Simaudio Moon Evolution 600i Integrated Amplifier:

           Current amplifier: as new complete serial #M7321888

Written by: Philip Beaudette
Category: Full-Length Equipment Reviews
Created: 01 October 2010

The
600i integrated amplifier belongs to Simaudio’s upscale Moon Evolution
line of reference-grade electronics. The first Evolution integrated, the
i-7, was reviewed on SoundStage! AV
in March of 2007 by Doug Schneider. The 600i ($8000 USD) and its big
brother, the 700i ($12,000), represent the second generation of Moon
Evolution integrateds.

I’ve heard the i-7; it’s amazingly powerful and transparent, and
among the best integrated amplifiers money can buy. This apparently
wasn’t enough for the Simaudio engineers, who evidently like to keep
developing new technologies; the 600i boasts a number of improvements
over the i-7, including a better volume control, proprietary output
transistors, and an input stage redesigned to reduce noise.

For example, consider that volume control. Simaudio claims that the
M-eVOL2, a proprietary technology developed for the Moon Evolution line,
is very close in performance to the M-Ray volume circuit used in their
flagship P-8 preamp. The M-eVOL2 employs two Multiplying
Digital-to-Analog Converters (MDACs), one per channel, to enable precise
volume adjustments in increments of 0.1dB, for a total of 530
individual steps. Between 0 and 30dB, volume adjustments are made in 1dB
increments. From 30 to 80dB (full power), adjustments are made in
increments of 0.1dB, making it possible to fine-tune the volume more
precisely than I’d ever before encountered. According to Simaudio, this
circuit offers no degradation in sound quality, regardless of the volume
to which it is set. Compared to the original M-eVOL circuit used in the
i-7, the M-eVOL2 boasts a better signal/noise ratio and a subsequently
lower noise floor, while also decreasing interchannel crosstalk. The
volume dial is large and operates very smoothly.

The second significant upgrade included in the 600i are the newly
developed bipolar output transistors, made to Simaudio’s specifications
by another manufacturer and thus available only in Moon models. Because
there are many transistors in each channel of the output stage, care has
been taken to properly match all of them to ensure signal integrity.
Simaudio says that these new transistors make possible in the 600i more
linear gain, a lower noise floor, wider bandwidth, and better bass
response than the high-quality bipolar transistors used by their
competitors -- and, presumably, than the transistors used in the i-7.

Befitting a product in this price range, the two transformers
installed just behind the 600i’s faceplate are no mere afterthoughts.
The steel used to wind them is of the highest grade, imported by
Simaudio from Japan. Although this inevitably increases the cost of
production, the steel is said to be extremely pure while having minimal
loss characteristics. This translates to better efficiency and lower
heat loss, which in turn should lead to longer component life.
Simaudio’s confidence in the 600i’s longevity is demonstrated by the
ten-year warranty that backs it.

The Moon Evolution 600i is a fully differential, dual-mono design
claimed to output 125Wpc into 8 ohms, this doubling to 250Wpc into 4
ohms, with the first 5W output in class-A. While that mightn’t seem too
high for a solid-state amplifier costing not far shy of $10,000, much
can be said for the fact that its output doubles as the impedance is
halved. This simply means that it produces lots of current, and
therefore should be powerful enough to drive most loudspeakers. Unless
your speakers drop well below 4 ohms, or you listen to your music in an
auditorium, or you try to reproduce the sound-pressure levels heard at
rock concerts, it’s unlikely the 600i will run out of juice.

As tends to be the case even with Simaudio’s less expensive
integrated amplifiers, the 600i has lots of connection options and many
features. Around back are a fully balanced XLR input and four pairs of
single-ended inputs, lined up to either side of center and reflecting
the 600i’s dual-mono construction. These inputs are configurable to be
home-theater ready, in which case the 600i’s volume control is bypassed
by the volume control of an external A/V processor or source component.
There is also one line-level output, configurable as fixed or variable,
depending on whether it’s used with a recording device, connected to a
subwoofer, or if only the 600i’s preamplifier section is used.

Each input is assigned a default name at the factory, but these names
can be changed by the user to reflect which component is actually
plugged into each input. More than 25 generic names (Aux, CD, DVD,
Phono, etc.) can be selected from the Setup menu, or the user can
custom-name each input. Those inputs that are not used can be eliminated altogether.

RS-232 and IR ports are included for custom-installation applications
and firmware updates. A 12V trigger allows the 600i to be turned on
remotely. With SimLink, another proprietary Moon technology, owners of
multiple Simaudio components can control all of them from a single
component. For example, if the user adjusts the display brightness of
one Simaudio component, SimLink will automatically and simultaneously
adjust the brightness of all the others.

Another feature, M-Lock, acts as a maximum-volume lockout circuit. In
other words, a different maximum volume level can be set for each line
input, to protect speakers from signal overload caused by switching
between source components of differing output voltages. The 600i also
offers gain offset, which lets you adjust the gain setting of each of
the line-level inputs through a range of +/-10dB. This lets you match
the gains of several source components, which is particularly useful
when trying to switch back and forth between components to evaluate
their performances -- ideal for a reviewer.

Also included with the 600i is the FRM-2, a full-function remote
control. Made from a solid piece of aluminum, it’s heavy enough to serve
double duty as a device for defending your home from someone trying to
steal your stereo. Seriously, it’s very functional, and will also
operate a Simaudio preamplifier and/or CD player. However, as much as I
appreciate the build quality of a remote such as the FRM-2, it is very
long and awkward to hold, even in my large hands. I prefer something
smaller.

Measuring 18.8"W x 4.0"H x 18.1"D and weighing 48 pounds, the 600i is
not only the most expensive integrated amplifier I’ve ever reviewed,
it’s also the beefiest. This is due in no small part to the gorgeous
casework housing the circuitry, including extruded aluminum heatsinks,
and triangular pillars that add weight and increase stability. It
perches atop four cone feet of beautifully polished metal that rest on
small metal discs -- your equipment rack won’t get scratched. The
high-quality, gold-plated WBT binding posts can accept spades, banana
plugs, or bare speaker wire.

The front panel looks very sharp. The faceplate, in black or silver
(the review sample was black), features a large alphanumeric display
that can be seen from across the room. As alluded to above, the
display’s brightness can be dimmed, or turned off altogether if you
don’t want big red numbers glowing at you. Small clusters of buttons to
either side of the display control all of the 600i’s functions,
including balance adjustment, input selection, mute, display brightness,
standby, and setup programming.

Despite my minor reservation regarding its remote, the Moon Evolution
600i is a gorgeous piece of equipment that looks like something costing
$8000. The fit and finish are perfect, and the entire package exudes
quality and fine craftsmanship. The only thing left to do was to find
out how it sounded.

A new reference?

The
user manual suggests that the 600i needs 400 hours of play to be fully
broken in, but I didn’t find that to be the case. After only 10-20 hours
of play, the sound opened up considerably and the 600i seemed to hit
its stride. There might have been some subtle differences beyond that
point, but I heard no major improvements.

One of the first albums I played after the initial break-in period was Elliott Smith’s Either/Or
(CD, Kill Rock Stars KRS269). What immediately struck me when listening
through the 600i was the exceptional clarity and power in the bass in
"2:45am," a song I’ve heard countless times. The drum kit had such heft
and presence that the music filled the room effortlessly, wrapping me in
a blanket of sound that was totally immersive. The quality and the
quantity of the bass were beyond reproach, and left me wanting for
nothing. The soundstage was large and well defined, with a good sense of
depth, while Smith’s voice was placed with pinpoint precision, and the
sort of lucidity that gives the impression that the singer is in the
room.

Moving on to another Smith tune, "Riot Coming," from New Moon
(CD, Kill Rock Stars KRS455), I marveled at how clearly I could hear the
sound of Smith’s hand striking the wooden body of his acoustic guitar.
The precision with which the strings resonated was uncanny, sounding as
detailed and clean as I’ve ever heard. I think the 600i might have a
lower noise floor than any integrated amplifier I’ve ever reviewed. At
about this time I began to wonder if the reproduction of recordings
could get much better than what I was hearing. During my time with the
600i, I found myself thinking about this more and more.

I tend to favor electronics that are very quiet and therefore highly
revealing, which is why I’ve always used solid-state amplification.
Components that impart little sonic coloration of their own let me hear
the recordings as they were made. Of course, depending on the quality of
the recordings themselves, this can be good or bad.

When I switched from Elliott Smith to Bob Dylan, I came to discover
something else about the 600i: it was dead neutral. Compared to the
Smith discs, which have a warmer, more-fleshed-out sound, the leanness
of Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home (CD, Columbia CK 92401) was
immediately obvious. This album is a remarkable piece of work, but while
Dylan’s lyrical musings established a new benchmark in the language of
popular music when this record was released in 1965, it broke no sonic
boundaries. What matters here is that the 600i’s neutrality told me as
much, which made it a good tool for evaluating the quality of recordings
as well as the other components in a system. Through this integrated,
be prepared to hear everything -- and I mean everything.

The Moon 600i reminded me of the Stello Ai500 ($3495), which I reviewed earlier this year. Both integrated amplifiers exemplify the definition of neutral,
and did their jobs while imposing on the music very little of their own
personality. Had the Stello still been here, it would have been
interesting to compare them side by side.

Still in the mood for folk music, I reached for my copy of Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 (CD, Reprise 2-516758), and cued up "The Last Trip to Tulsa." As with the Dylan album, Sugar Mountain
is no sonic landmark, but like most of Young’s work, it still sounds
pretty darn good. Some white noise in the background may be the sound of
the tape on which the music was recorded. Regardless, the sound was
incredible through the 600i. As I closed my eyes, Young’s show unfolded
in the most natural and believable way I’ve ever heard it (I’ve listened
to this disc through several systems). Young’s voice and guitar sounded
as pure and present as one could hope for; even the most subtle nuances
were reproduced with such clarity that it was easy to imagine that I
was actually sitting in the audience.

I suppose if Sugar Mountain were played through larger
speakers, the additional bass would have conveyed a greater sense of the
scale of the coffeehouse where the concert was recorded. But listening
to it through Amphion’s Argon3s, I never felt I was missing anything.
The Argon3s are exceptionally clean and transparent speakers in their
own right, but the 600i seemed to extract from them their very best
performance. Again I wondered whether music could sound much better, or
if the Simaudio-Amphion combination defined that point on the curve of
price vs. performance where spending more money might buy a different
sound, but not necessarily a better one.

Then I played Loreena McKennitt’s Nights from the Alhambra (CD, Quinlan Roads QRCDDVD2-110-N CD01/02). This live set from McKennitt’s tour promoting An Ancient Muse
(CD, Quinlan Road QRCD109) was recorded in Granada at the Alhambra,
which was built in the 14th century, toward the end of the Arabian
occupation of present-day Spain. The concert is rather special; the
venue itself helps transport the listener back to another era that is
perfectly suited to the musical journey on which McKennitt and her
musicians take us. Nights from the Alhambra places the listener
in the front row at the concert, only a short distance from McKennitt
herself. The transparency of the Moon 600i was breathtaking -- the
sounds of McKennitt’s lips moving, and the most minute changes in her
voice, were revealed as clearly as day. The sound of a bow against a
cello’s strings was rich and full, the deep resonance of the instrument
so tangible that it could have sounded better only had I actually
attended the concert.

Or so I would have thought had I not attended one of the concerts on
this tour when it passed through Ottawa three years ago. As much as I
enjoyed hearing these songs performed live at the National Arts Centre,
the sound there was no match for the more balanced sound on this CD. The
NAC was a wonderful place in which to see and hear this show, but that
night the percussion was a little too heavy and overblown for my tastes,
despite the visceral pleasure I got from feeling the music in full
swing. The energy was fantastic, but I found it tended to obscure the
sounds of some of the other instruments.

When I saw the show in Ottawa, I sat in the balcony -- but Nights from the Alhambra
puts me in the best seat in the house. Listening to this album, the
listener is so close to the stage, and the background is so silent, that
the stillness of that late-summer night in Spain can almost be felt.
The performance is incredibly intimate, something the 600i conveyed
flawlessly and without effort. It was strange, but even the quietest
passages of the show seemed powerful, such was the ease with which the
600i relayed them.

I’ve talked at length about how utterly transparent the 600i was, and
for good reason: it was exceptionally quiet. However, it’s not alone in
this category -- some other integrated amplifiers on the market are
also ultraquiet. Rather, it was the effortless way it did everything
that made it so special. With well-recorded material, the highs
extended to the heavens, the midrange was palpable, and the bass was
firm and tight -- but never once in my auditioning of the 600i did it
ever sound strained, no matter how much it was pushed.

When I played War Dance, from Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra’s recording of the suite from Respighi’s Belkis, Queen of Sheba
(CD, Reference RR-95CD), the pounding of the drums was enough to shake
my room -- yet the 600i was always in control, reproducing every nuance
of this piece with ease and composure. Its dynamic prowess was beyond
reproach: the 600i could go from soft to apocalyptically loud and back
to soft again, all in an instant, and never sound as if it were even
trying. In fact, the chassis barely got warm, despite my listening to it
for extended periods at room-filling volume.

More than anything else, in my opinion, it is this effortless ease
that separates the very best from the merely very good. If you’ve never
heard anything like this, it might be difficult to imagine how any
electronic component could bring such a sense of ease to the music. For
example, a high-quality affordable integrated amplifier from a company
like NAD or Arcam can play very loud without becoming severely
distorted, but after I’ve been listening to those components for long
periods, fatigue can set in. I never experienced that with the Moon
Evolution 600i. I don’t mean to suggest that its performance has no
limits -- sooner or later, I’m sure, it could be driven into clipping --
but I’d be very surprised if anyone other than those with huge systems has ever reached those limits.

Comparison

I compared the Moon 600i with my reference integrated amplifier,
Bryston’s B100 SST. At $2995, the Bryston might not seem obvious
competition for the 600i, which costs almost three times as much, but
it’s not as unfair as the difference in price might suggest; at $2995,
one has already passed the point of diminishing returns for integrated
amps.

Feature-wise, the two have much in common, with some important
differences. The 600i and B100 are both dual-mono designs with
commendably long warranties (ten and 20 years, respectively), lots of
inputs, and rock-solid construction. However, the Bryston lacks such
options as M-Lock or gain adjustment, and has no display -- you can’t
name individual inputs or cancel those you don’t use. On the other hand,
unlike the B100 SST, the Moon Evolution 600i can’t be ordered with an
onboard D/A converter or phono stage. If you want these features from
Simaudio, you’ll need to move down to the Moon i3.3 integrated.

The two integrateds are cut from similar if not identical sonic
cloth. Each can produce very powerful, energizing bass that remains
clean and detailed even at ridiculously high volumes, and both are
wonderfully revealing, letting one hear deep into the music, warts and
all. In terms of transparency, I’d give the edge to the Simaudio; I’ve
never heard a quieter integrated than the 600i, and I’ve listened to my
fair share.

In the latter half of "Fake Empire," from The National’s 2007 album, Boxer
(CD, Beggars Banquet BBQCD 252), a horn section enters to energize the
track. When they begin, the horns are a bit buried in the mix, before
coming to life and really carrying the tune. The 600i more clearly
rendered the horns, as if pulling them slightly forward out of the mix.
They didn’t sound bad through the B100; they just stood out more and
were easier to discern through the 600i.

"Fake Empire" revealed another area in which the Simaudio edged out
the Bryston: the size of the soundstage the former was able to create. I
suspect this may relate to its low noise floor, but whatever the
reason, the 600i’s stages were bigger. Music extended from wall to wall,
with an impressive sense of depth. Compared to the B100, the 600i
sounded more expansive, the music rounder and fuller.

Bryston’s B100 SST comes impressively close in performance to the
Moon Evolution 600i, achieving most of what the Simaudio can at a much
lower price. But that’s the crutch: the Bryston gets you most, but not all
the way there. For the lucky few able to afford it, the 600i takes an
extra step in performance above what the Bryston can achieve. It is even
more transparent and can create a larger soundstage, two things that
can be readily appreciated with complex musical passages that have been
well recorded. As good as the B100 is, the 600i makes it that much
easier to hear deep into the music and sort out what’s going on.
Considered on their own, these differences mightn’t seem huge; taken all
together, the Simaudio stands on the Bryston’s shoulders.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a full-featured, reference-quality, bulletproof
integrated amplifier, you would be making a mistake if you didn’t check
out Simaudio’s Moon Evolution 600i. It’s the best integrated amplifier
I’ve ever reviewed, and as far as I can tell, it is solid-state
amplification executed to perfection. At $8000 it’s not cheap, but when
you consider the price of some other high-end integrateds, that price is
actually very competitive. Furthermore, you get the peace of mind that
comes from buying from a company that has been in existence for 30
years, and will probably be around to offer support and service should
their product ever encounter a problem.

The 600i is exceptionally transparent, and sounds completely
effortless in everything it does. Connect it to a pair of high-quality
speakers and a decent source -- I enjoyed immaculate sound from a $500
CD player, which goes a long way toward saying how much performance the
600i is capable of -- and get ready to pick your jaw up off the floor.
If audio reproduction gets any better than this, I haven’t heard it.

. . . Philip Beaudette
[email protected]

Simaudio Moon Evolution 600i Integrated Amplifier
Price: $8000 USD.
Warranty: Ten years, parts and labor.

Simaudio Ltd.
95 Chemin du Tremblay, Unit 3
Boucherville, Quebec J4B 7K4
Canada
Phone: (877) 980-2400, (450) 449-2212

E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.simaudio.com

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