kotofei
permanent gear evolution
A month or so ago I scored a Kyocera R-861 receiver from a local seller who supposedly didn’t know what he was selling.
According to the manual, this is the 100 WPC beast with 120 WPC at 8 Ohm dynamic output power, 0.02 % THD / 0.02% intermodulation distortion and 10Hz to 60 kHz power bandwidth. The driver stage has MOSFET transistors and the manual claims that “improved open-loop performance reduces the need for negative feedback”. The Kyocera has 3-position parametric equalizer that could be bypassed and a quartz PLL FM tuner with a lot of bells and whistles.
The R-861 was in such a great cosmetic shape that I was not surprised that everything works as it should without apparent need for Deoxit treatment etc. I ran it for a couple of weeks in my main system and the verdict is that the R-861 is a great receiver but it might require careful choice of speakers OR just a listener who likes its sound.
As you might know, the word “Kyocera” means “Kyoto Ceramics”. This allows understanding of the sound that R-861 produces: imagine you hold a cup made of a good porcelain and slightly hit its top with the silver spoon. You hear the sound- clear, crisp, light and charming, with a lot of high notes but obviously thin on bass.
The Kyocera excels in high and mid-frequencies up to the point that both my wife and I were close to the listening fatigue. However, the bass was not there and use of the equalizer did not help much. There was plenty of clear power. The soundstage was outstanding: instruments were positioned such as each of them sounded from a defined “spot” or “point” rather than from a certain region of space as my other gear including Nak 4A. The vocal was clear and crisp and overall great. Probably, these features are characteristics of the MOSFET amplifiers since my Classe CAP-80 had the same sound signature.
However, low frequencies such as drums or strings, such as the low contrabass (?) notes in Laura Branigan “Self Control” sounded not as rich or “juicy” if you will as with the Nak 4A. This is the main reason why the R-861 did not dethrone the Nak.
The overall design of the R-861 is very well-thought; in fact, I think it’s the best of all receivers/amplifiers I have seen. For example, the amp-preamp jumpers were replaced with normally disconnected pre output and main input jacks and a switch that allows using them as separates or connected. The speaker terminals accept bare wires; however, if you need banana connection, four jacks are provided for speakers A. Phono input jacks are gold-plated. Most of controls that you normally don’t use are hidden under the little door hat flips at the bottom of the front panel. The tuner display is lighted up only if you depress the tuner button; if you use other inputs it is dark (I wonder does it mean that the tuner is powered off as in some Harman Kardon gear). By the way, the tuner is great and has excellent sensitivity.
Inside you can see a toroidal transformer (someone said it’s with dual mono winding), four filtering caps with a total of almost 25000 microfarads, and a clean design. Transistors are cooling by that famous Freon-containing tube connected to a HUGE heatsink.
So, if the R-861 has better bass, it would be a fantastic amp/receiver. Or perhaps I just need other speakers.
According to the manual, this is the 100 WPC beast with 120 WPC at 8 Ohm dynamic output power, 0.02 % THD / 0.02% intermodulation distortion and 10Hz to 60 kHz power bandwidth. The driver stage has MOSFET transistors and the manual claims that “improved open-loop performance reduces the need for negative feedback”. The Kyocera has 3-position parametric equalizer that could be bypassed and a quartz PLL FM tuner with a lot of bells and whistles.
The R-861 was in such a great cosmetic shape that I was not surprised that everything works as it should without apparent need for Deoxit treatment etc. I ran it for a couple of weeks in my main system and the verdict is that the R-861 is a great receiver but it might require careful choice of speakers OR just a listener who likes its sound.
As you might know, the word “Kyocera” means “Kyoto Ceramics”. This allows understanding of the sound that R-861 produces: imagine you hold a cup made of a good porcelain and slightly hit its top with the silver spoon. You hear the sound- clear, crisp, light and charming, with a lot of high notes but obviously thin on bass.
The Kyocera excels in high and mid-frequencies up to the point that both my wife and I were close to the listening fatigue. However, the bass was not there and use of the equalizer did not help much. There was plenty of clear power. The soundstage was outstanding: instruments were positioned such as each of them sounded from a defined “spot” or “point” rather than from a certain region of space as my other gear including Nak 4A. The vocal was clear and crisp and overall great. Probably, these features are characteristics of the MOSFET amplifiers since my Classe CAP-80 had the same sound signature.
However, low frequencies such as drums or strings, such as the low contrabass (?) notes in Laura Branigan “Self Control” sounded not as rich or “juicy” if you will as with the Nak 4A. This is the main reason why the R-861 did not dethrone the Nak.
The overall design of the R-861 is very well-thought; in fact, I think it’s the best of all receivers/amplifiers I have seen. For example, the amp-preamp jumpers were replaced with normally disconnected pre output and main input jacks and a switch that allows using them as separates or connected. The speaker terminals accept bare wires; however, if you need banana connection, four jacks are provided for speakers A. Phono input jacks are gold-plated. Most of controls that you normally don’t use are hidden under the little door hat flips at the bottom of the front panel. The tuner display is lighted up only if you depress the tuner button; if you use other inputs it is dark (I wonder does it mean that the tuner is powered off as in some Harman Kardon gear). By the way, the tuner is great and has excellent sensitivity.
Inside you can see a toroidal transformer (someone said it’s with dual mono winding), four filtering caps with a total of almost 25000 microfarads, and a clean design. Transistors are cooling by that famous Freon-containing tube connected to a HUGE heatsink.
So, if the R-861 has better bass, it would be a fantastic amp/receiver. Or perhaps I just need other speakers.
:yes
