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Cast your mind back to September 2018 and, while you’re at it, cast it all the way to Seattle. That’s when and where Amazon announced an absolute stack of new products, everything from microwave ovens to wall-clocks. But our interest was keenest in these two products - and now, just the six short months later, they’re here. Well, the Echo Link is here. The Echo Link Amp goes on sale on May 9.
The Echo Link and Echo Link Amp aren’t exactly Amazon’s attempt to reinvent the wheel - they’re more like Amazon’s attempt to give the wheel some Alexa functionality. The Echo Link Amp, in particular, is a mild reimagining of the sort of product one might reasonably have assumed Amazon - given its determination to fill the world with smart speakers - had nailed the lid down on. And yet here we are.
The little Echo Link box is intended to bring Alexa-powered wireless streaming to a stereo system that can’t otherwise support it, or to give powered speakers more options in terms of source inputs. The Echo Link Amp, meanwhile, adds 60 watts per channel of amplification to the Echo Link recipe - it’s a stereo amplifier of the old school with a smattering of 21st century functionality.
Amazon wants, on top of everything else, to be a hi-fi company.
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Design
Exactly how discreet and understated do you like your understated discretion? Amazon is seemingly on a mission to redefine the word ‘unassuming’ with these two products.
Both are resolutely anonymous black boxes, with only a volume control and 3.5mm headphone output interrupting the fascia. The volume control itself is ringed by a total of nine pin-point white lights which illuminate a) only when the control is manipulated and b) in one of three intensities, depending on the level of input. This kind of granular gain adjustment is welcome, given what a blunt instrument Alexa is when it comes to adjusting volume levels. But equally, this kind of fine control is nothing that stereo amplifiers haven’t routinely featured for many decades.
Around the back of each box there’s a selection of sockets for input/output, plus a connection for mains power - on the Echo Link it’s a tiny pin leading to one of those chunky mains plugs Amazon’s so enamoured of, on the Echo Link Amp it’s a much more serious ‘figure of eight’ socket.
At 7 x 12 x 14cm the Echo Link is usefully diminutive. The Echo Link Amp, while a fair bit bigger at 9 x 22 x 24cm, is still considerably more compact than the majority of stereo amplifiers against which it presumably wishes to compete, which are much more commonly 43 or 44cm wide.
Design flourishes are strictly limited to some smooth curves at top and bottom, front and back. The plastics of the chassis are hard and unyielding in the manner any Fiat owner will be familiar with from their car’s dashboard, and they retain fingerprints tenaciously.
Features
You’ve plenty of options when it comes to attaching the Echo Link to your existing system or powered speakers. As well as an Ethernet socket for optimal network stability, the rear of the Echo Link also features digital optical in and out, digital coaxial in and out, stereo RCA in and out, and a pre-out for a subwoofer. Sadly, neither the Echo Link nor Echo Link Amp can wirelessly power the wireless Echo Sub - if you want to bolster the low frequencies it’s going to need a physical connection. There’s also an ‘action’ button for use during set-up.
There’s wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity on board, too. The Echo Link’s onboard DAC is a 24bit/192kHz item that, by Amazon’s own admission, is considerably better than the DACs found in its Echo speakers.
The ability to handle hi-res audio is very welcome, even if the physical digital inputs have an upper limit of 96kHz. Less welcome is the standard Bluetooth A2DP codec - really, Amazon should be offering aptX as a minimum. And while we're complaining, hi-res audio is much harder to get at than it might be - as the Echo Link and Echo Link Amp go without any UPnP functionality, you’ll need to use a server such as Plex or Kodi before you begin negotiating with Alexa for access to your network-attached audio files.
The Echo Link Amp features the same suite of connectivity, plus some proper speaker binding posts that will accept either bare wire or 4mm banana plugs for a bit of hi-fi authenticity. It’s also packing the same DAC and Bluetooth standard. It adds a claimed 60 watts per channel of Class D amplification (measured at 8ohms) and vented top and bottom panels to help dissipate the modest amount of heat the Echo Link Amp generates.
Interface
Naturally, the big sell here is Alexa. Once you’ve used the Alexa app to designate your Echo Link or Echo Link Amp as the preferred speaker in a particular group, any mic-enabled Echo product on the same network can be instructed to start playing music or adjust the volume. In addition, the system that incorporates either of these devices can be added to a multi-room music group for streaming music playback in multiple rooms - or set up an ‘everywhere’ group in order to hear streamed music throughout your home.
Alexa ability doesn’t quite spell the end of physical control, however. No one’s expecting Alexa to be able to control the tablet or smartphone that’s sending Bluetooth audio to the Echo Link or Link Amp - but having articulated “Alexa, play John Cale on Echo Link Amp” to good effect, I’d have expected to be able to ask “Alexa, skip track” or “Alexa, go to next song” without causing any alarms. But no - Alexa can’t manage it, so skipping over Cale’s deconstruction of Heartbreak Hotel to get to Fear is a Man’s Best Friend has to be done manually. Hardly a chore, but more work than you might imagine it’s going to be when using a voice-controlled system.
Switching between inputs - you’re able to have three sources physically connected to the Echo Link or Echo Link Amp, as well as network and Bluetooth sources - isn’t possible using your voice, either. There’s a strict hierarchy to the inputs - the order of priority is: streaming, Bluetooth, optical, coaxial and analogue. If you want to hear an analogue source, then everything else connected to the Echo Link/Amp must be unplugged or, at the very least, turned off. When you’re listening to that analogue source, pressing ‘play’ on the CD player you’ve connected to the digital optical input will switch straight to that digital source.
As far as streaming services go, both products support Amazon Music, Spotify and TuneIn from the get-go. It’s possible to link an Apple Music and/or Deezer account, too - but if you’re a subscriber to TIDAL Hi-Fi (which gives access to TIDAL Masters, which is as good as audio quality gets from a streaming service), it’s no dice.
Performance
As far as the Echo Link goes, performance is very much tied to the quality of the system it’s being integrated into. Amazon’s claims for the abilities of the DAC seem justifiable - unless you’re using the Echo Link to introduce some streaming into a fairly high-end system, it’s worth comparing the DAC in your digital source (be it a CD player, Blu-ray player or a games console) to that fitted in the Echo Link.
Certainly the sound from a Samsung UBD-K8500 4K Blu-ray player enjoys greater heft and authority when it’s routed into the Echo Link using a digital optical connection and then pushed out to an amplifier via the Amazon’s analogue outputs. With a disc of Ron Howard’s Eight Days a Week spinning, the Samsung’s on-board DAC delivers a sound that’s rather thin and stressed - the Echo Link identifies more of the warmth and detail of the Blu-ray soundtrack than the Samsung is capable of.
And when used purely as a streamer, the Echo Link is a reasonably faithful listen. Asking Alexa to stream Radiohead’s The National Anthem via Spotify results in a sound that’s wider, better focused and more alert to fine detail than the same song delivered by the 3.5mm headphone socket of a smartphone. It’s not the most rigorous at the low end - bass sounds can quite easily get a little muddy - but it demonstrates greater presence and attack.
While there’s no amplification involved in the Echo Link, it nevertheless impacts on the outright volume of the system it’s attached to. No matter if it’s decoding the digital audio from a Blu-ray disc or streaming wirelessly from a Spotify account, the amp it’s connected to needs its volume dialled northwards a little to get to a similar level of output as it was serving up before the Echo Link was introduced.
Switching out a dumb analogue-only stereo amplifier in favour of the Echo Link Amp produces rather more nuanced results. First things first: Amazon’s claim of 60 watts per channel into a 8 ohm load seems optimistic in the extreme. The Echo Link Amp is the quietest, most reticent 60 watts-per-side design I’ve ever heard, and its volume illumination needs winding round towards three o’clock before the output approaches anything like ‘loud’. Ordinarily I would strongly counsel against this sort of recklessness, but in the case of the Echo Link Amp it seems absolutely necessary.
Whether or not it’s worth getting a workable level of volume is more debatable than it should be - the Echo Link Amp has a remarkably varied sonic character. The bottom end of Curtis Mayfield’s (Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go is lethargic and indistinct, dragging at the tempo and rendering lumpy what should glide. At the same time, the top of the midrange/bottom of the high end crossover point is hard and unforgiving, meaning any sibilants in a vocal are overstated and harsh. As a consequence, a recording like Nick Drake’s Saturday Sun features a double bass that sounds estranged from the rest of the instrumentation, underneath a vocal that hits the ‘s’ sounds so hard it’s almost painful.
In other respects the Echo Link Amp is better realised. For all its questionable power output, it’s reasonably dynamic - and though the bass is sluggardly, it is still capable of hitting quite determinedly. The soundstage it presents is decently wide and well defined. And, of course, being able to issue voice commands is a gift that keeps on giving.
Overall, though, the sense that Amazon has overreached somewhat is hard to shake. The Echo Link is a perfectly agreeable (though mystifyingly quiet) way to introduce wireless streaming and voice control to an existing system, but the Echo Link Amp is too compromised to be worthy of much consideration.
Very similar money buys a Marantz PM6006 stereo amplifier, which - though it goes without voice control and is around twice as wide - has three digital inputs leading to its 24bit/192kHz DAC as well as analogue inputs and a phono stage. And, crucially, it sounds like a balanced and thoroughly sorted stereo amplifier. Which, despite the company’s best intentions, the Amazon Echo Link Amp does not.
Verdict
Pros: Hi-res DAC; Alexa multi-room compatibility; usefully compact
Cons: Ill-defined bass; uncompromising high-end harshness; doesn’t sound like 60 watts-worth; harder to get hi-res audio than it should be
Price: £290
Rating: 5/10
Pros: Simple way to introduce high-res voice-controlled streaming into any existing system
Cons: Not all that affordable; not all that loud; harder to get hi-res audio than it should be
Price: £190
Rating: 7/10
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
