LET THE SUN SHINE IN:

(Note: This review has been rated "No-Hype." There are no worn out, tacky references to the Land Down Under where the product is manufactured. Not a word is spoken about koalas, kangaroos, water rotating backwards in toilets, shrimp the size of your head on a bar-BQ, large sharks, strong ale, nude beaches, or the Sydney Opera House. The people who make Redgum electronics are proud of their country, but they want to be judged solely on the merit of their product and, not the mystique of a land faraway where things work just a little differently. G'day mate.)

This is the first North American review of an amplifier you should listen to even if it's not expensive enough for your budget.

At the past two Winter Consumer Electronics Shows in Las Vegas, I have spent more than my share of time in rooms occupied by Ambience loudspeakers and Redgum electronics. In a sea of noise and clamor, musical sanity was the norm in the Redgum room. Without room treatments, special source material, or exculpatory whining about room conditions, the sound was realistic; correct in tone and harmonics, with an excellent sense of life and air.

The people behind the products were refreshing too. They didn't claim occult powers, or otherworldly technologies. As I did discover later, the products do possess some unusual sonic properties widely sought after, though seldom achieved. The designers were content to rely upon my cognitive powers to properly assess their achievements, rather than indulging in exorbitant self promotion. So you should know right now, that the integrated amplifier under scrutiny retails for about $1,100,and after some time with it one-on-one, it has caused me to ponder if there is really any legitimate reason for spending more, at least when using the superb Ambience loudspeakers.

The two central design features of Redgum electronics are reliability and clarity. Your have to design for reliability. Ian Robinson, the man behind Redgum, has by his own estimation repaired over 17,000 pieces of electronic equipment during his prior life as an electronic repair person. The experience of fixing other people's mistakes was invaluable in finalizing his design; it taught him about preparing for, and designing out, errors that can't be detected or measured on the test bench. That's a big part of the Redgum reliability story.

The other goal, clarity, was achieved by designing a circuit free of colorization and sonic preference. Consequently, all design directions flowed from this priority; circuit paths are kept short; dual mono construction to minimize crosstalk; and a high gain power amp section to make passive attenuation easier. Component count is kept to a minimum, you won't find a box full of caps, resistors and IC's in a Redgum amplifier. Electronics are not sold by the pound, so good design is substituted for bulk. Of course, simplicity of construction promotes dependability.

On the other hand, dual volume pots are oftentimes associated with simplicity, though I'll admit that I care for such dual attenuators not one bit. The Audible Illusions and Aronov preamps have them, and by my estimation they induce neurosis; one is forever adjusting, fiddling and fudging, and never quite getting them right - or so it seems. The Redgum uses mono, or dual pots for attenuation, and while I wasn't wild about this arrangement at the beginning, I must admit, when the channels are balanced correctly, the image snaps into remarkably sharp focus.

Amplifiers Should Be Seen And Not Heard.

I'll start to explain the above with an oversimplification. In general, solid state amplifiers control the bass better than do tube amplifiers, sound a little thin in the midrange, and are often extended, but harsh in the upper ranges. Tube amps excel in midrange richness, but sound a little slow and underdamped in the bass, and may round off the highs. (Remember, this is an oversimplification.) Every couple of years some audio journalist praises a product by rehabilitating a forty year old cliche: "The unit under test finally bridges the gap between tube and transistor." I have found that such a statement usually means that the virtues of one system have been sacrificed, but not replaced, by the virtues of the other.

With that in mind, several times I tried to pin down the Redgum sound, a sonic signature if you will, but had great difficulty in doing so. It didn't seize the woofer voice coils and wring out preternatural bass. It didn't sweeten the midrange, nor did it do anything especially noticeable in the highs other than drive the tweeters cleanly. If you have ever heard a passive preamplifier working properly in a system (and there are many that don't) you know what the Redgum does: It passes the signal without discernable comment. That's my impression of the Redgum. It's not what one would call would call "fast', "etched", "powerful", "extended", "detailed", or any of the other code words that are so often interpreted in good and bad ways. It doesn't impose "gray", "white", or "caramel" colors to the music. If you don't like the sound coming from this machine, it means that you don't like the sound of the associated equipment, or the software itself - the Redgum does little to alter what you hear.

A couple of months with the Redgum forced me to reconsider my feelings about solid state amplification. I like a bit of warmth added to my music, especially on a cold digital day, which is why I tend toward tube electronics. The Redgum doesn't "improve" the music the sound the way tubes can, instead, it is content to be honest to the source without the aggressive character of most solid state and without the blurred sound of solid state designed to sound "tube-like."

The amplifiers I would compare the Redgum to are those from Goldmund, for its lightness, and the FM Acoustics for its transparency. Both units bring out the best in some loudspeakers; generally, in speakers that need a little tightening in the bottom couple of octaves. But, why spend the big dollars associated with Goldmund and FM, when essentially the same quality can be obtained with the Redgum.

Looks-wise, Ian Robinson has not dressed up the amplifier for the American market. Let's see, an amplifier this good should have a half inch thick front face, a slab of black with silver letters engraved into the metal, massive heatsinks on both sides of the amp, and weigh in at around 90 pounds. Of course, such window dressing would make the amp retail for seven or eight thousand dollars, all of which would not make this amp or any other amp sound any better. I like it the way it is. 100 wpc, for a little over eleven hundred dollars, and the red-wood finish on all sides sliding into just about any decor one could create.

The Last Word

[Reprinted from Bound for Sound – February 2000 - boundforsound.com]