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Yamaha A-S801 Integrated Amplifier and YBA-11 Bluetooth Wireless Adapter

Yamaha A-S801

Sometimes reviews of expensive, advancing-the-art gear lead us to think that’s where all the interesting developments take place. 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. And that’s just what we have here: a 100Wpc integrated amplifier with an built-in DAC, priced at $899.

The Yamaha A-S801 may be inexpensive but its feature set is amazingly rich. 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. That range encompasses most of the computer-audio files available today. Status lights on the front panel indicate the sampling rate and DSD speed of a digital file being played. 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. And you can add aptX Bluetooth connectivity by plugging Yamaha’s $49.95 YBA-11 Bluetooth wireless adapter into the digital coaxial input jack. 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. But wait! There’s also a USB Type A jack, the type you find on computers. What’s that for? It powers the YBA-11. 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. So you don’t need a separate power supply for the YBA-11—clever.

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. And it has a single line-level output jack for connecting a subwoofer. Lots of folks today have 2.1 speaker setups (two satellite speakers and a subwoofer), and the A-S801 supports that arrangement—smart again. 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. There’s a blast from the past—when a respectable audio system had open-reel and cassette tape machines.

The parade of features continues with bass, treble, and loudness controls. Loudness controls used to be common, but like tone controls, have since become scarce. (If you’re wondering, a loudness control boosts the bass and treble as the volume level decreases.) There’s even a balance control! There are also two settings you can use for maximum signal purity: Pure Direct, which bypasses unused audio inputs and turns off power to those inputs; and CD Direct Amp, which switches directly to the CD player, bypassing all other inputs and turning off the power supply to unused inputs. Both of those settings bypass the tone, balance, and loudness controls. There is also a two-position speaker switch that lets you select two sets of speakers, or turn the speakers off entirely so you can use the headphone jack. You can also activate both sets of speaker terminals simultaneously if you want to bi-amp your speakers. And there’s a full-featured remote, too, which also controls all six of the CD players Yamaha makes. Did I mention that the A-S801 is feature-rich?

Styling is traditional Yamaha, which I’ve always admired. That means it comes in a full-sized case (17.125″ x 6″ x 15.25″) with lots of controls on the front panel. Both black and silver faceplates are available; the silver review unit looked quite stylish, and all its labels were readable. The amplifier carries a two-year parts-and-labor warranty, reasonable for an $899 product.

Yamaha emphasizes that it uses premium parts in constructing the A-S801, though no specific examples are cited. The chassis is double-layered to suppress vibrations. Lots of manufacturers are turning to Class D output sections to achieve high power output at low cost, but I was pleased to find the A-S801 uses a Class AB output circuit. Input impedance for all analog inputs, including the mm phono input, is 47k ohms, which should pose no problems with most sources. The single, summed subwoofer output on an RCA jack has an output impedance of 1.2k ohms and a built-in high-frequency cutoff at 90Hz. The relatively high output impedance for the subwoofer jack could cause problems with some subwoofers; it’s higher than ideal for my JL Audio Fathom f110 subwoofer, for example. An impedance selector switch on the back panel lets you choose the output impedance of your speakers: low for 4-ohm speakers, high for others. The amplifier should be turned off before changing the position of the impedance selector switch. An auto power standby switch, if turned on, automatically puts the amplifier in standby mode if it’s not operated for 8 hours. A two-prong IEC jack is provided for the power cord connection. There are no standard line-out jacks, so you can’t use an additional power amplifier for bi-amplifying, or use separate left- and right-channel subwoofers. Those omissions seemed well-chosen for an amplifier at this price point.

Since headphones have become such an important part of the connected listener’s experience, it was important to provide a headphone jack. The headphone amp is rated at 54 milliwatts into 16 ohms, and 400mW into 300 ohms.

A well-illustrated owner’s manual is provided with sections in English, French, and Spanish. Each section is 19 pages long. The manual is also available on Yamaha’s website. It has an exhaustively thorough list of specifications.

Setting Up and Using the A-S801
The full-width amplifier slid easily onto a shelf of my equipment rack with plenty of clearance for ventilation. It ran barely warm to the touch when playing. I used the power cord furnished with the amplifier, reasoning that at this price level users would probably not spring for an aftermarket cord. Since the amplifier had facilities for a 2.1 speaker system, that’s what I used: KEF LS50 satellite speakers with a JL Audio Fathom f110 subwoofer. To evaluate the A-S801’s bass performance, it was necessary to let the amplifier run full-range, so I turned the subwoofer off for that. Blue Marble Audio speaker cable, with banana plugs on the amplifier end, made it easy to connect to the A-S801’s speaker terminals. An HP Envy laptop computer running 64-bit Windows 7 and Roon server software comprised a computer-based server. It was connected to A-S801’s USB input using Audience Au24 SE USB cables. I remotely controlled Roon from both the iPad version of Roon Remote and from a second copy of Roon installed on a Toshiba laptop computer. It was cool to be able to use the Toshiba laptop to write this review and then switch over to use it as a remote for Roon. I also tried a dedicated server, the Linux-based Aurender N100H, connected to the USB input with a Wireworld Platinum Starlight 6 cable. The servers were connected to my home network, where I store my collection of music files on a QNAP TS-251 network attached storage drive.

I downloaded a copy of Yamaha’s Steinberg USB Windows driver Version 1.9.5 for the A-S801 and installed it so the computer would recognize the A-S801’s DAC, then changed the settings in Roon to play through the A-S801—a very straightforward procedure. Usually, a Windows driver installation actually installs several drivers, such as a Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI) driver and an Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) driver and possibly others. Normally, I use the WASAPI driver; however, Yamaha’s WASAPI driver was buggy; it crashed a few times, and when it did work, it would not play DSD files, converting them instead to PCM, even though I had set Roon’s DSD playback strategy to play DSD files using DoP mode. Fortunately, the Yamaha ASIO driver worked just fine. To explore this problem, I also tried the drivers in the JRiver Media Center version 21 server program; again, the WASAPI driver crashed occasionally, while the ASIO driver worked OK. The Linux-based Aurender server worked flawlessly. Grrr—whereas I found dealing with such a problem an interesting challenge, it would have been very frustrating for a newbie.

The A-S801 epitomized the need for amplifier break-in. Yamaha recommended 100 hours, so I let the amplifier play 24/7 until it reached (and passed) that elapsed time before I started listening critically. When I first connected the A-S801, I feared the review was going to be an ordeal; the amplifier sounded brittle and raw; but after 100 hours of play, it smoothed out dramatically. A couple of audio dealer friends who heard the amplifier before and after break-in (but not in-between) agreed there was a big improvement. Since I’m a headphone fan, I made sure the headphone jack got plenty of break-in time, too, using $299 NAD VISO PM50 headphones, a good match for the Yamaha.

Lots of people have large music collections on their smartphones, so it’s handy to be able to play that music by connecting the phones to an amplifier using a wireless Bluetooth connection. I plugged Yamaha’s YBA-11 Bluetooth wireless adapter into the digital coaxial input jack to provide Bluetooth connectivity. As noted above, the A-S801 provides a Type A USB port on the rear panel that powers the adapter. Both a power cable and a skinny SPDIF cable are also provided. They aren’t very long, so you’ll need to place the adapter near the amplifier—not much farther away than the front panel. Connecting the YBA-11 to my iPhone 6 was quite easy. It was one of the best-sounding Bluetooth connections I’ve heard, too—very enjoyable.

The remote control was easy to use, with buttons to raise or lower the volume separated slightly from the other buttons for easier access. A mute button, just below the volume buttons, partially muted the output of the amplifier, letting the music play at a much reduced level. The muting was quiet enough to permit a telephone call or conversation, but loud enough to remind you music was still on. I was pleased to see that each input had a separate button on the remote, so you could access any input directly without having to scroll through intermediate ones. The source selector knob on the A-S801 was freely rotating, but had a detent at each input’s position, and a small LED lighted up at each position to indicate which input was selected. The volume control had a small index line inscribed on it, indicating its position, but it was a bit difficult to see from my listening position ten feet away. The volume control was a continuously variable unit with a motor drive that enabled the remote to set the  level. The power amp section turned off when headphones were plugged in. I wondered if the relatively low headphone output into low-impedance ’phones would pose a problem, but it drove the 32-ohm NAD PM50s to higher SPLs than I cared to hear. The NAD headphone is quite an easy load, so I challenged the A-S801 with the harder-to-drive 35-ohm HiFiMan HE400, which has a fairly low 92.5dB sensitivity. The A-S801 drove it louder than I could stand to listen to, so any worries I might have had about wimpiness from the headphone amplifier were put to rest. Similarly, in my largish room (23′ by 20′ by 12′) the A-S801 effortlessly drove the 85dB-sensitive KEF speakers much louder than I wanted to hear them play. Bass without the subwoofer was punchy and dynamic, although it understandably didn’t plumb the depths; after all, the KEF speakers only have a 5¼-inch mid/woofer—although sometimes the bass performance compelled me to check to make sure I hadn’t left the subwoofer on. The A-S801 had no problem driving my sub, though I had to turn it down considerably from the setting I normally use with my preamp.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a moving-magnet cartridge available, so was unable to try the phono section. Nor did I have a CD player, which prevented using the CD Direct feature, but I did try the Pure Direct setting, which sounded a bit cleaner. I used the Pure Direct setting for the review.

Sound
The Yamaha A-S801 amplifier sounded sweet and smooth, particularly with vocals. Not a trace of the glare that plagued the unit before break-in was present, until the volume was advanced to a louder level than I ever cared to listen; then, some glare and coarseness set in.

It’s useful to begin a review with a very familiar musical piece, so I queued up old favorite “Folia Rodrigo Martinez” ripped as an AIFF file from the CD La Folia 1490-1701 [Alia Vox]. It’s an information-rich recording of a musical piece written in 1490 and realized by Jordi Savall and his band. On the A-S801, the cascabels which open the piece were very clearly delineated, though without as much detail as I’ve heard on the best systems. The bass, which descends into the mid-20Hz range, was, of course, not fully developed on the small KEF speakers (with subwoofer off), but had plenty of impact, and the upper bass was quite detailed. When I switched on the subwoofer, the low bass was reproduced with impact, though it lacked the resolution I’m used to hearing. Percussion instruments sounded harmonically accurate, but blurred into the background a bit more than they do with top-of-the-line systems. Savall’s viola da gamba sounded harmonically rich, and the baroque guitar and harp were distinctive. Sometimes the last two instruments seem to sound quite similar, making it hard to tell them apart. The A-S801 had plenty of microdynamic verve, so the music sounded quite lively. I could tell Savall and his forces were having lots of fun playing the piece, and I had just as much fun listening to it.

With “Folia Rodrigo Martinez” fresh in mind, I played the same piece from my iPhone 6 through the YBA-11 Bluetooth connection. My expectations weren’t very high, but I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of reproduction: plenty of sparkle and dynamics, maybe less detail than via the computer connection, but thoroughly enjoyable. If you have a lot of music on your smartphone, as many people do, it’s well worthwhile to invest in the YBA-11 Bluetooth adapter.

To see how the A-S801 handled a solo instrumental, I queued up Alex de Grassi playing “Shenandoah” from his album Special Event 19 [Blue Coast Records]. The A-S801 did a fine job reproducing the guitar: the initial transient of the plucked strings, the sustain as the string sounded its note, and the decay as the note slipped into silence. Treble was extended but not peaky. The A-S801 accurately captured the sound of the drone strings from de Grassi’s unusual instrument.

To evaluate how well a component handles soundstaging, I often turn to the piece “Miserere” from the Tallis Scholars Allegri’s Miserere & Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli album [Gimell]. This a cappella work has two vocal groups: The main one is at the front of the soundstage, while a smaller solo grouping is located well behind them in the church where the piece was recorded. The main group was reproduced with plenty of detail and clarity, without any trace of the distortion that some components impose on the piece. I’ve heard the main (front) choir distributed more widely across the soundstage, but singers within the group were well localized. The rearward solo group was reproduced in a wash of reverberation, but the singers there were still understandable. I’ve heard this piece reproduced better, but by systems costing multiples of what the review system cost.

You can’t write an audio review without playing a Girl with Guitar piece, so I queued up Shelby Lynne’s Just a Little Lovin’ [Acoustic Sounds]. Although this album was recorded at quite a low level, the A-S801 had no trouble playing it. Even though the subwoofer was turned off on the title song, the A-S801 reproduced the bass (midbass, actually) with a lot of impact and punch, so that the song was quite enjoyable. With the subwoofer back on, the bass extended quite a bit deeper—the advantage of a 2.1 speaker system. As in other pieces, treble was once again quite extended but not peaky. Lynne’s voice was reproduced with just a little hoarseness, which I think is how it actually sounds. I could hear how she phrased the words quite clearly.

Finally, I challenged the A-S801 with full orchestra, playing Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s recording of a favorite piece: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 [Reference Recordings/NativeDSD]. (If you’re unfamiliar with NativeDSD.com, its rapidly growing catalog specializes in downloads of high-resolution music recorded in DSD and DXD formats, including DSD256.) The opening bars nearly blew me off the couch, since I had forgotten to reduce the listening level after playing Just a Little Lovin’. But even at that level, there was no strain to the sound. The DSD128 indicator light on the A-S801’s front panel came on verifying that the A-S801’s DAC was indeed playing that extra-high-resolution format, and the orchestral sound was gloriously natural—tons of detail, harmonically rich, with distinct but continuous dynamic levels.

Comparison
Ideally, I’d compare an item being reviewed to a similar component; however, I had no similar integrated amplifier on hand, and there doesn’t seem much point in comparing it to my much more expensive reference system, with electronics alone costing over $23,000. I could sum up such a comparison like this: The reference system sounded better in virtually all respects, but so what? It doggone should sound better, given the considerable difference in price. It surely doesn’t sound 23 times better! Instead, let me draw on my memory of other integrated amplifiers I’ve reviewed fairly recently and compare them to the A-S801.

Most closely resembling the A-S801 was the $2600 NuPrime IDA-16 amplifier I reviewed in Issue 252. It included an equally versatile DAC and had even more power: 200Wpc from a Class D amplifier section. The amplifier section sounded smoother and never showed any inclination to sound ragged, even at obscenely loud levels, as you’d expect, given the power difference. Class D amplifiers have gained a reputation for sounding a bit odd, but the NuPrime had no such problem. It had several more sophisticated design features than the A-S801, such as ultra-low noise JFETs employed in its input stage, and a volume control with ninety-nine ½-dB steps implemented via an advanced, thin-film, switched-resistor ladder where only a single resistor is in the signal path at any volume setting. Its digital volume-level display was easy to read from a distance. It also had a full stereo line output which could be used to drive subwoofers or another external amplifier. This differed from the A-S801’s summed subwoofer output, and the NuPrime also had no built-in crossover. I don’t view that omission as a problem; most subwoofers have built-in low-pass crossovers. However, the NuPrime amplifier lacked a phono section, and had no headphone amplifier.

Another recently reviewed (Issue 255) integrated amplifier I’ll mention was the $599 Denon PMA-50. It’s a smaller switching amplifier designed for a different environment—a bedroom, office, or just as a headphone amplifier. I think of the A-S801 as an integrated amplifier that will also drive headphones, and the PMA-50 as a headphone amp that will also drive speakers. In the latter application, it has a more powerful headphone amplifier. I didn’t even try using the 25Wpc Denon to drive the 85dB-sensitive KEF speakers; I imagine the maximum volume attainable would be fairly limited. The Denon had only a single analog input, and no phono section or subwoofer output. But it did have a very versatile DAC and remote control. Although it looks very minimalist, a lot of controls are accessible through the tiny remote, including tone controls and three-level gain for the headphone amp. It also had an internal Bluetooth section, so you didn’t need an adapter like the YBA-11. However, I wasn’t nearly as impressed by the sound of the Denon’s Bluetooth connection as I was the YBA-11’s. Befitting its intended purpose, the Denon was less than half the size of the A-S801. If you have pretty efficient speakers and don’t want to play them loudly, or if headphones are your primary means of listening, the Denon amplifier could be a better buy than the A-S801.

Bottom Line
Is there any other audio component with as many features as the A-S801 amplifier? And it’s not like the features were just thrown in to impress; the A-S801 surprised me by how good it sounded driving the low-sensitivity KEF LS50 speakers in my largish room. No, it didn’t equal my far more expensive reference system, but during a listening session, several of my audio buddies said they derived genuine musical enjoyment from the system anchored by the Yamaha A-S801 amplifier, and could happily live with it. Coming from a group of lifelong audiophiles, that’s high praise indeed.

The Yamaha A-S801 looks good, sounds splendid, and has a long list of useful features at a price that makes it a flaming bargain! I suspect many readers are lifelong audiophiles like me, for whom system upgrades are a way of life, possibly even the purpose of life. But for lots of people who just want a good hi-fi to play their music on, a hi-fi may be a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. For those people, or for anyone who wants good sound with lots of flexibility at a reasonable price, the Yamaha A-S801 integrated amplifier would be my top recommendation. It may be the only hi-fi electronics purchase they will ever need.

SPECS & PRICING

Minimum output power: 100Wpc RMS, 0.019% THD, 8 ohms, 20Hz–20kHz
Dynamic power (per channel): 140/170/220/290W (8/6/4/2 ohms)
Damping factor: 240
Frequency response: 10Hz–100kHz +/– 1.0dB
THD: 0.019% (50W/8 ohms)
SNR: 99dB (input shorted, 200mV)
Inputs: Eight
Outputs: Two
Digital inputs: Optical, coaxial, USB (type B)
Dimensions: 17.125″ x 6″ x 15.25″
Weight: 26.7 lbs.
Price: $899

Yamaha YBA-11 Bluetooth Wireless Adapter
Price: $49

YAMAHA CORPORATION OF AMERICA
6600 Orangethorpe Ave.
Buena Park, CA 90620
(714) 522-9105
usa.yamaha.com

Tags: WIRELESS AUDIO YAMAHA

Vade Forrester

By Vade Forrester

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