The Yamaha A-S2200

The brand new Yamaha A-S2200 is the successor to the – yes – A-S2100. The differences aren’t that big at first sight. Still, a lot of things have changed internally. Most of it is ‘borrowed’ from the more expensive 5000-series. Think of better toroidal transformers, a firmer chassis and in case of the Yamaha A-S2200 a balanced circuit. The 3200 goes even further by the way. It has a fully balanced circuit and nicer capacitors. Of course you pay for that too. These adjustments should ensure that there is less colouring and more control in the sound.

The power of the A-S2200 has remained the same at around 100 watts in 8 Ohm and 160 watts in 4 Ohm. Damping factor is around 250. So that also remained the same. How the power is delivered we are going to find out.

Connectivity

The Yamaha A-S2200 has a wide range of inputs and outputs. Think phono MM/MC, one XLR input, four cinch inputs, one loop (for tape decks for example) and a pre-in and output.

Nice to see is the headphone output (with trim function, -6, 0 +6 and +12dB) and the large buttons on the front for balance, bass and treble. Nice retro touch. Just like the VU meters. Is it useful? Nope… is it fun? Sure it is!

Satisfaction

Operating the Yamaha on the device itself is very satisfying. The whole device breathes quality. The switches feel very robust and give a divine ‘click‘. For example, the mute switch. This is no ordinary switch, but a kind of spring loaded switch. So it jumps back. But the way it does that is just high-end. The Phono switch switches a relay internally. You hear that… ah… glorious. The rotary knobs for balance, treble and bass have a little more resistance on the ‘0’ position. That resistance has to be tuned to perfection. It’s perfect. Bizarre… Sorry. We’re going to stop now. Ow… bi-wiring and amping is possible with the Yamaha A-S2200… Matter of converting the very well build “speakers” switch.

The set-up

We’re testing the Yamaha A-S2200 on both the Focal Sopra No1, Bowers & Wilkins 805D3 and DALI Rubicon 6. Three totally different speakers. And we’ll hear about that later. As source we use both a Bluesound Node2 and our Ambre with Pavane from Metrum Acoustics. Wiring is from Audioquest and Grimm. We use both single ended and XLR. Make sure you notice the switch for attenuation and phase well, you can quickly touch that by accident.