MOON 250i
Contents
Your author does have something to do with the Moon brand. The 600i V2 is an insanely beautiful integrated amplifier. The 680D is a wonderful dac, and the phono stages are dead quiet and extremely musical. Also, the ACE has visited a few times, and it has never disappointed especially in combination with the new speaker…. the Voice 22. But how do you like the 250i? An amplifier that’s getting a bit old by now, we understand.
Opinions are divided on this Canadian. Martijn reports, “Warm sound in the bass and saxophone. Lots of breath in the saxophone sound, but it all feels a bit compact. Instruments get a little lost in the reverb. Lacks dynamics and drive, somewhat polite. Saxophone is very backward in the stereo image”. Yung mentioned “High-end control” and a nice 3d stereo image (he was in the sweet spot) and Geoffrey finds it difficult.“Emphasis on the voices, difficult these, instruments also more splashy, vocals very clear, lacks something precise.”
With the audience, Moon falls very well. Indeed, it won. So why it varies so much within the editors is a big question for us.
Moon 250i measurements
The Moon 250i is not an amplifier made for measurements. That much is clear to us. The very low feedback used by Moon creates a somewhat unsettled picture in the noise measurement. That ‘unrest’ increases at 10 watts. By itself, the noise floor is fine with a baseline around -120dB. But the harmonics disturb the picture.
The channel separation is at -76dB which is also not really grandiose. A bit similar to the Atoll which comes out at -73dB. The frequency response measurement shows that from 20 Hz there is a 3dB roll-off to 5 Hz. That’s pretty hefty if we’re being honest. There is also 1dB of channel unevenness.
In the power measurement we see that the Moon is fairly agnostic in terms of impedance. But the distortion is a bit high – 5% – at low input (1mW). That obscures microdetail. Power supply noise is nicely low with the Moon, though. All in all, the Moon doesn’t come out so well in the measurements.
Specificaties Moon 250i
| Country of origin | Canada |
| Dac | No |
| Analog | 5 x single ended in, minijack in
Phono MM/MC |
| Power | 50 watt 8 Ohm / 100 watt 4 Ohm |
| Power supply | 320 VA – 20.000 uF capacity |
| Size / Weight | 44 x 37 x 9cm – 10 Kg |
| Price | 2490 Euro |