Hey everyone!
I recently received the new B50 by Arylic and want to share a bit about my impressions of the device.
For a compact Amp like this it really comes with a ton of connectivity featuring Bluetooth, Toslink, Line In (cinch), Phono, TV ARC, USB for Storage devices and a DAC which is my preferred way of connecting to it.
The B50 can output 2x 50W @ 4 Ohm or 2x 30W @ 8 Ohm speakers and also comes with a low level Subwoofer out (cinch) which makes it ideal for driving a medium size pair of bookshelf speakers. Sadly i could not find out which amplifier IC the B50 is using since i didnt wanna take the heatsink off (probably some modern Class D Texas Instruments chip), but judging its size and heatoutput under load, this is really an efficient system. Im driving my DIY Fions with it, and they sound just as good as connected to my Marantz PM5005 to my ears.
Bluetooth connectivity is amazingly good throughout my house with its two antennas and Qualcomm’s QCC3040 IC (aptx, aptxHD, AAC, SBC). It’s really cool that I can connect two pairs of bluetooth headphones simultaneously and transmit any given input source and even change it on the fly. Latency is okay when only connected to one receiving device but with two its not possible to watch video with sound in sync - for music only thats fine of course.
Buildquality of the device is really good for it’s price of around 140$. I like the look and feel of the black anodized aluminum and the high quality laser marking used here. The volume knob is made of aluminum as well, rotary encoder feels solid and has a good click. Especially the PCB looks flawless. I only feel that the rubber feet could be of better quality since they are only glued on and make my unit rock a little bit when touched.
Controlling the amp via Gocontroll app is pretty straightforward and worked flawlessness for me. Switching inputs via app is just as quick as using the remote (I was a bit amazed about the low delay here). A nice feature is when using a subwoofer you can set the crossover point inside the app. Also only reachable from app is the deep bass button. I like the deep bass with my Arylic Up2Stream boards but with the B50 its not found on the remote anymore. What i really dislike about the app is that it needs my precise gps location everytime I want to use it. With the Up2Stream products in the 4Stream app this only happend once during setting up. I dont even understand why the B50 needs location services because it doesnt feature WIFI streaming services. I hope this will be fixed in future updates because like this I dont want to use the app.Besides from that you can control almost everything via remote so thats what im doing right now.
I also had a look into the settings for ACPWorkbench with this unit. It comes with all the Kalimba DSP options like other Arylic products that feature ACPWorkbench. The deep bass setting is factory set to 30% which is really overkill. If anyone is going to use the deep bass function, I recommend setting it somewhere between 6% - 9% depending on speakers used.
All in all I think for the price it’s a very good small amp with a ton of features that excels driving some bookshelf speakers in a medium sized room. Theres still room for improvement but I think Arylic will keep updating this product just like they do with the Up2stream boards that I use on a daily basis.
