Audio Research Reference 80S stereo power amplifier

For Audio Research, those ears sit behind the very large beard of Warren Gehl, Design Engineer and Aural Evaluator for Audio Research. Let’s face it, anyone who has the words ‘Aural Evaluator’ baked into their job title is going to know how to voice an amplifier, but Warren takes this to the extreme. He’s the kind of listener those of us who get paid to listen take seriously. The real deal, and the reason why there is such consistency of sound between these three power amplifiers.

The difficulty for a reviewer who has looked at all three products is ensuring you don’t just unconsciously plagiarise yourself (because if the amps are very consistent, your words should be consistent too, and you might end up using the same descriptions) but you also don’t want to check those prior reviews in case they influence your writing.

The Reference 80S is keenly dynamic in use, both in micro and macrodynamics. If you play a large-scale piece of music [Tennstedt tearing into Mahler’s Symphony 2 ‘Resurrection’, LPO], it manages to cope with both the huge dynamic swings in this masterpiece and the subtle cues that show this to be an orchestra of musicians playing together.

This good dynamic range is partnered with a fine sense of detail across the board from the deepest bass to the highest treble. In fact, that clean, extended treble is a bit of a key point to the Reference 80S sound; play something like ‘Because He Was a Bonny Lad’ by The Unthanks [Here’s the Tender Coming, Rabble Rouser]. The tight harmony of the two close-miked vocalists is extended and shows up any potential granularity in the mid and treble of an amplifier. Here, their voices are sonorous and clean right into the highest ranges and when the rest of the folk instruments kick in, there is clear sonic and spatial delineation.

Beyond this, however, there’s a sense of rhythmic ‘bounce’ to the recording that is often lost in all the detail (it’s why it was a popular demo track of Naim Audio a few years ago). What the Reference 80S shows, however, is that ‘pace’ need not be mutually exclusive with ‘detail’ or ‘dynamics range’. If you want an amplifier to deliver all the filigree soundstaging and inner detail of a recording, this is it… but the same applies if you just want to kick back and play some rock and have some fun.

Where the Reference 80S ‘shows its limitations’ is when trying to push it beyond its very wide comfort zone. It’s impressively loud and dynamic… until you hear what 140W can do instead of 70W, all other things being equal. The Reference 80S is remarkably good at not running out of puff, but once again compared to the sheer headroom of the Reference 160 S and especially 160 M, it’s clear there’s even more to offer. And yet, if the Reference 80S is all you need for room size or loudspeakers, you’ll probably never notice where it runs out of steam… because, in all likelihood, it won’t run out of steam. Ever.