a unique system of auto-fit of lifting the voice and low/high frequency is used: when the regulator passes its mean position at volume increase, the next volume increase is accompanied by reduction of timbre lifting. And at the position of the maximum volume the frequency characteristic again becomes the linear. So, you needn't to be afraid of overloads! Let us notice, that volume control doesn't have a digitized scale (there is only a mark of centre point). It is obviously, that the creators considered this to be unnecessary with having remote control: anyway, you won't see anything from the distance of several meters. Output amplifier was pleasantly surprised. Even at the power of 120 W (1kHz, 4 Ohm) a nonlinear distortion coefficient was less than the specified: 0,05 % against 0,06 %. And at nominal power of 100 W distortions were only 0,035 % and somewhat less than 0,06 % in whole range of frequencies from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Based on the results of the listening different music programs (tuner, CD player and vinyl record player with MM pick-up), sound quality can be subjectively rated as a very good.