Apparently, the looks of the series turned a few customers away... way too serious looking, especially considering the period during which these were introduced. Very homogeneous, however, with the brands' past offerings (PRA/POA-1001 etc) ; Denon's design horrors would be for the next decade.

But once you let any of these warm up - bang!... you'd almost wonder what hifi did do for the past 30 years to bring you a better music reproduction ; hook it to a decent LP turntable and you really start wondering.

The original PMA-850 (>above) does away with the rec-out selector and Class A mode ; the PMA-830 (>right) loses the high filter but strangely regains the Class A possibility ; the ultimate PMA-850II (>below) has it all and is, previsibly, the rare beast. All are very healthy units and built to make music for a nice set of decades. Pretty rare these days!

A review of the PMA-850 is available at hi-fiworld.co.uk