Quad Vena II Play (Lancaster Grey)

A very impressive sound for the money. The rhythm and musically of this amplifier are superb. Also the separation of instruments is as impressive as most pre power combos. It has an excellent phone stage (never heard my Rega sound so good) Also Play-Fi does work - you just have to be a little patient. Sounds good through Bluetooth as well. Plenty of power as well so can cope with all genres of music. Classical and Jazz sound especially sweet but handles dance music well. Can be revealing of poor recordings (most indi music) All round a quality piece of kit at a reasonable price.

I have now had the amp for a couple of weeks and it has been on extensively so is run in. Pro's Superb sound quality (smooth but detailed) Looks and feels great Easy to set up Cons No battery for the remote! Takes a while to connect to WiFi when powered up DTS Play fi app not great You have to engage critical listening mode everytime you open the app. I bought this amp to use almost exclusively as a network streamer so cannot comment on other inputs. For me it is worth the money on sound quality alone. Tried many streaming sites in A-B comparison and went for Amazon HD. Spotify by comparison sounds awful and low quality whilst Tidal was also great but does not have the catalogue. Power output is fine, I am driving Dali Oberon 5. Not sure why such a quality amp has Bluetooth and in truth if you are aiming to buy this for use with Spotify don't bother, it is a quality amp and is best streaming high and ultra high definition music.

Very versatile unit. Had a FM4/44/405 for some 40 years so decided it was time for an update. New amp had to be quad so went for the Vena II Play and was very pleased with it. It’s well made as you’d expect from quad with an instruction book (which could’ve benefited from a proof read), a remote - no battery due to said battery being lithium which according to the instructions, was not included due to export reasons. That’s what was said. Battery is a CR2025 btw. Remote range is the only disappointment I’ve found so far as you can only be 4 ft away and in direct line of sight of the amp. All other facilities are top notch and well laid out. The Play-fi app takes some getting used to when streaming, and does require a good wi fi signal. No numbered volume control but lights do tell you where you are to and seem to stay at where you were when you last used that setting which is neat Also turns itself off into standby if not used for a certain amount of time. All in all very good. ** Re the remote, I did email quad about its range or lack of it, and without any prompting from me, they were good enough to send a replacement remote, (with battery) which has now arrived & at first going off seems to be an improvement. Good service from Quad!

The amplifier is excellent but the remote cane without a battery which suggests poor QC I telephoned the dealer who promised to send one. So far he hasn’t.

This new QUAD Vena 2 Play does virtually everything you could possibly want from a streaming amplifier. Everything just works as it should without any messing around. The sound quality cannot be faulted. I have just replaced all my vintage QUAD gear with this so it was a big leap in the dark for me. One I can't see being regretted!

Since we have old, but very good loudspeakers it was important for us to replace our old amplifier with a new one which also brings us up to date with Bluetooth and wifi links. Whilst it took us a whole day to set it up (we are pensioners!) it was well worth the effort. We were able to hook it up to our turntable, cassette player and CD player and are able to stream from apps such as idagio and Spotify as wells as listen to radio programmes etc etc. It was an expensive purchase, but we have not regretted it.

This product has a range of digital and analogue inputs. It supports the Play-Fi software and so far seems to be a good central building block for a hi-fi system. I have yet to check out some of the features will try and update later on.

lovely build quality & Sounds great,with a lot features. Probably the biggest surprise is how good the phono stage is, its excellent.