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Listening Room
We’re expecting mail from the
flat-earthers, those who believe that
all amplifiers with adequate power
will, in the absence of a truly egregious
engineering blunder, sound alike. We
reviewed two multichannel power amps
in this issue. And if you think they must
both sound the same, turn the page.
We took the AV-6 into the lab for our
usual battery of tests. It performed flawlessly
even at levels just above the noise
floor, which was very low: it’s shown on
this page. Down to 200 Hz, the noise
hovers around 100 dB below full power.
It rises somewhat below that frequency,
though under no circumstances does it
become audible. The amplifier is slightly
microphonic, and we could see the lowfrequency
noise soar some 10 dB when
we struck the cover hard. This is still
a good figure, though it illustrates the
reason Vecteur spent money damping
that potentially troublesome cover.
Because we don’t own six dummy
load resistors, we couldn’t check maximum
power with all channels driven.
Driving just two channels (the ones
we had listened to), the AV-6 easily
exceeded its specifications. We drove
it to 153.3 watts before clipping at
1 kHz, and to a slightly higher level at
20 kHz. It did a bit less well at 20 Hz, as
The listening room was suddenly filled
with sunlight, and I felt great, submerged in
great music. Lacking was not a single one of
the qualities sought by any self-respecting
audiophile.
To begin, in works with torrents of notes
and sounds, including at times breathtaking
chromatics, I detected a treasure trove of
detail, thanks to the amplifier’s remarkable
clarity. The image, and the space — both
horizontal and vertical — left all the space
necessary for the wide-ranging dynamics,
alternating between pianissimo and powerful
tuttis, had plenty of elbow room, and
could communicate such charming emotions.
Choral voices were superb too. Impact
was striking, the sound exquisite…in short,
we are dealing here with a highly musical
amplifier I can recommend without tion.
hesita-
—Reine Lessard
CROSSTALK
Listening to music through this amplifier
was a breeze. There was nothing to analyze
or compare, nothing to pay attention to,
just the music in all its glory. An effortless
experience, I tell you. Choral voices flowed
in clear, transparent veils around the speakers,
strings lightly brushed sounded like just
that — not just as simple transients — and
the vibraphone…vibrated with its rich,
resounding tone.
Actually, it was so similar to the reference
amplifier that it was no test at all, so to speak.
But then, as I relaxed through the listening
tests, I started noticing little things I had
not heard quite so clearly before. That harp
touch was almost palpable, I thought. And
this double bass melody line — why did I
find it so easy to follow now? What about
those barely audible sounds that fade into
space and reveal the size of the hall?
In many ways the character of this amp
many amplifiers do. Though it clipped
at 147 watts, it began exhibiting high
distortion at 120.1 watts…just above
the rated power.
We were initially puzzled by what one
can do with that sixth channel. Though
6.1 channel systems do exist (DTS
offers a true 6.1 system), the AV-6 has
one channel too many for the usual 5.1
surround system, and one too few for
Dolby’s 7.1 channel system. What do
you do with an extra channel?
Actually we had little difficulty
coming up with answers. You can give
your centre speaker extra headroom by
biamplifying it. You can also drive a passive
subwoofer. Such subs are now rare,
but we do in fact own one.
And then we got more ideas. Perhaps
you have a high grade two channel
music system and you’re looking for a
new power amplifier. So look what we
have here: six superb quality amplifier
channels, capable of triamplifying your
high end speakers!
However you configure it, we think
you’ll come to the same conclusion we
did: by any standard this amplifier is an
amazing bargain. But unlike many bargains,
this one won’t make you wish you
had saved a little longer before making
your choice.
was similar to that of the reference, but
through many other little details, it reached
out to me unexpectedly, in unmistakable
fashion, as the reference rarely did. How do
they do it?
—Albert Simon
I’m still waiting for Vecteur to get a
product really, really wrong. It doesn’t look
as though it will be this year. The AV-6 is
such a bargain that it’s tempting to talk about
it in terms of price. That would be unfair.
What Vecteur has provided here is not
just a big bang for the buck, but The Big
Bang itself. Forget the price, forget the extra
four channels (as we did in our Alpha room),
and just listen to the way it sounds. The AV-6
represents value in the original sense of that
much maligned word: what comes out of it
is valuable for its own sake.
—Gerard Rejskind
Was Ray Brown the world’s best bassist?
Judge for yourself on this 24/96 disc that will play in any DVD player. Of flip it over for 24/192
DVD-Audio. Visit http://www.uhfmag.com/Hi-Res.html.
52 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine