Kiwi Fruit
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday October 18, 2004
This amplifier from across the Tasman deserves its good reputation, writes Greg Borrowman.
New Zealand may not have quite as many sheep as Australia, but it has more hi-fi amplifier manufacturers, the most famous of which is Perreaux. Peter Perreaux began building hi-fi amplifiers in 1974 and exporting them to Australia in 1976. His company burst onto the world scene three years later when it released its PMF2000 power amplifier. It was the first production audio amplifier to use "Field Effect" transistors (FETs) rather than ordinary bipolar transistors and it put Perreaux - and New Zealand - on the world hi-fi map.Perreaux has always been famous for building high-power amplifiers and its new Model 200i/P is definitely not short on power. Rated at 200 watts a channel, the amp tested by The Guide in an independent laboratory produced 278 watts into eight ohms and 440 watts into four ohms. The high power means the amplifier runs quite hot but, rather than use a noisy cooling fan to keep the output transistors at a safe temperature, Perreaux uses nearly a metre's worth of aluminium heat-sink finning. As a result, the Model 200i/P is much deeper than most amplifiers: 460mm. It's 483mm wide and 88mm high.Although it's a stereo amplifier, the 200i/P is essentially two monophonic amplifiers in a single chassis. This design ensures left-channel signals can't leak into the right channel and vice versa. Even the power supplies are separate so, in the case of a heavy power demand in one channel, the other won't be starved of energy.In spite of appearances, the Perreaux does have buttons on the front panel; they're just very small. After activating the main power switch on the rear panel, volume is adjusted using two small push buttons alongside the front-panel display. Volume level is displayed in large red numerals, with indications from 00 to 59. Up to six source components can be connected to the 200i/P, one via a professional "balanced" connection using three-pin XLR fittings rather than the usual two-pin "unbalanced" domestic RCA sockets.The front-panel buttons are so small and awkward to use that it's best to use the remote for all operations. This also gives you access to additional circuits, including "Mute" and channel-balance functions. The mute circuit is curious. If you haven't cancelled it within a minute, it resets the volume to zero and switches the amplifier to stand-by. In practice, we found this time a little too short for everyday situations, such as to answer the telephone or the front door.We were bemused by the two-letter abbreviations in the front-panel display that show the active input. Why is there an "Ld" input? We doubt there's been a single LaserDisc player sold in either Australia or New Zealand during the past five years. A "DV" abbreviation would be more appropriate. The display also mixes upper- and lower-case letters arbitrarily, which looks plain odd.There was nothing odd about the Perreaux's performance in our reference system. The 200i/P drove the speakers effortlessly with the spare power ensuring that musical peaks were always presented cleanly and without any dynamic distortion, no matter how loudly we played the CDs. There was no unwanted noise at low or high volume levels, nor was there any harmonic or non-harmonic distortion audible. After a week admiring the appearance and performance of the 200i/P we were left in no doubt as to why it's the most popular amplifier in Perreaux's range.Infofile Perreaux 200i/P Integrated Amplifier RRP: $4995 Audio Marketing Pty LtdUnit 14L/175 Gibbes Street, Chatswood, NSW 20679882 3877info@audiomarketing.com.au www.audiomarketing.com.au
© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald