ACCUPHASE E-450

In Accuphase they use current feedback and MOSFET topology in push-pull arrangement and the E-450 is not an exception. If you open its case you would see a massive toroidal transformer encapsulated in a not less massive steel sarcophagus to be shielded effectively from the rest of the amp’s circuitry, large filtering capacitors and typical cleanliness and neatness of Accuphase’s layout. The input stage is totally decoupled from the power stage both electrically and mechanically – the E-450 is practically a preamp and a power amp in a single case.

A few years ago Accuphase arrived with a revolutionary volume control system (AAVA) that finds its place also in the E-450, however, in the second generation incarnation. The AAVA-II completely removes variable resistors from the signal path – the input signal is converted from a voltage into a current by means of proprietary circuitry and the current is then controlled by current switches before it is converted back to the voltage. As the music signal does not have to pass through resistors the whole volume control process is lower in distortion and shows a better signal-to-noise ratio, yet it is completely analog process – no adjustments happen in a digital domain. The number of steps of such a volume control is 216, which yields over 65 thousand (!) possible adjustment steps – it is well beyond the resolution thresholds of our audiophile ears.

Who has ever touched an Accuphase’s amp knows that it is always a beyond words experience - the craftmanship is impeccable and speaks for itself. On the E-450, there is an input switch knob on the left, a volume knob on the right and sizeable illuminated VU meters in between. Whatever else you need to control the amplifier is hidden under a front subpanel so nothing distracts you from the purity of the E-450’s design. Once you open the subpanel you’d find a full set of controls: a speaker selector that enables switching between two pairs of speakers (the E-450 has two sets of speaker binding posts), a MUTE control, controls for TAPE and REC, knobs for tone controls, phono board adjustments and buttons to switch on and off the VU meters and loudness compensation circuits. The E-450’s tone controls have quite a wide range of operation of +/-10dB from 300Hz and 3kHz, however, it is possible to exclude them from the signal path completely by simply pushing a button. The loudness compensation work very effectively and therefore at night you can give +8dB boost to the frequencies below 30Hz which makes low level listening much more enjoyable.

The Accuphase E-450 offers two pairs of balanced XLR inputs and four pairs of single-ended RCA inputs. In emergency you can also use its tape inputs. It is important to know that should you need to use the E-450 as a standalone preamp (or a power amp) then you can only do that via RCA (no balanced input or output is available in this configuration).