AUDIOLAB 6000A PLAY

Does your home stereo need a new heart? Transplant in Audiolab’s exquisite 6000A Play and it’ll beat stronger than ever before. Cheesy cardiac intro aside, this is something of a hybrid device, comprising the amplification electronics of the company’s highly-rated 6000A and the streaming smarts of its class-leading 6000N. What results is a finely-balanced and delicatelooking amplifier that’s as adept at blasting out the signal from your CD transport as it is streaming 24-bit/192kHz hi-res audio.

The core of that streaming platform is DTS Play-Fi – quickly becoming something of a standard in audio streaming – which links the 6000A Play to a laundry list of music services, streaming radio stations, or your own hi-res collection via the Play-Fi app. That’s not its only trick; you can also hook up the likes of Spotify Connect, or just connect and stream via aptX Bluetooth. With four digital audio inputs, three line-level RCA inputs and an MM phono connection, you’re not short of other audio options, either. There’s a good reason we went with the ‘beating heart’ analogy: this is the hardware through which your whole hi-fi can really come to life.

Even if you already have a meaty power amp or a beloved preamp, the 6000A Play can slot right in. You can optionally disable one of its two stages and only make use of the other one, so whether you need 50W per channel amplification into eight ohms, or a simple and precise analogue preamp, you’re completely covered.

“Soup up your stereo with this sound piece of kit”

Josh Russell