Yamaha R-N402
Smartness via the MusicCast wireless multiroom system makes this amplifier versatile beyond its price bracket.
Among the greatest achievements of this Yamaha smart amplifier is that you would never guess its price. Under $800 it is, and while you might note that it’s light when you lift it, or that the front panel doesn’t have quite the gravitas of the company’s higher-end units, once on the shelf it looks solid and serious, clearly part of Yamaha’s world. It’s not entirely serious, though — in fact it’s rather fun. Equipment The fun smart stuff comes largely from the inclusion of Yamaha’s MusicCast wireless multiroom system, and all the abilities this brings — app control of networking, Bluetooth (with AAC but not aptX), AirPlay and online music sources.
But there’s a reasonable spread of standard amplifier fare also. In addition to the choice of Wi-Fi or Ethernet networking you get three analogue inputs on RCA pairs, one of these a ‘tape’type loop with an output. There are two digital inputs at the rear — one optical, one coaxial — and a USB slot on the front to which you can attach sticks or drives of files. (We’d note that a single optical input is pretty light for today’s world, and there’s no USB-B for direct computer playback so plan your system carefully, remembering that MusicCast may allow you to get around the light input count by playing in another way.)
There are FM and AM tuners (but not DAB+ digital) on board with antenna inputs and antennas provided; MusicCast will add internet radio.
The amplifiers themselves are clearly a variant of Class D, which allows far higher levels of power than Class-AB circuits might at this price, though Yamaha’s figures are sometimes a little hard to interpret — 2 x 100W is the headline into eight ohms, though quoting 0.2% THD at a figure of 50W, so potentially higher when pushed. And there are two sets of speaker terminals here, so you can attach ‘A’and ‘B’ speaker pairs, but you should not use both at the same time, the manual warning that the amp may overheat if your speakers aren’t 16 ohms or higher, which they almost certainly won’t be. (From this we might infer you should take some care cranking the R-N402 with speakers below eight ohms as well.) You can also use the extra terminals for biwiring a single pair of speakers.
For control you can use your smart device with Yamaha’s MusicCast app, or the supplied physical remote control which follows Yamaha’s usual penchant for having a few too many buttons, though at least the volume is clearly situated in the centre, with the mute to one side nearby. Or of course you can play with the front panel itself, with its vertical buttons (designed to look like the selector switches on Yamaha’s higher-end kit, though here they are mere buttons) and heavilyweighted volume knob on the right. Performance We used the Yamaha as a dumb amp for a couple of weeks, sans MusicCast, just running a TV into the optical input and music via analogue RCAs from a separate preamp (to keep our turntable in the system). All was clear and dynamic through our friendly standmount speakers, and the missus had unusually little difficulty switching to the new remote for TV volume control.
We also enjoyed the FM tuner given a roof antenna connection, and even with the supplied strip antenna things were better than many implementations thanks to a mono mode button, thereby reducing noise on lesser signals — something all stereo FM radios once featured, yet strangely fewer today.
We’re not sure why you’d use the AM tuner when pretty much everything there can now come digitally from internet radio (unless you’re out bush, of course, see News). So at this point we connected to the R-N402 using the MusicCast app (eventually, see above), and enjoyed the variable merits of talk radio that way. And so much more! Moving up to the music room, we turned to the world of networking for file replay, in the absence of a USB computer input on the R-N402. Via MusicCast our Mac-based iTunes files could be accessed using the Asset UPnP utility to share them, while our various NAS drives served high-res files up to 24-bit/192kHz for FLAC, WAV and AIFF, and 24/96 for Apple Lossless. One fine delivery came playing a Stockfisch DSD2.8 file of Irish band Ranagri’s
Cold Shallow, every harp pluck and guitar stroke impeccably rendered, the whole a rich and textured delight. By now we were driving a big pair of JBL Studio Monitors hard, enjoying a powerful and crisp presentation able to pull a wealth of detail from those high-res files — Bonham’s squeaky kick pedal and Jimmy’s buzzy guitar amp were audible right through the first verse of Led Zeppelin’s Since I’ve Been Loving You (24/96 FLAC, since we couldn’t play vinyl through this amp). At times, even with these relatively friendly speakers and a high-quality file, there did seem a limit below reference level where we often backed off on volume, Robert’s vocal showing a smidgeon of strain at high levels, Mr Yo Yo Ma’s cello coming through just a bit pushy on his newly released Bach collection; a further level of distortion-free playback is what you gain by paying the higher admission price for the costlier amps in this group. But short of the rise to reference level, the Yamaha delivered from its many sources with drive and agility, Conclusion Amplification that performs up to and above its level, a reasonable set of physical inputs and a host of other paths to music via the MusicCast platform — Yamaha’s R-N402 is precisely what we were hoping to find in this group, an amplifier that appears traditional at first glance, but is really a leading example of the new breed of smart, networked, multiroom-capable music hubs for the home.