One for all

German high-ender AVM wants to make top all-in-one performers. David Vivian takes a listen to its all-singing integrated amp

- David Vivian

You know, the best ideas don’t die, they simply move with the times. Take the typically unlovely MDF and plastic music centre that graced many a teak dresser in the mid-to-late Seventies. Absurdly bulky, badly compromised and rubbish by the hi-fi standards of the day, the briefly fashionable turntable, cassette deck, tuner and amp all-in-one with add-on speakers (of highly dubious quality) was nevertheless an ace idea waiting for its time to come.

Not only has it come, it appears to be on course to conquer, the twin trends of convergence and convenience achieving maximum traction in this digital age. Whether we choose to embrace it or not, it’s given us a viable reason not to access our musical jollies via a coalition of individual components laced together with hard-to-hide cables. But even in a burgeoning market for high-performance plug ‘n’ play minimalism, AVM’s AS 2.3 is strikingly, almost inscrutably, sleek – a compact, screwless, flush-surfaced, feature-dense nugget of aesthetically neutral tech that looks great anywhere.