The SMSL AL200 is a Giant Slayer! Flawless Integrated Amp at $260

this right here right here is darn near a perfect Hi-Fi product so sit down grab a cup of coffee and let's talk about the smsl AL 200. if you are new here please consider subscribing we have over 740 videos 95 of those or more are on products under 600 like today's product which is 260 dollars I do this for a living and when I get more subscribers I get more stuff sent in I get more sponsors which allows me to make more content so please subscribe and like this video the smsl a l 200 it's a speaker amp it's a DAC and it's a headphone amp and it uses an amp chipset that I've never heard before and let me tell you something this thing has blown me away this comes in at about four pounds which doesn't sound like a lot but compared to other amplifiers other class D amplifiers that have an internal DAC even have an internal headphone amp this thing is a literal Beast compared to those this actually feels like a real product not to say that those other products aren't real they are and they sound really good but this one has some heft to it this utilizes the ma53 32 Ms it's the miris chipset from Infineon Infinity on has made a ton of awesome amp chips that have been utilized in a lot of amps the 120 70 I think was used in dozens of amps I've never heard this one before and I can't wait to hear more because sounds really good claims to put out 165 watts into two channels at 4 Ohms 85 Watts times two into eight ohms I don't know the total harmonic Distortion if that's at point one at one at ten percent don't know if that's RMS or Peak only thing I know is what's on the screen but what I will say is I had the elac bs41 which is not an easy speaker to drive plain comfortably without Distortion at 90 DB now I was only about three feet away but if I can get 90 DB at three feet chances are I want to be just fine on any speaker and probably just about any room Rising the cirruslogic cs43131 DAC slash headphone chipset this is the same chipset that's used in the smsl m300 SE which I just reviewed and I was really impressed by and it comes in about 116 dollars I'd never seen a Dax headphone amp chip utilized before well in any DAC headphone amps same one is in here and it sounds just as good in the al200 as it did in the m300se uses an xmos xu316 processor which supports DSD 256 and PCM also uses Japan's jrc electronic volume control chip njw 1194 which gives you accurate volume control accurate accurate volume control and low Distortion supports mqa through the USB connection also supports mqa CD just like the m300se internal power supply so you're not going to have to change bricks to get the most out of this amplifier out of the box you just plug in the IEC cord and plug it into the wall they say that this chipset the amp chipset in here puts off not a lot of heat so they don't need heat sinks and it takes a smaller footprint comes with seven EQ presets and tone controls and it includes my favorite smsl EQ setting sdb Sierra Delta Bravo if you have seven of them and they actually sound pretty good on the older Infineon chips some of these eqs were really heavy-handed but on this one they sound pretty well implemented you have direct which is flat tone sdb bass Super Bass I would stay away from Super Bass it wasn't great Rock was okay soft was okay clear a little bit much on top so all of these EQ settings were actually usable except for E4 and E7 Super Bass and clear otherwise they sound pretty good sdb is kind of like a loudness button your mileage may vary but this is the best implementation of preset EQ settings I've seen or heard on an smsl product before also has five PCM filters for your DAC I usually don't hear a huge difference between filter roll-offs when it comes to the sound on Dax but they're there you can check them out if you want to comes with with the ubiquitous smsl remote control which is not terrible and it works so there's nothing to really complain about especially at 260 dollars what's on the front and the back [Music] foreign [Music] the front it's pretty self-explanatory you have a headphone a 6.35 millimeter headphone jack here display volume control the cool thing about this product though is this brushed finish it looks very nice this is a bit of a trapezoid so it doesn't have squared off ends looks very nice fingerprints on here it looks very nice though on the back you have the IEC connector speaker binding post right here Optical input USB input coaxial input and then you actually have a line input so this takes one analog input three digital inputs coaxial Optical USB and it has Bluetooth who needs Bluetooth right let's talk about how it sounds foreign amp sounds almost identical to the m300se if not identical because it has the same DAC slash headphone amp chipset there could be some differences because of the power supply but I didn't directly a b them it was good enough however it would not run the Dan Clark aeon RT closed back this is a 13 ohm headphone it ran them but if you wanted to get any type of volume it started to distort around the 20. so the volume span starts out and then as you get it closer to zero it gets louder about negative 20 into the negative teens these fell apart other headphones though like the high famine Edition XS were just fine I got them louder than I needed to listen to them so keep in mind this headphone amp in here is only going to take you so far and super hard to drive super low impedance headphones like the Dan Clark are probably not going to work off the al200 from smsl speaker pairings I mentioned the elac bs41 super hard to drive speaker low impedance low sensitivity it does make a lot of bass but the reason why it makes a lot of bass is because the Tweeter efficiency is squished down so much so you need something with some gumption you need a power amp that has a bit well power and the al200 drove them as good as I've heard on anything maybe other than the A1 monoblocks from emotiva or the dr1 super monoblocks from emotiva basically this thing finally Rivals the a b current capabilities like this feels like it's got so much on reserve for big base hits listening to my name is mud by Primus a lot of bass in that song obviously less Claypool plays the bass and he's probably one of the best bassists in the world the ability for this to articulately reproduce the quick bass notes was really stunning and at 260 dollars I think it's exceptional if not the best amp I've heard under 300 when it comes to Bass as far as air I was listening to the internal DAC so it wasn't like I was listening just to the amp because when you have an integrated amplifier it's kind of difficult to separate things out Airy very Dynamic instruments are cleanly defined and frankly this may be the best pairing I've had with the elac bs41s from a smaller footprint style of an amplifier the V3 from faziadio is awesome drives these really well the bt20a pro drives them really well the a07 pro from Aima drives them really well there's a lot of amplifiers that drive this bs41 well but they all pale in comparison to the al200 I think what surprised me the most is just there was no veiling there's no smearing of the sound and this thing plays loud like I honestly expected this to top out maybe at 80 to 85 DB even in close proximity and when it was pushing 90 this speaker was going to run out before the al200 ran out and usually it's the exact opposite usually I'm pushing amps to the point of clipping and the speaker is doing just fine but you can start to hear the Distortion creep in around that 85 to 95 DB area This Plane clean clear 90 DB SPO which is loud what are my final thoughts foreign thoughts on the al200 from smsl this is a Flawless device at the price point at 260 dollars I honestly don't think you're going to get anything better and this fills a void because there was nothing between the hundred and fifty dollar range and then the 350 range for something like the Yamaha as 301 this is going to embarrass a lot of higher priced products and I cannot wait to do some more a b comparisons with higher end products there's no subwoofer out though the display is there's nothing spectacular about the display it's very simple but it's also simple to read in somewhat simple to control though you're gonna have to go through the menu system a few times before you can figure out how to change everything the cool thing about this amplifier I did not use tone controls once I used the baked in eqs but I did not feel the need to use tone controls at all on this amplifier this is a real winner the only thing the only thing that someone's going to complain about on this amplifier I think there's no subwoofer out and someone could potentially complain about the headphone amp but to be fair most headphone amplifiers can't drive the Dan Clark 13 ohm aeon closed back RTS very well anyway if this had a subwoofer out it would be perfect for Soundbar Replacements perfect now with that said you could still run a subwoofer off here with a speaker level input if your sub has a speaker level input you can still get a subwoofer on this thing but it doesn't have a dedicated subwoofer out it doesn't have a dedicated preamp out either if it had that this uh would be perfect I love the design I love the weight this feels like a solid product however I cannot comment on the longevity of this product because I haven't been using it that long and right now this only looks to be available from Hi-Fi Express who sent it in to me they didn't tell me you what to say though when you go to their website though you can get it shipped from the US but it's not on Amazon that I found and it's also not at apost audio so if you buy this you're buying it directly from Hi-Fi Express if you have any problems with it chances are you're going to have to send it to China to get checked out I hope that this comes into stock on Amazon and or apos because this is like I said almost a Flawless product highest recommendation I can possibly give a product at 260 dollars it is bananas what this thing sounds like Well Done smso spectacular product if you want to support the channel you can sign up for patreon patreon.com cheapaudiment every Sunday night we have patreon zooms patreon only Facebook group patreon only Discord server you can also use the links in the description those are affiliate links which I don't think this is actually an affiliate link you can also buy me a cup of coffee down at the bottom of the video there's a thanks button put some money in the tip jar buy me a cup of coffee but don't feel compelled to buy me anything you can also sign up for Amazon music title or Rune links in the description so don't binge watch anything on Netflix or Hulu binge listen through this awesome integrated 260 integrated amp and fill your soul with happiness and with that I'm Randy I'm the cheap Audio Man

Channel: cheapaudioman

Views: 61,935

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Id: FddClzNLO4Q

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023