Rega Aethos Update...

We have been selling this behemoth of an integrated amplifier for a few months now and in that time it has become our favourite amplifier at the price by quite some margin. It has been out performing all of the competition that have passed through our doors here in Cheltenham, some of which have cost almost twice as much. With that in mind we thought that it was about time to shout about this wonderful addition to the Rega range in one of our regular blogs. Can’t believe we haven’t done so already really. So here goes….

The Rega Aethos is an integrated amplifier that has been eagerly awaited for some time. In the last three years, Rega has released three turntables, Planar 6, Planar 8 and Planar 10, that can legitimately stake a claim to being close to or the benchmark at their respective price points. What Rega couldn’t do as easily was sell you an amp to go with them. The range has four relatively affordable amps (including the new Io and the very excellent Brio) and then a significant gap until you get to the flagship Osiris (which, by the way, is also rather excellent).

At one pound under three grand the Aethos is Rega’s exercise in making the ultimate sound they could for the price. They took out the phono stage. Their logic being that if you own an amp at this price you are more than likely going to run it with a turntable of at least the quality of the P6 if not a P8 or P10. So you will have a moving coil cartridge and will thus want to do it proper justice with an out board phono stage, such as the Mk3 version Aria or the Aura Reference.

The Aethos is a dual mono design that uses a custom wound toroidal transformer and regulated power supplies for the sensitive amplification and driver stages. The pre-amplifier stage uses class-A discrete circuitry throughout. It delivers a very impressive 125 Watts per channel into an 8 Ohm load, so it has the capability to go very loud, hence the chunky rows of heatsinks down either side. The Aethos’ build quality is impressive. The chunky styling of the new casework certainly feels rock solid and inspires confidence. The controls are simple enough with smooth-acting buttons for choosing the inputs for listening and recording.

Now of course its not all about volume (although that does help), the Aethos has control and dynamics, delivering an impressive performance that always makes the music sound vivid and alive. We have used the Aethos with many and various combinations of turntables, CD players, streamers and loudspeakers, and it always has an assured and solid sound staging ability. It possesses an amazing ability to get the sound of an instrument or a voice to appear to hang in the air in front of the listener, and to sound like it is way outside the left or right of the arc of the loudspeakers. There have been many instances where we have had one of these set up in our dem room for a customer to come in for a listen. And when the demo is over we have left it playing so that we can have a listen for ourselves, and the comments are always the same. “How does it do that for the price” or “ I want one!”

As can be seen from the picture above the Aethos is fitted with five RCA line inputs, a tape loop (that neatly features parallel outputs so you can drive a headphone amp and record at the same time), a power amp in and preamp out. This is partnered with a headphone amp running into a 6.35mm jack connection, and the performance on headphones is just as stunning as through the speakers. A nice chunky set of gold plated 4mm speaker sockets complete the line up on the rear.

The Rega Aethos has a very similar character to the Elex-R and Elicit-R but is more revealing and powerful, which opens up a wider range of loudspeaker options but does place higher demands on the source. Essentially it won’t gloss over anything coming from the front end, be that the hard- or software. But it is a very musical and compelling amplifier that makes you want to listen longer and, dare I say it, louder, which is one of life’s great pleasures after all. Add to this very high build quality, a good selection of analogue in- and outputs and you have a classic amplifier, built for sound quality first. What more do you really need?

During these difficult times we are operating on an appointment only basis, so if you’d like to listen call Audio T Cheltenham and book a demonstration.

Andy, Jon and Farid.

Rega products are available from all branches of Audio T