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Review Audio Video Nov 2002

FOCUS/INTEGRATED AMPLIFIERS

Sounds better than it looks

Perreaux 200i

VERDICT Dubious looks. Very butch. Stunning sound though…

High Fidelity is an odd game that appeals to odd people. Being one of them I can safely say this. And it’s not the most friendly of markets either. People who have the kind of money that this amplifier demands are the sort that can be nit pickers at worst, hardened fanatics at best and generally a pain in the butt to have to deal with.

And I’m not convinced that this particular amplifier is going to win any looks contest. Save for a Steinhart, it’s undisputably one of the ugliest things I’ve ever had on review. This is of course, a personal opinion and will probably get me into trouble.

However, I have to point out that it’s also one the very best amplifiers I have ever heard, at any price. I do not care about what it looks like, I care about what it sounded like. And if sound could be converted into looks, this would be a Claudia Schiffer.

Briefly, on the technical side, the SM6P is a reference integrated amplifier from the Perreaux stable. Its construction philosophy is simple: Make it strong. And strong it is – the chassis is the closest thing to bullet proof I think you’ll find in hi-fi. It’s heavy as a result and it’s totally inert – not a jot of resonance even when whacked with a four pound hammer. No tapes or adhesives are used internally and everything is bolted together with high tensile steel bolts.

Its front fascia has a somewhat retro-looking red FL display that indicates the level of power dialled in, while rudimentary looking button switches show which source component is selected, and that’s about it. The whole package appears to have been designed with one thing in mind: amplification first, looks second.

The chassis itself is said to add to heat dissipation which is important when it comes to the 200 watt a channel of power that the thing delivers. It’s a Class A/Mosfet hybrid design that delivers 100 watts of pure Class A before switching over to the higher powered Mosfet circuitry. Perreaux claim however, that their design is such that one gets Class A effects when listening, combined with the advantages of Class B design. It gets a little technical, beyond the space I have here.

Inputs are standard stuff: gold plated RCAs all round with solid 5-way speaker binding posts that I hooked up with my silver plated Tributaries. These also served as the interlinks between the Bow Wizard CD Player and the amp.

From the word go, the already run in amplifier stunned me. It has reserves of power that kick in effortlessly and with a zero-based bias on the sound. The tone is neutral to the point of ridiculousness and the speed is, as they say, ludicrous speed. This is a very serious amplifier indeed and it delivers a very serious performance.

I would be very interested to see how this amplifier would handle a pair of Apogee Stages – one of the most difficult of all speakers to drive that I have listened to. I think that the same would apply as to all the speakers I hooked the amp to – total domination. Without exception, the amp grabbed each speaker with conviction and submitted them to a ruthless, controlling experience where not one driver was allowed to move so much as a nanometer out of place.

With this kind of control, it stands to reason that the listening ought to be good. It was better than that - it was fantastic. Speed, pace and hence dynamics were everything that they should be. I had levels of detail and transparency that demonstrated just how good CD technology has gotten over the years and I had a completely neutral tonal approach across it all. It’s a straight wire with gain approach that has to be given enormous respect for its accuracy. And especially so from an integrated amplifier.

That it is musical goes without saying. Perreaux have managed to make an amplifier that if fed an arc welding input, will produce an arc welding output. If you are not hearing musicality in your system, I can guarantee that you need to look somewhere else for the problem.

As I said before, hi-fi is an odd game. Do not be swayed by the looks either way. This is a box that will kick the backside of many separate pre/power combinations without even thinking about it, and its approach to music is quite different from what you might expect from an amplifier that looks the way it does. It’s an absolute stunner in all respects.

William Kelly