Onix OA-21 intergrated w/MM phono
rp
scratches, aesthetically an 8 or vg+, works perfectly sounds wonderful.
It's been unused for the last couple of years. Original owner. $425 +
shipping.
Tel: 212 420 1710, NYC.
Below is an old (and obtuse) TAS review. This is far and away the best
little integrated for this price. At the time it was very highly rated -
Hifi Heretic (now Listener, loved it). The transparency really rivals
stuff costing a few thousand dollars, and it is smooth and open
sounding, not transistory - though admittedly it is rather flat and 2
dimensional like most British integrateds.
***NOTE*** Please remove -nospam- from address when replying ***NOTE***
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THE ONIX OA-21 INTEGRATED AMP
by Neil Levenson
The Absolute Sound
May/June 1987, Vol.12 - Issue 47, pp 106-108.
The ONIX OA-21 is the first product from a young British company
headed by Craig Hill and Adam Worsfold. You'd hardly mistake this for
anything but a British product: There are only three controls on the
front panel, an on/off switch; a volume control; and an input selector.
There is no provision for channel-balance adjustment, let alone
mono/stereo switching, or facilities for tape monitoring.
Construction quality of the unit is outstanding. The power transformer
and main circuit board are firmly mounted to the chassis. The top cover
mounts to the chassis with eight allen bolts of a type you'd normally
see holding a woofer onto a baffle.
The heart of the OA-21 is a sizable 300 VA torroidal power transformer.
Energy storage capacity in the power supply is a generous 20,000
microFarads. The amplifier uses two complementary, twenty-amp, Bi-polar
output transistors per channel, driven by a two-stage differential
amplifier. No current limiting Is used, nor is there an output Inductor,
as Onix thinks these would degrade sound quality. Fusing is provided In
the feedback path. The OA-21 Is rated at around 50 watts per channel. No
Instabilities or other operational problems were encountered.
The OA-21 Is supplied with your choice of moving-magnet or moving-coil
phono boards. Equalization Is a combination of passive and active, and
there is active supply regulation for the phono Input stage. Extra phono
boards are available for $80 each. Both varieties of phono stages are
very quiet, and gain is more than adequate.
Listening tests did not take into account the price of the Onix, only
its performance vis-a- vis music. Keep in mind that an attitude
circulates in Britain to the effect that good musical performance from
audio gear need not be necessarily expensive.
Associated equipment used for this review included a latest version
Linn Sondek with Zeta arm and Linn Karma cartridge, a Rega Planar 3 and
RB-300 arm, with either a Premiere LME or Music and Sound Econocoil, a
sightly re-worked 1984-vintage AR turntable and arm with an FMI
cartridge, an HH Scott 4310 FM stereo tuner, a Tandberg 64 open reel
tape deck (used for playback only), a Nakamichi Dragon cassette deck, a
Kinergetics KCD-20A compact-disk player, Audio Research SP-11 and Naim
32.5/ HICAP preamps along with a New York Audio Labs Superit preamp
equipped with Mullard 12AX7s, an Audio Research D-115 Mark II amplifier,
Naim 250 and 135 amps, and an assortment of speakers to be mentioned
below. The Audio Research electronics are the core of my reference
system.
The awesome transparency of the Onix OA21 does not rival that of the
SP-11/D115-II but nonetheless It Is striking. The unit takes on the
characteristics of the signal you feed it, so that you might easily
mistake its sonic signature for that of the source. FM broadcasts of
well-recorded analogue disks are portrayed through the Onix with
requisite clarity and detail. If the local station chooses to play a
bright, beclouded CD, the Onix, In turn, presents a bright, beclouded
sound.
Such transparency demands a high-quality source. The Onix really isn't
suitable with your typical Japanese cassette deck, or worse, the typical
Japanese compact-disk player. In contrast to many of the Asian mid-fi
integrated amps and receivers, the Onix Is noticeably free of midrange
grunge and high-frequency grit. It is not excessively bright nor is it
excessively thick. Thus, associated equipment earlier on in the chain
has to be chosen with the utmost care.
In addition to this transparency, the Onix has a lean tonal balance.
The midbass and upper bass are highly controlled, so highly controlled,
in fact, as to exclude ambient Information in these regions. Woodwinds
low brass, and stringed instruments lose their sense of body as well.
The stereo Bayreuth Parsifal conducted by Knappertsbusch (Philips 835
220/24 AY) suffers a diminution of the famed Bayreuth atmosphere through
the Onix. Plucked low strings do not coalesce into the Bayreuth acoustic
but rather decay prematurely and abruptly. When playing the
hold-your-nose, compact-disk version of this performance through the
Onix, the mid- and upper-bass tightness was really unsatisfactory, and
the vocalists sounded quite thin and unappealing. The ARC D115-II
rescued more midbass and upper-bass atmosphere from the CD version than
the Onix was able to portray from the LPs. While vocalists from the CD
(Philips 416 390-2) were unappealing through the D115-ll (reinforcing my
unhappiness with digital portrayal of the human singing voice), and
while
the Onix told the difference between the analogue LPs and the digital
CDs, nonetheless the Onix laced up the theater's acoustic to a very
noticeable degree. I could imagine a listener less sensitive to digital
aberrations than I am preferring the CD / D115-ll combination to the
LP/Onix combination.
The low-bass capability of the Onix, on the other hand, is powerful and
striking, if lacking the pitch definition of the ARC and Naim
amplifiers. And the Onix possesses more real world power than its
50-watt rating might suggest. It could easily fill my living room with
low bass from pipe-organ recordings played through Fulton Premiere
speakers. These speakers have two 12-inch subwoofers per side,
slot-loaded to the floor, and another 12-inch woofer per side coming in
at around 40 Hz. With a selection of Bach, Franck, and Messiaen organ
recordings, the Onix produced convincing and authoritative pedal notes.
Japanese integrated amps even at twice the wattage rating cannot be
compared to the Onix in this respect. Its low bass should be singled out
for special praise.
Smaller speakers, including the Spica-TC50, the Fried Beta, and the
Wharfedale Diamond, mated very effectively with the Onix. (Its
transparency was a dramatic attribute.) Bass performance from the Fried
speakers was just amazing with organist Fernando Germani's recording of
the Franck Chorales (Angel S-35962). I think that the ample power
transformer of the Onix is a major factor behind the low-bass aplomb and
lack of low-bass mush.
Image capability of the Onix was something of a mixed bag. A very
stable stage and a stable image placement were maintained with all types
of music and with all of the speakers mentioned. But the stage itself
was compacted, especially in the lateral dimension, and was noticeably
compressed with respect to height. Image placement lacked a degree of
specificity.
Stage compactness was only moderately noticeable with a recording such
as Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos's performance of Falla's ElAmorBrujo
(London Treasury STS-15358). But with a recording rich in antiphonal and
spatial effects, the OA-21's compact stage and image specificity
deficiency were very obvious. The Hanns-Martin Schneidt recording of
Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers (Archiv 2723 043) suffered a serious loss of
spatial information through the Onix. Even the pre-recorded cassette of
the Monteverdi (410 564-4) lost a great deal of spatial information and
image specificity. To a lesser but still obvious degree, spatial
relationships were generalized in Karl Ristenpart's classic recording of
Bach's Cantata BWV 140, "Wachetauf", a recording mentioned by EM several
issues ago in his Baroque recording survey (Nonesuch H-71029).
Dimensionality of images, i.e., whether they are paper-flat or rounded
and multi-dimensional, is not an area where the Onix scores points. It
presents pancake-thin images, two dimensional in character. To cite one
example, I was engaged in a comparison of three recordings of the
Bach-Busoni Chaconne during my audition of the Onix (performances by
Egon Petri, Ronald Smith, and Artur Rubinstein). The transparency of the
Onix allowed it to reveal the vastly different engineering of each of
the three recordings. Yet by far the best-recorded of the three,
Rubinstein's (RCA ARL 1-3342, produced by Max Wilcox), came across as an
upright piano even when the Naim 32.5 preamp was pressed into service to
feed the OA-21's aux input. Taking the Onix out of the system and
substituting the Naim 135 amplifiers instantly produced a Steinway
grand. The Audio Research gear forming the core of my reference system
excels at producing three-dimensional images, but even the Naim gear
trounces the Onix in this respect.
Two other areas of major concern are dynamics and instrumental tonal
color. The Onix does a fine job with large-scale dynamic contrasts, and
it retains this dynamic effervescence even when pushed hard. Many a
higher wattage amplifier fails to produce the exciting dynamic contrasts
of which the Onix is effortlessly capable. With smaller-scale dynamic
gradations, especially at the soft extremes of piano and pianissimo, the
Onix is not quite so lithe and responsive. Still, it outdoes, and
outdoes handsomely, your typical Japanese receiver which seems to play
everything at a more or less constant mezzo-forte level.
I cannot completely separate in my mind consideration of the OA-21's
portrayal of instrumental tonal colors from its image specificity loss.
In this case, I will lump image specificity together with tonal color
and say that there is a general diminution of focus. I want to tread
lightly here so as not to give the wrong impression. There is a loss of
zeroing-in on tonal colors, yet at the same time the Onix differentiates
between, say, a violin and a viola. The differentiation is there, but
contrast is reduced. The Onix gave me a better sense than the Naim 250
of Sigiswald Kuijken's Baroque violin in his traversal of the Bach
Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt (Deutsche
Harmonia Mundi 1C 151-99820/ 21). Yet the Naim 250 more clearly
contrasted and differentiated between instrumental textures on the Felix
Ayo / I Musici recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (Philips 6747 311).
Note that with the ARC SP-11/ D-1 1 5-ll ne-plus-ultra rendition of
tonal color in my mind, I consider all other components I've heard to
date distant runners-up. I must be either spoiled or prejudiced. I give
the Naim gear a lot of credit for musically vital tonal contrast, if not
for the richness and beauty of which the Audio Research gear is capable.
The Onix is tonally at its best around C above middle-C on the piano.
On any good recording containing a flute, the Onix reproduces this
nearly sinusoidal instrument with notable realism.
Brass instruments and cymbals could not be reproduced unerringly by the
Onix. It bleached and whitened their tone considerably.
Onix markets an accessory power supply for the OA-21 called the SOAP.
It contains another torroidal power transformer, rectification, and
additional storage capacity. It plugs into the back of the OA-21 and, as
far as I can tell, operates in parallel with the OA-21's built-in
supply. It is said to enhance the OA21's ability to drive difficult
speaker loads such as the Linn Sara.
I don't have a pair of Linn Saras on hand, but perhaps the nine-way
Fulton Premiere speakers could also qualify as a more difficult than
usual load for an amplifier and, by extension, its power supply. I
auditioned the SOAP supply not only with the Fulton speakers but also
with the Wharfedale, Fried, and Spica speakers already mentioned. Its
effects were
similar regardless of the speakers.
The SOAP allows a slightly wider and slightly deeper stage with more
space between instruments. Large-scale dynamic contrasts are improved
slightly. If I had been listening to rock music, I might have preferred
using the SOAP; but on the type of program material I have cited, the
SOAP was not altogether an improvement. Using it tended to obscure fine
details insofar as it consistently added an ever-so-slight haze to the
OA-21's character. It added enough of a blur to bowed string instruments
in particular and to minute dynamic inflections in general that I
preferred the OA-21 without it.
In sum, the Onix OA-21 integrated amplifier is to be taken seriously in
its price range. It is a substantial first product and confirms Onix as
a company worth watching.
--
***NOTE*** Please remove -nospam- from address when replying ***NOTE***
rp
scratches, aesthetically an 8 or vg+, works perfectly sounds wonderful.
It's been unused for the last couple of years. Original owner. $425 +
shipping.
Tel: 212 420 1710, NYC.
Below is an old (and obtuse) TAS review. This is far and away the best
little integrated for this price. At the time it was very highly rated -
Hifi Heretic (now Listener, loved it). The transparency really rivals
stuff costing a few thousand dollars, and it is smooth and open
sounding, not transistory - though admittedly it is rather flat and 2
dimensional like most British integrateds.
***NOTE*** Please remove -nospam- from address when replying ***NOTE***
THE ONIX OA-21 INTEGRATED AMP
by Neil Levenson
The Absolute Sound
May/June 1987, Vol.12 - Issue 47, pp 106-108.
The ONIX OA-21 is the first product from a young British company
headed by Craig Hill and Adam Worsfold. You'd hardly mistake this for
anything but a British product: There are only three controls on the
front panel, an on/off switch; a volume control; and an input selector.
There is no provision for channel-balance adjustment, let alone
mono/stereo switching, or facilities for tape monitoring.
Construction quality of the unit is outstanding. The power transformer
and main circuit board are firmly mounted to the chassis. The top cover
mounts to the chassis with eight alien bolts of a type you'd normally