Complete review in STEREO magazine (Germany), Issue 06/2013
Accuphase Integrated Amplifier E-260
Boy, have you grown!
By Matthias Böde
The new E-260 is small only with respect to the ranking within Accuphase's line-up of integrated amplifiers. Furthermore, it has long since outgrown the image as premium entry-level amplifier.
It has always been considered the fairly reasonable entrance into the noble world of high-end audio: the smallest integrated from Accuphase. This was never before more true than with its most recent version E-260. It's because never before has the Yokohama-based maker implemented so much high-tech and sound quality in its youngster, yet without having to increase the retail price at the same time. Well this may also be attributed to the currently devaluated Yen towards Euro or Dollar.
Anyway, the new E-260 comes with coated side panels and a substantially more solid case than its predecessor. And like its bigger brothers this 20-kg-beauty now also features the numeric (dB) volume level display.
In order to make the E-260 a worthwhile investment for years to come audio components from Accuphase are famous for their longevity the engineers in
Yokohama have employed only parts of the highest quality, like for instance gas-tight,
decently clicking relays and even for this entry-level class have avoided conventional potentiometers as they might become susceptible to faults sometime in the future. Instead, the E-260 comes equipped with the ingenious, microprocessorcontrolled Accuphase Analog Vari-gain Amplifier , in brief: AAVA, which by means of voltage-current amplifiers is to convert the incoming musical signal into 16 weighted current stages which are then activated or de-activated by subsequent current switches, depending on the position of the volume control knob. Thus, a sensitive adjustment in fine gradations is achieved over the entire volume range. Besides the long-term stability, Accuphase mentions lowest distortions and noise as well as absolute channel balance even at low volume levels to be the essential advantages of this AAVA concept, whereby the E-260 was to receive the most recent implementation.
Next to the current feedback circuitry for utmost phase definition up to the highest frequencies, the enhanced damping factor ought to be mentioned, which,
when compared to the E-250, is to result in a much better and effective control of the speakers. When playing Wake me up & by the duo Le Bang Bang from Munich
(STEREO Listening Test CD VII) we were indeed startled whilst the E-260 hammered the vehement and dry bass pulses into the woofers of DALI's Epicon 6 speakers.
Never before had we heard any small integrated from Accuphase playing with such verve and authority.
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Attack and Enthusiasm
The short intro of Wake me up & didn't promise too much because the sometimes plucked, sometimes stricken strings of the double bass in this song were vividly rendered with lots of tautness and springy agility. Also the brief and fierce drum beats in the subsequent Attempo played by the Antonio Forcione Quartet was displayed
