Hi-Fi News on the Audiolab 9000CDT & 9000A

Forty-plus years after the 8000A first arrived, Audiolab's 9000 Series holds the line: disciplined engineering at a wallet-conscious price, with a laser-like focus on getting the fundamentals right. Hi-Fi News reviewed the 9000A integrated and the matching 9000CDT transport together — Mark Craven on listening, Paul Miller on the bench — and awarded the duo the magazine's Outstanding Product recognition.

What Hi-Fi News found

The 9000A is built around Jan Ertner's ES9018-based DAC implementation — current top-dog ES9038PRO, proprietary HyperStream II clocking, Time Domain Jitter Eliminator — and a dual-mono 100 W/8 Ω output stage with quartets of output transistors per channel. The 9000CDT adds a purpose-sourced disc mechanism, clock-controlled S/PDIF outputs, 12V triggers and a USB-A input for WAV/FLAC/AAC/MP3 playback. Hi-Fi News describe the pairing as visually and sonically symmetrical: both units carry the same animated 4.3-inch LCD display, the same quiet-style controls, and — once you match them on a rack — the same clean, musical character across CD and everything the 9000A's digital inputs can handle.

“The 9000A is a chassis worthy of its flagship status.”

— Hi-Fi News

Cut above

The verdict, in Hi-Fi News' own words: "Audiolab's 9000A showcases a crowd-pleasing sound quality, well-balanced across the range as it segues seamlessly between energetic and contemplative when needed. The solid specification is essentially matched by its performance, and that's not damning with faint praise. While you might expect a mid/entry-level integrated to be jack of all trades, master of none, the 9000A is a clear cut above, as evidenced by its low-end extension, articulate midrange and considerable power. And when coupled with the matching transport, CDs are afforded the same clean, musical treatment."

Our take

This is the review that confirms what we hear in our own listening room: the 9000A is not the "entry-level" part of the 9000 Series — it's the distilled one. And when the 9000CDT joins it on the rack, the story stops being about two black boxes and starts being about a complete, visually coherent CD-and-everything-else system that punches dramatically above its price. Pop in a silver-disc favourite, let the 9000CDT's temperature-compensated clock do its work, and the 9000A does the rest.