Our éloquence 250i integrated amplifier has been recently reviewed in Taiwan by hi fi magazine Audio Art.

Read Lin Yihong's review of the éloquence 250i as it appeared in Audio Art, or read the review in English courtesy of Google Translate.

Thank you to our distributor in Taiwan, Sheng-Kai, for providing the review sample.

Chinese hi fi magazine HiFi Asia recently reviewed our éloquence 250i integrated amplifier and was featured in the Recommended section of the magazine.

The reviewer thoroughly enjoyed their time with the 250i. Unfortunately we do not have a copy of the review translated into English, but feel free to read the review in Chinese.

Many thanks to our distributor in China, Kinetic Audio, for supplying the review sample.

The Consumer Electronics & Photo Expo was recently held in Moscow.  It is Russia's equivalent of CES and covers premium hi-fi as well as mobile & digital, photography, digital TV and audio/video.

Audiomania was in attendance representing Perreaux alongside some of their other lines, such as Waterfall and Penaudio loudspeakers, Nordost cables and Cold Ray vibration control.

On display was our Silhouette SXCD CD player, éloquence CDt transport with 250i integrated amplifier and Prisma 350 power amp.  The setup was mostly static with a lot of the gear not available for demonstration – in any case, it's still excellent exposure in Russia for the brands Audiomania represented at the show.

Audiomania have posted photos of Consumer Electronics & Photo Expo 2011 on Facebook, where you can see photos of their stand as well as coverage of other aspects of the show.

Congratulations Audiomania on what looked like a popular stand at a busy show.

The April issue of French hi-fi audio magazine Haute Fidélité features a review of our éloquence 250i integrated amplifier.

Reviewer Laurent Thorin was so enamoured with the 250i he was compelled to rate it 5-stars across the board. I can't recall any time where we've scored full marks for every category. We've come close on a number of occasions, but never 100%. Understandably, we were very excited about his findings.

"The Eloquence Perreaux 250i appropriates personality perfectly" comments Laurent regarding the timbre of the 250i, "the adjective "realistic" fits like a glove", he continues.

With respect to soundstage, Laurent found "The listener is immersed in music, but it extends to the back of the room, offering a perspective that is a pleasure to enjoy, even when the song becomes more complex".

"Precise in the way he has to bring out micro-data with a perfect "appropriateness". Exhaustive as to the amount of items it manages to highlight" is what he discovered when appraising transparency.

We're very pleased that Laurent enjoyed his time with the éloquence 250i and would like to thank him for taking the time to review it. We would also like to thank Haute Fidélité magazine and our distributor in France, DEA International, for supplying the review sample.

For those who can read French, please feel free to read Laurent's review of the éloquence 250i integrated amplifier.

It looked nice and well set up, carefully arranged and sounding good.  After the carrying, plugging, unplugging and pointing had given way to smiles, closed eyes and head nodding, it was obvious all the hard work had been well worth it.

At 5.30pm on Monday 13th of December at the Wellesley Boutique Hotel in Wellington, Hugo Van Son, Audio Visual Manager of Harvey Norman Tory Street, and I, were looking at each other wondering if an evening of hi-fi demos in 2010 was actually a good idea.  Was hi-fi still a thing that could capture the public’s attention?  Or were we living in the past, some of the last men on the ramparts championing good sound over convenience?

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Reviewed by: Deon Schoeman, South Africa

Command performance

I'd never heard of New Zealand high-end audio company Perreaux until Mike Blake of The Listening Room added the marque to his portfolio of imports, and the two components under review here arrived on the AVSA doorstep. In fact, Perreaux sounds more French, and certainly Continental, so to find out that the brand harks from Dunedin in New Zealand came as something of a surprise. The only reference to Dunedin I have is that they play some pretty fine rugby at Dunedin's Carisbrook stadium, also known as 'The House Of Pain' - as our Springboks have found out on various occasions...

Read the full review here: Review - 250i / CDt - Deon Schoeman - South Africa (PDF 884 KB)

Review by: Mr. Mikkel Gige of HIFI4ALL online magazine, Denmark www.hifi4all.dk
Original review: http://www.hifi4all.dk/content/templates/anmeldelser.asp?articleid=2377&zoneid=3
Translated by: Mr. Soren Vittrup, Audiocompagniet, Denmark

Introduction

With price and power in mind, the Perreaux éloquence Series 250i is a very compact amplifier that does not make much fuss, and it will fit on most shelves. Depth is barely 35 cm, but still there was space for a 1000VA toroidal transformer and eight power supply filter capacitors with a total capacity of 44000μF (100V). You will also find separate printed circuit boards for the output stage and one for the preamp section which has its own transformer of 35VA. There is not much space left in the compact cabinet. The parts are of very good quality – with the exception of the RCA jacks, which was also one of my complaints, when big brother R200i was reviewed.

The cabinet is constructed of two steel frames that hold sides, top and bottom, and front and rear together. Top, back panel and bottom are made of 2mm aluminium plate, the sides are two powerful cooling profiles, while the front plate is made of an almost 2 cm thick aluminium plate! Indeed, a good solid and well-built cabinet. Design of the front is perhaps a little straightforward compared with other products from Perreaux.

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I've experienced some stunning audio/visual systems and a few disasters also.

I received a call from a friend the other day asking my advice on a home audio system for his new house. He had received a multi-room audio proposal from his local store and they felt he needed audio in every room of his house. The system was both extensive and expensive, but importantly there was far too much emphasis on quantity and convenience over quality.

Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not buying into all this convenience. When I'm in the bedroom, my prime focus is usually rest; and when I'm in the kitchen, thoughts of food take presedence. To me, this is the hoary old chestnut of less adding up to so much more. Rejecting everywhere convenience in favour of focusing on a few select prime areas of use and making them all they can be is definitely the way to go in my opinion.

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French audio magazine Stereo Prestige & Image likened the power delivery and impact of the éloquence 250i integrated amplifier to a "Tyson left in the chest":

“...le "déferlement" de puissance totalement sous contrôle, avec un impact physique dans le grave digne d’une gauche de Tyson en pleine poitrine.”

They also go on to say:

“La voix de la chanteuse Michelle Shocked ressort avec un timbre chaleureux, presque doux dans ce monde de brutes, avec un caractère expressif étonnant sans la moindre trace d'intermodulation. Les voix en background se détachent parfaitement sur deux plans différents derrière elle au lieu de se superposer, révélant un parfait maintien de la phase à des niveaux pareils qui assurent une réelle surpression sur les tympans : époustouflante tout simplement.”

Which loosely translates to (via Google Translate):

“The voice of singer Michelle Shocked projects with a warm timbre, almost sweet in this cruel world, with an astonishing expressiveness without the slightest trace of intermodulation. The voices in the background stand out perfectly on a plane behind instead of overlapping, revealing a perfect continuation of the phase at such levels that provide a real pressure on the eardrums: simply stunning.”

For those that can read French, check out the rest of the 250i review from Stereo Prestige & Image.

Issue 279 of Hong Kong hifi magazine HiFi Review features a review of our éloquence 250i Integrated Amplifier.

Many thanks to Raymond Cho, from our Hong Kong distributor Kinetic Audio, for arranging the review.

The review has kindly been translated into English by our Singaporean distributor Audio Basic. A huge "thank you" to Steven Cheah for his efforts.

Here are a couple of the comments reviewer River Chan made about the 250i integrated amplifier:

“Overall performance is so natural that it warms the heart and soothes the ear...”

“...we listened until we drowned in its emotions, shaking our heads in rhythm, swaying with the music, tapping our feet in line with the infectious melodies...”

Feel free to continue reading what other thoughts and emotions were stirred in reviewer River Chan. Alternatively, you can read the original review in Chinese.

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