Sound
(Image credit: Yamaha)
Beginning with the A-S3200's line stages, we are impressed from the start. This is a surprisingly clean and clear performer that renders the leading edges of notes with crispness without ever veering towards sounding hard or edgy. That's a difficult balancing act that quite a few alternatives fall foul of.
We're pleased with the articulate way this Yamaha delivers Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, a beautiful piece that comes through with a great deal of subtlety and finesse. The A-S3200's sound is expressive and nicely textured, and the music flows with elegance, the amp able to reveal slight changes of pace well.
We switch to Radiohead's In Rainbows set and are pleased to find that the Yamaha has no trouble digging up lots of detail and organising it into a musically cohesive whole. Tracks such as 15 Step can easily sound messy and cluttered, but not through this Yamaha. It's a responsive performer – one that's happy to charge along at full throttle when the music demands. We're particularly taken by the A-S3200's bass performance, which is taut, tuneful and textured. The lows are seamlessly blended into the midrange, too, thanks to the shared agility and insight.
Tonally, this amplifier stands on the lean side of neutral, particularly through the midrange. This affects the A-S3200's ability to convey solidity and punch through these frequencies and gives it a more analytical presentation than most. The class leaders produce a more ‘blood and guts' presentation with this album, leaving the Yamaha to sound a little reserved in comparison.
We're pleased to find that the A-S3200's phono stage is a good one. It sounds best through the moving magnet option, delivering much of the clarity and detail we hear through the line stages. The phono stage sounds lively and has us playing record after record thanks to the combination of finesse, control and detail. It's a relatively quiet circuit, even when we're using the moving coil option. Here, we're more aware of a loss of dynamic punch and verve, so if you have a high-quality moving coil-equipped record player, consider going for an outboard alternative such as the Vertere Acoustics Phono-1.
We have no such issues with the 6.3mm headphone output. Yamaha has provided a number of gain settings to allow for the variation of sensitivity between different models of headphones. We use the Beyerdynamic T1 Mk3 along with the Focal Stellia, and both work well, echoing the clarity, low-end punch and overall finesse we hear through the speaker outputs. The company has done a good job here, particularly as some rivals treat the headphone output as a box-ticking exercise and don't engineer it with care.
The Sound
Every night around 8 pm, I started a ritual where I would turn the A-S3200 on and give it 20 minutes to warm up. It never really gets hot. Even when driven hard for long stretches of time. I've run my hand over the top cover after long listening sessions and it was never an issue. I wouldn't stick the amplifier inside a cabinet and do this, but it takes a lot to overheat this product.
I also never really used any of the tone controls. Not a fan and I didn't find that it made a huge impact on the sound with any of the tracks that I experimented with.