Specs & Pricing

Start Me Up
Rega Brio 3 Integrated Amplifier,
R3 Loudspeaker, and Apollo CD Player
grasp the appeal of British mini-monitors
of the LS3/5a variety. Their laughable
low-frequency potential makes them noncontenders
for me. So it was with a bit of
trepidation that I accepted Dallas-based
Sound Organisation’s offer to take an entrylevel
Rega system for a test drive—complete
with The Chord Company’s interconnects
and speaker cables, for what they called
“a full British experience.” Not included:
bangers, peas, warm beer, and a heartfelt
rendition of “God Save the Queen.”
Most suspect were Rega’s R3 speakers,
little baby columns no taller than the average
tabletop. Not so doubtful were the Apollo
CD player (praised by Chris Martens in Issue
165) and the Brio 3 integrated amp, the latest
iteration of a piece that’s been quite well
received in the audiophile community. The
electronics are “affordable state-of-the-art,”
but at less than 20 pounds each, the speakers
shout, “Shangai knock-offs,” though they
are made in England.
The Brio 3 can do
justice to vinyl
I share Chris Martens’ enthusiasm for the
top-loading Apollo CD player. Put a disc in,
close the smoothly operating, hinged disc
cover, and the player automatically starts the
“initialization” process. (Pressing the frontpanel
play button or the corresponding
button on the remote yields no results until
the disc has been read.) Rega claims that
the Apollo “optimizes” itself for each type
of disc that it plays: Red Book standard
CD, MP3, or WMA media. Opening the
disc cover stops playback. Unlike some
similar-looking designs, the disc cover
doesn’t clamp the disc to the mechanism’s
spindle—the disc is secured in place by
the spindle’s three tiny spring-loaded nubs.
The play button doubles as a pause button,
a bit of ergonomic design that’s becoming
commonplace. The only other buttons are
back/forth arrows, a square stop button,
28 December 2006 The Absolute Sound
and an illuminated power switch to the left
of the display. The player’s look is clean and
elegant, but I prefer blue LED displays to
Rega’s red. Back-panel connections include
stereo analog outputs on RCA connectors,
and coax and optical audio outputs.
Simple, compact, easy to operate, and
great-sounding, the Apollo is reasonably
priced at $995. It’s also the most expensive
piece in the Rega system, and justifiably
so. With a precision disc transport
mechanism, vanishingly low jitter, Wolfson
WM8740 DACs, a Class A output stage,
20MB of buffer memory, and an overbuilt
power supply, the Apollo competes both
technologically and musically with some of
the best players on the market.
Sharing the Apollo’s dimensions and style,
the $645 Brio 3 integrated amp appears to
be built on the same chassis. But because the
Brio’s cover acts as a heat sink for its output
stage, Rega cautions against the natural urge
to stack the two. (You can’t put anything on
top of the Apollo, of course, so the two need
to sit side-by-side.) Two large knobs grace
the Brio’s front panel—one for volume, the
other for choosing inputs, each labeled for
commonly used components: Phono, CD,
Tuner, Tape (people are still using tape), and
the odd “Line1” (odd because there is no
“Line2”—whatever happened to good old
reliable “Aux”). The back panel has goldplated
RCA jacks for all inputs, and a pair
to feed a recorder. Speaker outputs are two
pairs of 5-way binding posts. Everything’s
nicely labeled in white against black for
goof-proof hookup.
Output power is rated at 49Wpc into 8
ohms and 64Wpc into 4 ohms—enough to
drive most relatively sensitive speakers. The
power supply features a toroidal transformer
and large filter caps. The amp’s phonostage
is a Rega “Planar” IC. In a nod to reliability,
the 150-watt Sanken output devices are
operated far below their limits.
Most unusual are the $845 R3 speakers.
Styled like larger columns—from pictures,
you would expect them to stand at least fourfeet
tall—they have a 4" paper midrange at
the top, with a 1" dome tweeter below it.
A side-firing 5" woofer handles the bass,
augmented by a 2.5" port in the bottom
front of the speaker. (Front ports enable
placement of speakers closer to walls.) The
back panel has a single pair of 5-way binding
posts; the contrasting plinth has threaded
recesses for spike feet.
The test drive happened to coincide with
a home invasion by a team of plasterers
and painters, the outcome of a summit
meeting with my mate over living in a
perpetual remodel. I’ve had to swallow my
perfectionist do-it-yourself pride and admit
that even if I can do everything myself—and
better than anyone else—I can’t do it within
any reasonable time frame. So my main
system went into hibernation, draped in
plastic sheeting, and the Rega system got set
up in the small back bedroom that serves as
my office—actually an appropriate space for
it, considering the domestic environments
likely to house it. Most folks outside North
America live in much smaller spaces than we
do.
Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting much from
the R3s, and I was pleasantly surprised to
discover that not only do they not have
British mini-monitor syndrome (excessively
lean bass), they actually have amazingly
good bass, with excellent pitch definition.
Imaging was also a surprise. With the R3s
about six feet apart, and a foot off the wall, I
was able to sit ten feet away and get a pretty
good sense of dimensionality from a big
range of recordings—including a few LPs.
I have an old Rega Planar 2 turntable, with a
Sumiko Blue Point high-output moving-coil
cartridge. My vinyl days are long behind me,
but I hooked it up to see how it sounded,
and found the results delightful, especially
with high-quality recordings like some of
Mobile Fidelity’s remasters. The Brio 3 can
do justice to vinyl, boding well not only
for old-school music fans, but for the new
generation just discovering the format.
A tad astringent when first powered up,
the Rega system needed a lengthy warm
up before it began to really breathe. Strunz
& Farah’s Americas [Mesa] didn’t begin to
feel articulate and dynamic until about
20 minutes in, but then the system began
to open up. Physically modest, the Rega
system has a sonic signature that seems
bigger, like a shadow cast late in the day.
While I couldn’t push it into the “red zone”
without needing to dial back the volume,
it did well at moderate to moderately loud
levels—perfectly adequate for a small room.