Rega Elex-R Integrated Amplifier

DESCRIPTION

Rega have been world famous for their turntables since 1973 and they are also world famous for their amplifiers.The Rega Brio model has stunned the audio world with its delivery of detail, precision and dynamics in spades and its agile and rhythmic presentation from such a compact, well built design.It has consistently won best in class at awards time.Its bigger brother, the Elex'r has continued the legend in a full size cast aluminium chassis with more power, greater drive capability and a higher quality phono preamplifier made famous in the Fono MM outboard preamplifier.It too continues to win best in class at award time and constantly surprises us with the difficult to drive loudspeakers that it brings to life.The Elex-R is a sublime blend of the Brio-R design with the power circuits and advanced phono stage of the Elicit-R. Rega’s engineers have achieved the perfect balance of power, control and dynamics, delivering a performance that always puts the music first.

You will find plenty of connectivity options allowing complete flexibility and integration within the rest of the Rega range.

Product details

Design Innovation

The Elex-R is built to the highest standard and designed to deliver the best possible audio performance whilst remaining simple to use and easy to setup.The Elex-R is built into the full width Rega case with increased heat dissipation, which along with a larger transformer enables the Elex-R to deliver 90 Watts per channel into 6Ω and 72.5 Watts per channel into a design centre rating of 8.

Our time, effort & money have been spent on developing the circuit and construction utilizing the highest specification of components throughout. As part of the design we have included useful features like pre-amplifier output, to enable the new Elex-R amplifier to be used in a wide combination of systems and have avoided superfluous gadgets such as tone controls or a headphone socket as they can obstruct the signal path and degrade the produced sound quality.

The Elex-R has been built to Rega’s extremely high standards of reliability and quality to ensure many years of musical enjoyment. The primary function of an amplifier is to boost and equalize the low level signal generated by a phono cartridge, DAC and CD player or other source component to a level that can drive the loudspeakers. It is vital that the amplifier achieves this whilst minimising distortion, as this would directly affect the music. The distortion level is typically 0.007%; just under the clipping of the output.

The volume control and pre-amplifier used in the Elex-R is designed to overcome the problems associated with the standard arrangement. This design uses a custom chip along with peripheral support IC’s like a microcontroller and a custom made rotary volume control.

The Elex-R uses a combined feedback and passive volume control, where the feedback and input levels are varied to set the required volume level. The level and tracking between the two channels is set by the close tolerance parts in the pre-amplifier circuit and less by the actual potentiometer itself, thus keeping the mismatch of channels due to volume control tracking irregularities to a minimum.As well as keeping tracking irregularities to a minimum, this method also reduces noise and input overload as the control will only ‘use’ the required gain to amplify the signal.This form of volume control is normally only found in professional broadcast environments where accurate low noise control of levels is required.

Power Amplifier Technology

The output amplifier used in the Elex-R, Elicit-R and Brio-R was born after extensive research by our engineers to develop a low source impedance emitter follower Class-A driver stage. This is based around a complementary pair of 150w Sanken Darlington output transistors. The technical and sonic improvement gained by the use of low impedance drivers is well known, however, it can feature high standing currents in the driver stage when using standard transistor configurations. By combining the low impedance driver with the Sanken Darlington transistors (with their imbedded thermal bias network running at a lower standing current) this combination forms a complementary emitter follower emulating Class-A conditions with good thermal stability with lower standing.

Performance

This is a truly honest amplifier that delivers the music in the best way it knows how - with utmost integrity - and will keep delivering and surprising with its musicality. Listening to the Rega Elex R will certainly take you to another dimension - away from it all and involved totally in the musical experience - and that is rarefied air - something truly special. It just keeps you coming back for more....particularly with playing vinyl with its exceptional inbuilt phono preamplifier. There is no other amplifier manufacturer that respects vinyl more than Rega - their passion and essence in reproducing vinyl is exceptional.

The Rega may not sound quite so ‘hi-fi’ but its timing skills set it apart, that and a feeling of honesty, a sense that you are getting to the nub of the musical matter. It delivers a fast, agile sound that’s as rhythmically surefooted as you wiil hear at this level – and that can’t be stressed enough. With a combination of impressive timing, space and dynamics there’s an addictive sense of liveliness and energy. This amplifier is terrific at communicating the drama of the music. The Elex-R is a mighty fine achievement; the kind of product that gets straight to the heart of the music and conveys all the emotion in the recording with ease.The build quality is as solid as we expect from Rega, and while the casework is functional rather than luxurious, it’s finished neatly and everything feels like it will last for years.

Specifications

Key features

Rega custom full width case with improved heat dissipation
Combined feedback & passive volume control pre-amp
90 watts per channel into 6 Ohms / 72 watts into 8ohms
High specification integrated phono stage
New multi-lingual user manual
Enhanced power supplies for the driver stage
Hybrid of the Brio-R and Elicit-R design
Dedicated mini remote handset included
Pre-amp out / Record out / 4 line inputs
New custom transformer

Specifications

Power Supply
Voltage: 230v & 115v
Frequency: 60/60Hz
Power Consumption: 250 Watts
230v Fuse: T3.15AL 20mm
115v Fuse: T5AL 20mm

Output power

72.5W 8Ω both channels driven - Design centre rating    
90W 6Ω both channels driven - Rega speaker impedance rating
113W 4Ω both channels driven

Phono input

Sensitivity (72.5W 8Ω1.7mV (Load 47K in parallel with 220pF)
Maximum input level: 100mV

Line input

Sensitivity (72.5W 8Ω 164mv (Load 30-50K)
Maximum input level: 10v

Tape output

Level: 164mV with rated input
Output impedance: 470

Line output

Level: 625mV with rated input
Output impedance: 600

*Reprint from Manufacturers Website.