Logic3 Valve80 review

As its name suggests, this amp and speaker kit from Logic3 uses a valve amplifier to appeal to the ears of audiophiles that want a warmer sound from the music on their iPod.

The amp and iPod dock are housed in a chrome and black body that complements the design of the iPod touch and classic, and you'll easily find space for it on a table or shelf due to its compact dimensions. The speakers supplied with the amp are a boxy shape except for the small engine-like cones that raise out of their top surface, and they'll easily blend into your living room.

On the back of the amp are two sets of RCA inputs to hook up other equipment such as a DVD player or games console, which is important. At this price, it's reasonable to expect that you can integrate the Valve80 into your home entertainment system.

Logic3 has also recognised that you might want to play videos downloaded from iTunes on your TV, so there are composite and S-Video outputs to accommodate this, but there's no higher quality component output that recent iPods support. That's a pity since it has become more common in the UK since the introduction of HDTV. Nor is there an optical input to feed the amp with a digital signal from your DVD player.

Though you'll have to stand close to see what you're selecting, your iPod can be controlled with the included remote. This is well laid out, gathering buttons into useful clusters for playback functions, menu navigation and bass, treble and volume controls, though the buttons have an uncomfortable spongy feel when pressed.

You can hold a button to go through your music library, but it's slow for browsing more than a few dozen items and you'll soon resort to the click-wheel, which is cramped when the iPod is docked. Comfort isn't so much of a problem with a touchscreen though, due to the shorter amount of time that it takes to flick around your library.

The remote control also works with an iPod touch, and the menu button even opens the iPod application to save you the hassle of first locating it.

Throw poorly encoded audio at the best kit and it'll sound terrible, so we used 192kbits/sec MP3s encoded using the best quality settings in the free audio encoder Max (sbooth.org/max), which uses the Lame encoder. The valve takes about 30 seconds to warm up before it'll output any sound, but you'd be impatient indeed to sacrifice the Valve80's quality for immediacy.

We were pleased to hear a warm sound emanating from the speakers. Goldfrapp's Ooh La La retained its rumbling glam bass line, and there was no muddying of other instrumentation and vocals. Marvin Gaye's I Want You sounded sublime, retaining the distinct nuances in its percussion and vocals. The warmth and clarity was so impressive that we wanted to sit for hours to take in more and more of our old albums.

Logic3 has fulfilled its objective very well, but it's a shame you can't buy the amp on its own and pair it with your own choice of speakers. All the same, the Valve80 is an excellent choice to make your iPod an integral part of your home entertainment system, helped by the rich sound quality that it brings to your music.