Disappointment at the beginning

After depriving the SAM G2 of its packaging, three editors are surrounding the device in a half circle, giving utterance to their disappointment. Where have the two big rotary knobs for the input selection and above all the volume control gone? The SAM now looks like an oversized Audionet PRE I G3 Preamplifier. A pretty mess which hopefully will have no sequel.



At least not as far as the workmanship is concerned, for this is marvellous as usual. The screws fit snugly in the housing, the clearances are correct and the sockets are mounted so firmly that one might be tempted to lift the 16 kg amplifier by them. As to the colour selection nothing has changed, by the way: body in silver or black, display in blue or red. Instead of the two rotary knobs for input selection and volume control, these functions are now operated via pushbuttons. 



Alright, due to the omission of the two large rotary knobs the design now matches the other components. Especially that of the brandnew Audionet ART G3 CD player which is also present in our testroom. Luckily the ensuing practical tests show that the new SAM is almost entirely operated via the optional remote control. Now the response to commands typed in comes from the graphics display.



The upper half of the display shows which outputs are active; up for choice are headphones and loudspeaker outputs. In the same line any desired name may be assigned to the source. This is a pretty time-consuming procedure, but it’s worthwhile for your daily routine. Below it we see the displays with a bigger font for the selected input and the volume level.