Audio Note UK IZero Integrated Amplifier Tube Amplifier Review

Regardless I preferred listening to the Killers and all of the above albums – great recording or lesser recording through the IZero.

The “Upogenie” album is very well recorded, as are all the Matheny albums I’ve run across, and the IZero has all the treble extension and airy ethereal feel that seem to be present. I say seem to be present because the amplifier lies by omission. When you directly compare it to an OTO or a Meishu you notice what those amps bring – superior transients – a bigger more open presentation but again without the direct comparisons the IZero very much seems to present the full picture. I suspect this is because the amplifier does a terrific job of presenting ambiance and a better overall sense of decay compared to many amplifiers. I have used this Metheny album a lot and many amplifiers get the transients but lack the body of instruments and the room. The timing and ambiance I suspect is why it’s easy to believe it’s presenting all the information. When comparing music replay on my Audio Space Mini 2SE I simply continued to want to go back and listen to the IZero regardless of recordings.

This is no slight on my Audio Space integrated – it’s significantly less expensive (about 2/3 the price) and it does offer more features and offers significantly more power and it’s ready to go in a couple of minutes. There is every chance that the Audio Space and many of the amplifiers I mentioned earlier will drive more loudspeakers because a large number of speakers will not be happy with an 8 watt amplifier.

It may also be possible to extract more from the Mini 2 and other similarly priced tube amplifiers via tube upgrades and capacitor upgrades. However, doing that will also raise their prices possibly to the price of the IZero. Personally, I’d rather get the results at the outset over hoping and praying that spending more on higher end tubes and cap upgrades will be the magic elixir to better sound, because it’s also very possible that spending more on the various will still wind up in the IZero’s wake.

Again the IZero isn’t an Ongaku (or an OTO SE) and there is a reason that amp costs that much (to the chagrin of my bank account). The IZero simply doesn’t have the resolution, the inner detail, the openness or that “sparkle” of breathiness of the best amps. So the IZero leans to the warmer and arguably safer side of Audio Note UK’s amplifier spectrum. What a great budget amp like this one does do is sound so darn inviting that your ear will adjust quickly to what it does so that you’re not inclined to bother with making those quick A/B comparisons. The IZero is a kind of chill pill for obsessive compulsives.

Comparing stock to stock versions the IZero is a significant step up in the critical areas of sound reproduction over any Push Pull amplifier or any solid state amplifier that I have auditioned in this price class. What I noticed in listening to recording after recording was the ability to follow more of the event without losing focus on accompaniment. I attribute this to the dots being connected. With lesser amplifiers I focus more on one area of a performance and lose focus on other areas, I suspect this is because my brain is trying to fill in or make the missing corrections and to compensate for something that doesn’t sound quite right. Ultimately, with those amplifiers I have to concentrate more during listening and the listening experience slowly borders on becoming work rather than relaxation, somewhat like working under fluorescent lights as opposed to natural light.

The IZero allowed me to relax and get swept up in the performance the way a very good Single Ended amplifier does. Higher level AN UK amplifiers and very good SET amps have more delineation of subtlety with brush strokes on cymbals for example. Such things were slightly softer with the IZero but to get a good SET amplifier these days you’re looking at $4,000 or more (even from the Chinese manufacturers such as Line Magnetic, Audio Space, and Melody).The ANKit One would be an interesting alternative to the IZero but remember that 300B tube replacement is considerably more expensive and you have to build the Kit yourself.

I talked to Peter about the IZero and he and his designer, Andy Grove, are mighty proud of their Zero. I get the sense that in a certain way they have more pride in the zero series than their higher level cost no object components because while most companies can throw lots of money at a solution and can make fairly high level sounding components – the trick for companies making relatively affordable products is that they can no longer drop in very expensive transformers or black gate caps or use top of the line wiring, boards, and resisters etc.

Indeed, they have to somehow get more from a part than even they thought possible. A big part of tube amplifiers though comes down to the quality of the transformers and I suspect this is where Audio Note UK has a huge advantage over most if not all other tube amplifier makers. They design their own transformers and don’t need to alter their design to fit an off the shelf part. They design the amp and the transformer and they can get exactly what they want.

Peter Qvortrup and Andy Grove set out to make an amplifier that they could be happy putting their name on, an amplifier that fully lives up to the Audio Note UK standard of fully engaging music replay. To succeed in this while also doing it as affordably as they have was no small feat. For a long time my favorite budget integrated amplifier was the Solid State Single Ended pure class A Sugden A21a integrated amplifier. The Sugden now has company in the IZero and I hope that like the Sugden the IZero becomes a classic for audiophiles on a budget.