NVA

P50 Pre & S80 Power Amp

£995 for bundle as reviewed

The nineteen eighties was a fascinating time for hi-fi – you might say it was the bridge between the old world of the seventies and before and the modern era that the nineties ushered in. New companies like Acoustic Energy and Audiolab emerged in the UK and beyond to take on old, established names, while the young upstart brands of the seventies like Linn and Naim indeed came of age. Some older manufacturers like Wharfedale reinvented themselves, while other names like Celestion disappeared…

Nene Valley Audio was one of many so-called 'cottage industry' British brands that appeared at the beginning of that decade. Some say this is a derogatory term, but in truth, these companies were small, low volume specialist manufacturers often run by the person who designed the products and knew them inside out. They tended to be far more charismatic and daring than the stuff coming out of bigger companies or corporations. And they made the hi-fi world of that period very interesting to follow.

NVA's founder Richard Dunn was a true firebrand. I met him twice, circa 1987, and found him a passionate music fan, gifted electronics engineer, and all-around bon viveur. A big Alfa Romeo fan and lover of martial arts, he had a life beyond hi-fi – which was remarkable considering he worked so hard on making and selling his small range of affordable audiophile amplifiers. I was so impressed with the sound of the AP30 integrated amplifier that I bought one – choosing it over and above a Naim NAIT, Exposure X, Mission Cyrus 2 and an IncaTech Claymore, all of which were great mid-price designs back in the day.

Richard used to design pro amplifiers for rock bands in the seventies, a venture which became Tresham Audio – whose products received very positive reviews in the UK hi-fi press of that period. By the time he started NVA in 1982, he'd developed a strong philosophy that was somewhat akin to Colin Chapman of Lotus cars, who used to tell his engineers to “build in lightness”. In other words, Richard wasn't a believer in hugely complex circuits and had a purist, “less is more” approach.

He wasn't designing his products to be ultra-rugged or to turn in great measured performance – for him, it was the end result that your ears heard that counted. “If you can do without it, then do without it”, he once said. “Test equipment readings have virtually nothing to do with the musical ability of an amplifier. I have designed amplifiers for very flat frequency response and low distortion, but I do not like the music they create. I design my amps to enjoy music; it is that simple! The only valid test equipment is the human ear. We go to a concert with ears, not distortion analysers. The best test equipment is the little hairs on the back of the neck!”

Richard was obsessed with the minutiae of circuit design, everything from the PCB material to the topology, tracks, wiring, grounding, case material – even the screws used inside. High-quality capacitors were specified, and inputs were wired with silver-coated stranded copper wire with a PTFE (Teflon) coating. Passive potentiometers featured in the preamplifiers or the preamp sections of the integrateds. The internal layout of his amps looked a bit untidy, but there was a method to his madness.
 
Much of this doesn't sound particularly unusual now but remember, this was the early nineteen eighties – where most people didn't even realise that speaker cables sounded different to one another. It's fair to say that not everyone 'got' Richard's approach – he was thought of as an eccentric – or even a heretic – of the hi-fi world. His outspoken and undiplomatic manner didn't help in this respect, yet his products were what really did the talking…

Richard sadly passed away in May 2019. A decade earlier, he had been given six months to live but got a new type of treatment, which worked. He used to say that he was “already dead”, so every new day was a bonus. His company lived on, the remaining assets being bought by an ex-NVA employee, Tomasz Danus, and Hi-Fi Subjectivist forum member, Paul Tiernan. Soon after Richard's passing, they relaunched the NVA brand, rationalising his old range while keeping his unique circuit designs. Their intention, Paul tells me, was not to change the electronics – just implement them better. The new company behind the brand is called Hi-fi Subjectivist Audio Ltd.

Richard's “all components are bad, but some are less bad than others” philosophy remains. His deliberate and controversial avoidance of protection circuitry – he always said this had a highly deleterious effect on the sound – is retained in the designs of the new NVA power amplifiers. This means that – like Lotus cars, again, for example – the amps are made for a particular type of user who understands that they're not disco party amps. Nor are they for idiots who short circuit speaker terminals for fun. But use them as intended, and they're fine; I ran my AP30 for many years without damaging any loudspeakers. Rather like high-quality valve amplifiers, they're specialist products that do the job they're made for very well.

“The amps are just too good for us to have let it wither away, but we knew we could make some sympathetic improvements, and you only live once”, Paul tells me. “And I usually say that it was time that I made my hobby tax-deductible!” He had met Tom at some hi-fi shows that he did together with Richard. “We have very different skill sets, but a shared passion for audio, and the NVA sound in particular…”

September 2019 wasn't really the perfect time to be relaunching a niche audio brand, however, as hindsight now tells us. “It went absolutely fine, apart from Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war”, he jokes. Still, the pandemic gave the guys the space to take a long, hard look at what was and wasn't needed. “We simplified the range to give more obvious starting points and upgrade options. At the same time, we improved what goes inside – with higher quality components, more rigorous build processes and better quality control.”

“The circuits and the principles of the classic Richard Dunn-era NVA amps are the same, but we have invested in a higher quality implementation”, Paul explains. “Our new amplifier boards are made in the UK using the latest 'selective soldering' technology and feature uprated components for improved durability. That applies across the whole range. I have no doubt that the amps that are now leaving the NVA workshop are the best quality that the company has ever produced – and the openness, purity and naturally musical presentation is still there in all respects.” If you want to read more, then there's a fascinating interview with Richard on NVA's website.

UP CLOSE

The £995 NVA P50/ S80 starter bundle comprises the aforementioned pre and power amplifiers, complete with a pair of matching LS2 loudspeaker cables (2x 3m) and SC low capacitance interconnects (0.75m) to hook the two components to one another. It represents a saving of £125 over everything if bought separately.

Both pre and power amplifiers are neatly presented in shiny black acrylic cases and are handmade in the UK. There's certainly no sense of these being cheap and nasty in how they feel – which is surprising considering the very modest retail price.

NVA was a very early advocate of passive preamplifiers, and the P50 is one of its most long-standing designs. It's basically an ALPS Blue Beauty (10k ohm) potentiometer in a small, 250x70x210mm box with silver-plated, Teflon-coated wiring. It offers a basic selection of four line-level sources and a direct input that bypasses the volume pot. There are also three pairs of preamp outputs, plus a tape output – this supports single, bi and tri-amping. It can be upgraded to SA (Stepped Attenuator) specification, at any time, by paying just the difference – but those wanting Bluetooth, UPnP streaming, and DAC functionality better stop reading now.

The matching S80 stereo power amplifier would normally sell for £695 on its own. It's a highly affordable exponent of the company's philosophy and again comes in an acrylic box that's a bit larger than the preamp at 250x65x205mm. It is claimed to put out 35W RMS per channel and uses an 80VA Toroidy transformer and high-quality Vishay capacitors in the circuit. It sports simple unbalanced RCA phono inputs on the back and has a surprisingly chunky – at this price – captive 'flying lead' mains cable.

As Richard Dunn described its predecessor, “it's an amplifier with clean sound and wide bandwidth, which is why we take every possible capacitor and all filtering circuits out. In other words, these amplifiers are not unconditionally stable, and they still perform at 100kHz. They are not compatible with all kinds and makes of loudspeaker cable.” This is why NVA strongly recommends that all owners use the company's LS2 budget loudspeaker cable or the more high-end LS3 type. Again, I can vouch from previous experience with my AP30 that it sounded far better with NVA speaker wire.

THE LISTENING

This 'reborn' NVA pre-power sounds much as I remember my mid-price integrated amplifier from thirty-five years ago, albeit fresher and crisper. In short, it's a lovely thing to listen to – and quite remarkable at the price. Richard Dunn's sound was always smooth and enjoyable, with a character that doesn't draw attention to itself but instead lets the music do the talking. It's far more self-effacing than many amplifiers, then and now, and seems to get out of the way when other amps – especially at this price – tend to editorialise much more.

One of the things I always liked was its creaminess. In some ways, the P50/ S80 is more like a valve amp than a typical Class AB solid-state design. I don't mean it's fat and coloured and warm, but there's an unusual smoothness – silkiness, even – to its tonality. More Bryan Ferry than Johnny Rotten, you might say! Of course, NVAs always did sound slick, but back in the eighties, the contrast to Naim amplifiers was more marked – the latter were feisty and fierce things back then, less so now. Yet don't confuse 'slick' with 'boring'; again, like valve amps, they have a very good rhythmic flow – and the music just ebbs along before your very ears.

A great example of this is Donna McGhee's It Ain't No Big Thing – a soaring soul record from the mid-seventies and a fine recording too. This track has powerful strings which dominate it, set in front of her sultry, smoking vocal line and a sinewy, funky rhythm guitar. The P50/ S80 pre/ power caught this beautifully, giving a highly immersive sound that had me enraptured. Whereas most amplifiers at this price make the strings too edgy or shiny, the NVA nailed it – its superb, discrete, velvety tonality proving perfect for the occasion.

At the same time, this combo played its other key party trick – its relaxed but engaging musicality. Rather like a good valve amp or full Class A solid-state design, it has an uncanny ability to draw the listener into the music's rhythms – in this case, the drum and rhythm guitar lines – and keep them enraptured. This is all the more interesting because the P50/ S80 does not have big, powerful bass. Amplifiers such as the Technics SU-G700 make this song fun to hear because it conveys a gut-thumping bassline and has huge reserves of power and drive. The NVA works in a very different, perhaps more charming way by sidling its way into the music's inner groove – much of which is in the midband, not the bass, and conveying this in a liquid mellifluous manner.

When you play an indie rock track like House of Love's Shine On, the P50/ S80 sounds absolutely stellar, but it's a little underwhelming on techno, such as Kraftwerk's The Robots. To be fair, it's fun on the latter too, but its slightly light bass and relative lack of grunt gives a less impactful and visceral rendition than most similarly priced (integrated) amplifiers. It just can't hammer out those bass transients at you hard enough. Yet again, its midband is lovely and really majors on the subtle interplay between the gated synthesiser sound and the drum machine.

On the aforementioned indie track, there's relatively little bass content, and it's all a wash of electric guitars, drums and vocals – so the P50/ S80 is playing on 'home ground', so to speak. This indie-rock anthem lets the NVA combo really do its stuff, drawing in the listener, creating a great sense of tension and providing an immersive vantage point inside that wall of sound. The midband of this pre/ power pair is really good – and absolutely remarkable at the price. It has a maturity and sophistication that you simply don't expect for the money. It's a really grown-up sound that never descends into harshness yet still ekes out lots of what's going on in the original recording – and also strings it together in a musically enjoyable way.

If you remove the P50 preamp from the equation, the sound gets better still. I drove it direct from the variable output of my Chord Electronics TT2 DAC and was quite amazed by what I was hearing. The P50 is superb for its price tag – which is not a lot – but it does introduce a slight extra layer of diffuseness to the sound of the S80, which it doesn't really need. The latter, being such a smoothie, doesn't need to be 'tamed' or softened by a preamp, as it has an excellent natural balance. Playing Fleetwood Mac's Tusk – a late seventies rock track that's a little on the light and forward side – the NVA power amp did brilliantly considering its price tag. The music was fast, enjoyably propulsive, and dynamically expressive. This is a really tricky track to get right, and I've heard many, far more expensive power amps flailing and stumbling to correctly convey the heavy percussion work that dominates the mix. Yet this one was deft, fleet-footed and nimble.

Of course, this budget pre-power is not a universal panacea and doesn't beat everything else around in every respect – you'd never expect this at or near the price. But if we're talking about the P50/ S80's imperfections in absolute terms, the first thing we have to point to is the lack of power. There's always a sense that you're not getting the full impact of the song's bass line, especially if you're someone like myself with hard to drive speakers or who likes to pump up the volume. The S80 made a decent stab at driving my Yamaha NS-1000Ms but wasn't anywhere near as comfortable as the Technics mentioned above. Also, it couldn't quite get the best out of the superb NEAT Majistra standmounters that I'm using on a daily basis. It was as happy as Larry driving my Cambridge Audio Aero 6 floorstanders with their 90dB sensitivity and superlight BMR drivers.

This means that any prospective purchaser of this bundle should look to use it with a reasonably efficient loudspeaker – 88dB or more. When the NVA is in its comfort zone, speaker wise, it's amazingly good to listen to considering its price – but it's no big bruiser that can take on all comers in terms of speakers. As ever, system matching is the key.

With an efficient speaker such as the Cambridge Audio mentioned above, the P50/ S80 sort of 'comes out of itself'. It seems more relaxed, and the soundstage gets considerably more expansive. There's no sense of strain, and the music just opens up – I loved hearing Something by The Beatles this way; large and lilting, it really nailed the emotion of the track, and made me wonder why I'd ever need more from an amplifier. Saxon's 747 (Strangers in the Night) via my Yams was undoubtedly fun, but it was as if that gut-punching bass guitar work and guitar riffery had been turned down a bit, for my safety!

Give the P50/ S80 a well-recorded piece of music, a good source and a sympathetic speaker, and it's a sweet, open and expansive sounding combo – it even has surprisingly fine stage depth. The indie-rock gem that is Felt's Primitive Painters was positively ethereal, with ringing guitars, a supple bass guitar line, a lovely deep, haunting vocal and a sweet, delicately resolved treble – no crunchy hi-hat cymbal sounds here. Again, I kept thinking this combo felt like a solid-state version of a good valve amp – a sort of latter-day Leak Stereo 20 but with some of the sumptuousness surgically removed for a more modern sound. Despite its lack of muscle, there's an awful lot that's right about it – and again, you have to pinch yourself when you think of the price.

THE VERDICT

I'm delighted that the NVA name lives on and that Richard Dunn's designs have been subtly improved and made more accessible. The P50/S80 is true budget esoterica – a cult pre-power combo of the nineteen-eighties that's been subtly enhanced and sold at a price that's not far off what it was selling for back then. It's a remarkable package and I suspect it will tempt many. Yet the usual caveats apply – this is not a product for everyone; it's a hardcore, specialist bit of kit that needs careful speaker matching to give its best. Now, as then, your average Technics buyer won't see the attraction of a package such as this. Yet I can say unequivocally that what attracted me to the brand back then is still clear to hear now – and even better. Well worth an audition, if you're so inclined.

For more information visit NVA