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Roksan Oxygene integrated amplifier

Roksan Oxygene integrated amplifier

Roksan Audio’s Oxygene integrated amplifier will anger reactionary audio enthusiasts as a result of it being nothing like an amplifier from a bygone age. It does not have a big, comforting volume knob on the front panel. It avoids the bank of switchgear to show off how many sources you own. It doesn’t even follow a series of decades-old design cues to make a product that you – and only you – can understand.

Currently, the range comprises this Oxygene integrated amplifier and a matching CD player, with the possibility of future products in the pipeline. Because of their distinctive no-button, top-mounted control surfaces, the products do not lend themselves to being stacked on top of one another or even on a shelving unit. They should be side-by-side with plenty of access to the top plate.

Instead, the Oxygene is the centrepiece of a design-aware high-concept range of electronics (and eventually loudspeakers). Today, that means ‘Jony Ive’ as well as ‘Dieter Rams’; control surfaces that are no longer hard buttons, but devices that respond to human interaction in clever ways. Which is why the Oxygene does without knobs, buttons and dials and replaces them with the words ‘less is more’ on the top plate. Press ‘less’ and the volume decreases, press ‘more’ and it increases, and press ‘is’ and those controls work through the list of inputs. You do need to press these words quite firmly though. The front panel is instead given over to a white display board, with basic information on show. Once you understand how to drive the amp – and that understating process will take most people seconds and ends with an ‘aha!’ moment – the interface is almost impossible to forget how to use. There is also a basic remote, but this is lacking the elegance of the amp itself (it does however allow the user to dim the front panel display). Even the packaging itself – faintly reminiscent of the boxes used by Apple for its MacBook products –  and the black, white or (for a premium) brushed silver chrome finish options all exude a distinct 21st Century design ethic. 

, Roksan Oxygene integrated amplifier

That design brief extends to the connectivity of the product. Alongside the three analogue inputs, the Oxygene integrated amplifier features a 16 channel AptX Bluetooth connection. It’s easy to access; your Bluetooth device can be paired easily (it appears as ‘Roksan’ and you enter the code ‘0000’), there are enough channels available for it to reconnect without ever having to pair the two devices again, and AptX is a high-quality digital audio pathway. Once paired, you connect or disconnect from the host Bluetooth device, and only one device can be paired at any one time.

 

Unfortunately, Apple does not support AptX on its iOS system at the time of writing, but it is supported on Motorola, HTC and Samsung Galaxy phones, as well as Galaxy tablets. Strangely, it is also supported on Apple OS X for its computers, so it’s possible AptX compatibility will become available on later iterations of Apple’s iDevices, or operating system. 

The only other connections on the rear panel are subwoofer outputs and multi-way loudspeaker terminals, and a strange connection that looks something like a Neutrik Speakon. This is intended for a forthcoming power supply upgrade.

, Roksan Oxygene integrated amplifier

The amplifier design itself is fascinating. It is a Class D design, using Hypex UCD 400 Class D modules to deliver 75 watts into an eight ohm load and 150 watts into a four ohm loudspeaker load. Class D amplifiers do not tend to react well to lower speaker impedances than this, so avoid using the Oxygene with ‘difficult’ speaker loads. Although every manufacturer of Class D modules makes a claim to delivering good sound, Hypex is commonly considered to be the best of breed in sound quality. 

Why fascinating? Roksan has also taken the rare step of coupling these fast Pulse Width Modulation amplifier modules with a linear power supply. Normally, designers use Class D modules with switch-mode power supplies in order to keep the size and weight of the amplifier down. There is no strict demand for switch-mode power from the Class D modules however, and instead Roksan uses a linear PSU with a pair of big toroidal transformers inside the amplifier’s case. Roksan is not the only company to approach Class D in this manner, but the trade-off (or maybe the hidden benefit) is the size of the chassis means the Hypex modules (capable of up to about 400W) are limited to 75W into eight ohms, because it places a ceiling on the size of the transformer. 

Design-led? Bluetooth? Class D? Subwoofer outputs? I can’t think of anything less appealing to the rank and file hi-fi enthusiast. And that says more about just how out of touch those rank and file hi-fi enthusiasts are with the way non-audiophiles live today.  I can see this amplifier sitting under the TV screen in many living rooms, the two loudspeakers making sound for both audio and video entertainment, with the listener porting music from his or her tablet wirelessly. I can see this happening because that’s exactly how the Oxygene ended up being used, with the display dimmed or off to keep from acting as TV distraction.

, Roksan Oxygene integrated amplifier

The first day of use, I must admit was disappointing. Out of the box, the Oxygene lives down to all those bad-news stories enthusiasts like to lay at the door of Class D; it was flabby in the bass and thin and brash sounding in the treble. If it carried on in the same vein, I’d have sent it back unreviewed and unloved. In truth, I lost the next two days, because I had friends staying for the weekend, but this sentence hides an interesting story. Quite without prompting, One Direction started blaring out of the Oxygene mid-Saturday, and it kept happening. This was the result of the teenage daughter of my friend discovering the word ‘Roksan’ on her phone, guessing (correctly) that ‘0000’ was the code and essentially ‘hacking’ the hi-fi. While deeply annoying – hearing ‘Little Things’ for the eleventy-third time in a row can drive you round the bend – it also showed just how easy the Oxygene is to use, and how it will be used. Unfortunately if you turn off the Oxygene, when said teenager powers it up again, it retains the input but resets the volume level to a moderately loud ‘20’. 

Maybe it was a few days of running in, or maybe it was exposure to Harry Styles, but by the end of the weekend, those initial misgivings about the Oxygene had vanished completely. I couldn’t put this down to familiarisation with the product sound, because it was filtered through the system being dominated by use as either TV sound or the audio plaything of a teenager. All I know is the sound of the music I played on the Sunday night bore little relation to the sound of the music I heard two days previously. Things got better on the subsequent midweek listening session, but I couldn’t perceive any notable improvements after a few days of running in. 

 

For serious listening, I used my 2009 iMac (running the latest OS X 10.8.4 operating system) playing lossless files through AptX Bluetooth to one of Roksan’s 16 BT channels. First came Vaughan Williams The Wasps, played by Michael Stern and the Kansas Symphony Orchestra (Reference Recordings). This is proving both a remarkable recording in its own right, but also a fine test recording, in terms of the dynamic range of a system and its ability to communicate musical themes accurately. Perhaps it’s the Kansas connection, but the overture here can easily drift into something more like Copland than Vaughan Williams, but here it was kept in check and very English summertime. There was no sense of the bass getting out of control or the treble messing up those beautifully recorded strings and brass sections. This was quickly followed by Madeleine Peyroux Careless Love album (Decca) and the interplay between singer, organ and guitar was slick and sleek. In absolute terms, the Oxygene is on the right side of mellow; far removed from the Class D screech-boom of old, but not the crowned king of transients. That serves to make the Oxygene sound sophisticated in most cases, but just be careful of matching the amp with mellow sounding loudspeakers.

, Roksan Oxygene integrated amplifier

Yes, if you go the traditional audiophile route and build up a system comprising a host of stylistically-random boxes, with visible screws and heatsinks everywhere, you will probably end up with something that sounds better than the Oxygene. Which is akin to saying a old Ford Fiesta with an engine from an even older Renault 5 Turbo is faster than a Porsche Boxster – even if its right, those who are about to buy a Boxster will cry ‘who cares’? And that’s the big feather in the cap of the Roksan Oxygene – it’s hi-fi for a new generation who would never buy into the old ways.  

Technical Specifications

Inputs: 3x Analogue RCA

Bluetooth: 16 channels (15x individual devices, 1x infinite)

Outputs: 2x Loudspeaker terminals, L/R phono for 

active subwoofer

Power bandwidth: 1Hz-43kHz

THD: Better than 0.1%

S/N ratio: 95dB

Input Sensitivity: >1Vrms

Input Impedance: 10kOhms

Power Output: 75W (eight ohms), 150W (four ohms)

Output Impedance” ).02ohms @ f > 1kHz

Current Limit: 16A peak

Dimensions (WxHxD): 31x31x6cm

Weight: 7kg

Finishes: White, Black, Silver 

Price: £3,000 (Silver £3,500)

Manufactured by: Roksan

www.oxygene.roksanaudio.com

Distributed by: Henley Designs

www.henley-designs.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)1235 511166 

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