Rotel A8

For those who want to take a modular approach to future-proofing their system, rather than a ‘lots of eggs, one basket’ do-it-all design? Rotel has the answer in the form of the new A8 integrated amplifier, a simple all-analogue model it’s just slotted in as the entry-level offering in a line-up currently running to nine amps.

At £399 it’s highly affordable, at just 7.3cm tall it’s suitably sleek, and with three line-ins and a moving magnet phono stage it has everything most users will ever need.

If you want digital inputs, there’s no shortage of affordable DACs you could add to the Rotel, and those who want to stream their music are well served by the likes of the WiiM range (which starts at just £159 for the Pro network player) - so with the extras so affordable, a no-frills amplifier like the A8 makes perfect sense. After all, designs like this have seen generations of music listeners from records and cassettes to CDs and streaming and back to LPs again - so they must be doing something right.

Available in black or silver, the A8 sticks to established Rotel thinking on what matters when designing products. Its power supply uses a chunky high-current toroidal transformer built in-house, as are the power-supply capacitors and other sound-critical components that rival manufacturers tend to buy in. The internal layout is simple and logical, keeping signal paths short from input to output. Everything’s on one main circuit board, in the middle of which sit the heatsinks for the output devices - and Rotel is sticking to tried-and-tested Class AB power amplification rather than following the Class D path trodden by so many other brands. 

This delivers 30 watts per channel into 8ohms, rising to 40 watts a side into 4ohms - not massively impressive for those who buy based on big numbers, perhaps, but more than adequate for the easy-going electrical characteristics of most modern compact speakers.

There’s nothing to shock or baffle on the fascia - just a volume control, smaller knobs for balance, bass and treble, and four push-buttons to select the inputs. A 3.5mm headphone socket completes the line-up - and if you’re really hankering for some frippery here, there’s a remote-control handset (such luxury!) and the choice of colour for the LED ring indicating the volume level, selected via a long press of the AUX button on the front panel. You can have red, green, blue or purple, so go ahead and knock yourself out with the hedonism of the whole experience. You can dim or defeat the LEDs using another long press on the CD button, or temporarily using the remote handset (which will also control Rotel source components).

The rear-panel layout is just as simple as the front: four sets of input sockets, terminals for one pair of speakers, and a little slider switch to enable or defeat automatic power-down if the amp doesn’t detect a music signal for 20 minutes. That keeps power consumption to a minimum, the amp ‘waking up’ again when the volume or source selection controls are operated, or an input signal is detected.

Sound quality

There’s nothing, then, to confuse - so the Rotel is quick and easy to install and set up, the only big decision really being the colour of those volume LEDs (though I guess you could change them whenever required to match your outfit). Beyond that, you need only to plug in your source, hook up your speakers, and you’re good to go. In my case, using a WiiM Pro Plus network player as the front end seems more appropriate than my Naim ND 555 with twin 555 PS DR power supplies, which might have been slight overkill, while the PMC Prodigy 5 floorstanders, although perhaps more expensive than the typical choice for an amp like this, give a good insight into what the amp can do.

Initial impressions are that the A8 sounds just a tad thin and even a bit brash straight from the box, but after a day or two of use it settles down, the bass filling out nicely and the midband and treble coming together to give good insight into the qualities of performers and recordings. Even though the PMCs are a pretty easy drive for any amplifier, you’re not going to get quite the bass extension and grip of a more powerful amp when you have only 30 watts per channel on hand, and neither is this the amp to choose if you want to fill a huge room with music at very high level. 

However, the Rotel gives a fine account of itself within the limits of ‘normal’ listening, goes loud enough for most without any signs of stress, and always sounds clean and entirely natural. Nor is there any sense of anything significant missing from the sound: rhythms move smartly and with good drive, the bass is well-extended and tightly defined, and there’s plenty of air and space in the treble without the high frequencies ever straying into excessive brightness or harshness.

It does a great job with the quirky, dense mixes of World Party’s Bang! album, but is equally adept with Simone Pedroni’s John Williams Reimagined set, with its chamber arrangements for flute, cello and piano of some of the composer’s more romantic movie moments, bringing out the drama of the music and the close-miked timbres of the instruments. And while a large-scale recording such as the punchy Steven Wilson remixes of ABC’s The Lexicon of Love will work the A8 hard, especially at high playback levels, this little amp always stays clean and clear, conveying the music with all its intensity intact.

Living with

In its simple, honest way, this is one of the easiest amplifiers to incorporate into a system, and whether you’re putting together your first set-up or upgrading from an elderly amplifier, you can have this one up and running in minutes. Yes, it’s a step back in time compared with the digital inputs and onboard streaming of some of the more complex integrated amps around today, but it’s hard not to like the back-to-basics appeal here.

Conclusion

There’s something entirely old-school about the A8, but that’s part of its charm: drawing on its in-house engineering and design expertise, Rotel has come up with a design capable of higher standards of performance than you’d expect at this price, and with an ‘all you need, nothing you don’t’ attitude it’s hard not to like.

Listening notes

Chris Benstead Train Game

This cue from Benstead’s soundtrack for The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a snappy workout of bass and drums, superbly recorded to push a system hard

ABC Poison Arrow

Steven Wilson’s 2022 remastering of ABC’s debut album, The Lexicon of Love, brought out more detail, more drive and more grandeur. Play it and hear how we all imagined it actually sounded back in 1982

The Branford Marsalis Quartet Whiplash

Straight down the line and tight as a tight thing, this track from the quartet’s Four MFs Playing Tunes album is one to have you sitting back and wondering at both the musicianship and the wide-open recording

Compact, well built and with enough oomph to drive most compact modern speakers to great effect, for many users this could be all the amplifier needed to create a great system. And there’s a purity about both the design and the sound that makes it something rather special.