Atoll IN50 Integrated Amp $1200 (50×2)

(3.75h, 17.32w, 12d, 16 lbs)

Made in France!

Priced as Line Stage With Remote, 3 Year Warranty

Optional Boards Available: Phono MM $130, DAC $300, DAC/Bluetooth $500

Atoll’s IN50 is by far my fave, inexpensive integrated amp on the market. It has surpassed various NAD and Marantz pieces by a significant margin. And yup, it’s made in France, not China.

What’s exciting about IN50 is in how much better it is built and SOUNDS compared to everything else at this price point. Literally everything else near this price is manufactured in China and is built distinctly worse. The Chinese have chosen to ignore audiophile excellence and instead, opt to build in Bluetooth, DACs, streamers and noisy phono preamp chips.

Construction Details

Atoll has crushed it with IN50. It starts with a 170VA toroidal transformer. Toroids harness the magnetic field so the transformer isn’t spraying RFI all over the PCB. Atoll transformers are built in Spain to its specs. This significant, incipient design fundamental, delivers more clear sound with a quiet background.

Take a look at a couple of competitors we’ve shown below for comparison. The transformers are minuscule in comparison to Atoll.

IN50 uses a generous load of almost 20,000uF of filter capacitance in its power supply. Atoll designs the caps and has them manufactured by Nipon in Japan (not China). These caps are low ESR, very fast acting supply caps.

The other guys don’t use nearly the AMOUNT or quality/speed in power supply caps that Atoll uses.

IN50 uses MATCHED MOSFET output transistors. Think of the theoretical ideal transistor performing like a perfectly round circle. In reality, none are perfect. All are irregular to some degree. When transistors are used that have mismatched “patterns” for the sake of this analogy, then you’ll hear the grainy distortion artifacts of the differences among them.

An amp needs at least four transistors. Right plus, right minus, Left plus, left minus. Without taking the time/effort/expense to hand match transistors, you’re guaranteed to get all manner of distorted circular patterns with jagged edges. Atoll does hand match transistors so the array you get in YOUR Atoll amp, even the entry level IN50, run with copacetic behavior, delivering a smooth sound.

Competitors that use discrete transistors don’t MATCH them as Atoll does, at anywhere near IN50’s price point. In fact, almost all Chinese manufacturing now runs Class D. The D module replaces the discrete transistors. The Ds are reliable, but sound more thin (especially in the bass) and dry, compared to Atoll’s Class AB with the stout power supply and discrete transistors.

Atoll builds its integrateds on a large, exquisitely fabricated circuit board. The only wire runs from the transformer to the board. The boards are beautifully laid out and symmetrical in alignment. They’re literally a work of art, for music and aesthetics.

Take a look at the other guys. You’ll see a myriad of tiny boards, punched out of mass produced stations. These boards can be used among a plethora of brands the production house makes. It is the epitome of mass production. Then these boards are wired together with wire the size of dental floss, or ribbons, both of which attract RFI and noise. They’re literally built the opposite of how Atoll builds.

Atoll offers a culture of making its products with larger and higher quality parts. This attention to transformers, filter caps and matched output transistors, unsurprisingly leads to a warmer, richer musical presentation- sans gadgets.

We have always known that what an amp sounds like boils down to the way it is built, more than the number of watts it produces. At higher price points especially, we have found modest wattage can outperform higher wattage amps. If you leave off some features at a given price point, your total investment can result in noticeably better sound quality because you can afford to use superior versions of the components mentioned above. Buy the sound quality first and spend on the features YOU need- after.

Never… have I seen such a disparate relationship between modest wattage and the prodigious nature of the amp’s performance at such an inexpensive price point, as with Atoll. IN50 sounds fluid, large and beefy.

The Sound

IN50 has a weighty, smooth sound. It sounds like it’s coasting and yet will bring bass out of your speakers- you didn’t know they had. You’ll know in a few seconds by the feel of the volume control that IN50 is something unique, very robust and musical.

If we compare Atoll to other top brands, as a family, Atoll sounds more earthy and muscular than other quite credible integrateds from NAD, Hegel, Cambridge & Marantz, for example. The latter group sounds more cool and lean.

IN50 is a superb match with speakers you might infer would need more juice. Take any Magnepan or Bryston speaker as an example. IN50 drives them very well. You won’t believe the colossal bass these speakers produce with Atoll.