Measurements and conclusion
Contents
Bluesound PowerNode Edge
Bluesound puts up decent measurements. Frequency response is dead straight. They do that well. Noise is noticeable: up to 20 KHz it’s all neat, but after that we see a filter doing its job and the noise rises significantly. And that measurement is done with a high-res measurement signal….
If we demand maximum power, the distortion shoots up. However, all models in this test do this. That is apparently the concession we have to accept. Maximum power is achieved though.
Noise to mains is under control. It is not the lowest, but it is good enough. So no worries in that area.
Sonos Amp.
Ai, Sonos… these are not very good scores. The noise floor – as with Bluesound – is decent at first (except for some spiking), but it rises pretty quickly. Sonos rises as early as 10 KHz.
The frequency response is not straight when the equalizer is on with all sliders at 0. How can that be? Only when we really turn off the equalizer is the response straight…. Strange.
Distortion at maximum power is unacceptably high. At 1 watt we are still at 1% THD. Finally, we see a huge amount of noise on the mains side. So much that we wonder if this would pass CE inspection.
Volumio Integro
We see an equivalent measurement to the Creek. Which is not surprising, since the amplifier chips are the same. So we do not see a perfectly straight line, but a very faint bulge. Know that everything falls within 0.1dB approximately. What is noticeable, however, is that the channels are not quite even…. that may impact the stereo image.
Distortion is quite low, but not the lowest in the field. Sonos’ THD N, for example, is lower. However, in the Residue measurement we see that the residue is much more natural (rounder in shape) than the Wiim, Sonos and Bluesound. That is a striking fact…!
The noise floor is around -100dB and rises from 30 KHz. So it is not the lowest noise floor, but is “straight” for a long time.
The Integro also struggles when we ask for full power. It starts significantly higher than the Bluesound and WiiM (which start around 1% THD), but is well below where Sonos starts (20% THD). At 1 watt, we then see 0.15%. That’s high… in short: don’t turn it up full blast.
The noise on the mains side is under control. It is even quite low! The WiiM does even better here, but we see that Volumio didn’t just grab a “power-brick”. This is a neat one. Though we think a clean, stable, powerful power supply takes this streamer to a whole other level. All the “problems” we see are in fact power supply problems.
WiiM Amp
What can we say… boy: we didn’t expect this. We see really neat results on the screen. Power supply noise is low, power is met (though with some tweaking… class D is a bit grumpy at times) and distortion is low, considering the price range.
The only thing we find remarkable is the frequency response. We see a substantial lurch at the end. That must be a filter effect. However, we think that could be a bit neater.
But all in all: for 349 Euro a streamer amplifier that sounds and measures so well…. hats off to you.
Ha, just try the EC Play, Electrocompaniet app with own S2 / SA2 streamer / streamer + amp