The Aura Note Integrated Audio System Is Getting a Model Change to the Premier.

The Aura Design CD player/tuner/amplifier all-in-one Hi-Fi system “Aura note” has been featured at the top of the sidebar for some time now, but when I checked in on it after a while, I noticed the price had dropped below ¥200,000 at several shops — goodness me, I thought, and then it turned out that a new model is due out at the end of April. The current special price appears to be the distributor clearing old stock. The new model is to be called the “Aura note premier”. The main changes include a complete overhaul of the CD drive section, iPod compatibility, and the addition of a pre-out, AUX input, and optical digital input. There are also minor changes such as a thicker glass lid that no longer comes loose, and more substantial insulators, and so on. The appearance is largely the same, and the list price moves only slightly from ¥283,500 to ¥295,000, so it seems this one is mostly staying put as well.

As for the AURA NOTE itself, I had a good long listen to it in a shop around the time it launched two years ago, but at the time I deliberately chose not to write about it here. The exterior design is the work of British industrial designer Kenneth Grange. Based on plans for a product that was conceived in the early 1990s but never made it to market, the unit was jointly developed by Yukimu — the Japanese company behind the Aura Design brand — and South Korean audio manufacturer April Music, known for their stello brand. The main amplifier circuitry follows the lineage of the old Aura VA50, which was sold around 1990, and uses Hitachi MOS-FETs that were put back into production specifically for this product. It also has a built-in FM tuner, and as someone who has a soft spot for top-loading CD players, I found the whole thing — stabiliser, clear glass lid and all — enormously appealing as a device for listening to music. It struck me as a lifestyle Hi-Fi all-in-one that has achieved the very highest level of product value and sound quality.

Aura note V2 FMチューナー内蔵CD/AMP一体型レシーバー

Aura

¥398,000 （2026/08/06 17:58時点 | Amazon調べ）

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Just between us, the sound quality is such that I would place it a class above its rival, the LINN CLASSIK-T (now discontinued). It has a refinement that makes assembling a separates system for under ¥300,000 seem rather pointless — and that left me a little worried, thinking that if I went around recommending something like this, I would no longer be able to lure people into the deep end of pure Hi-Fi, for better or worse.

The tonal character of the AURA NOTE is that familiar bright Aura colour, evoking white light, but compared to my memory of the old VA50 — with its rich, gently wavering mercury-lamp quality — there is no coarseness in the detail, the soundstage has genuine scale, and I was genuinely astonished at how effortlessly it drove almost any speaker thrown at it, quite unlike what you would expect from a 50W×2 analogue amplifier. It has an easygoing nature that seems unbothered by the partnering speaker, and there is a freshness, brightness, and sense of pace — a texture and a modern sonic character that actually made me wonder whether this might secretly be a digital amplifier.

An article by Shaba-yan, who has been using the Aura VA-100EV2 for many years

Life, I love you!

オーラデザイン　『VA-100EV　II』 – Life, I love you! 「コクがあるのに、キレがある。」オーディ…

So it was not the same sound as the VA50 — that solid-state amplifier with a faint whiff of valves about it — but I was struck by the fact that it unmistakably remains within the tonal world of Aura Design. If anything, my impression is that it is closer to the VA105 STINGRAY and VA200 Stingray line that appeared around the year 2000. If I were pressed to name a weakness, listening closely to the NOTE there was sometimes a feeling that the number of notes on offer might be limited by the ceiling of the CD drive — though that is a feeling rather than a certainty, and it seems likely that the Premier will address this with its refinements.

I tried around six or seven different speakers with it, and the one I personally felt worked best was the ELAC BS203.2. Aura and ELAC share a similar tonal direction, and with the musical expressiveness of the ELAC BS203.2 added into the mix, this combination brought back something of that old gently wavering, fragrant quality. Also, to make the most of the NOTE’s driving ability, I think it is worth supplementing the supplied power cable with a decent aftermarket model.

I have yet to hear the Aura polo, the dedicated speaker released for the note last year, but it is a compact little thing at H280×W170×D250mm, and the price is fairly accessible — perhaps I should feature it here as well. It is a two-way bass-reflex bookshelf speaker, fitted with a 135mm pulp cone woofer with a custom hemp-fibre mix and a 25mm silk dome tweeter. The crossover network uses capacitors and resistors from Germany’s Mundorf.

The piano-finish surfaces and driver layout reminiscent of British bookshelf speakers are appealing, but this is ultimately an April Music product — the fact that it is not a purely British-made product in the tradition of the old Aura Design will be a point that divides opinion. That said, the glossy black finish of the aura polo is more than enough to bring to mind the SP-50 — the speaker from the old Aura Design era of the VA-50/VA-80/VA-100 Evolution, when the company was under the B&W umbrella.

The SP-50 of that era — well, how to put it — compared to the overwhelming sound quality of its sibling, the B&W Matrix 805V, there was rather a sense of “oh, hmm…” It was half the price and did not employ the MATRIX internal bracing, so it was hardly reasonable to expect the kind of sound you would get from what was then the finest small monitor speaker around — but even so, it had a tonal character that was distinctly Aura-ish in its own way, and it was, incidentally, rather a large bookshelf speaker at 399mm tall with a 16cm woofer. I am curious whether the polo surpasses the SP-50 in sound, but at least in terms of size it has been brought together into a compactness befitting a small-room bookshelf speaker, which is a good sign. Looking at the SP-50 now, it bears a remarkable resemblance to current QUAD / Wharfedale speakers — rather like a combination of a QUAD tweeter and a Wharfedale woofer. The Aura SP-50 of the time did use a metal dome tweeter, mind you.

Aura FM/AMチューナー内蔵CD/AMP一体型レシーバー note premier

Aura

¥179,800 （2026/08/06 17:58時点 | Amazon調べ）

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To return to the Aura note. Honestly, I want one quite badly. Even I, with my usual attachment to British- and French-made products, find it an attraction that is hard to resist regardless of where it is made. If I could get hold of one, it would not even need to be the new “premier”. But when I think about it calmly, even the clearance price of ¥190,000 is by no means cheap in the current climate. Of course, for an amplifier of this sound quality with CD and tuner included, it is not the sort of quality you could achieve with a separates combination at the ¥300,000 level — but as ever, there are various other smaller things I want as well, and spending ¥200,000 on a single piece of hardware does feel, when all is said and done, somewhat contrary to my small-room Hi-Fi budgeting philosophy. After all, when I think about it carefully — or even without thinking carefully — I do not actually own a single piece of pure Hi-Fi equipment that costs ¥200,000 at street price (for speakers, that means per unit)… Revisiting the purchase prices of the equipment around me, I found myself rather taken aback by just how modest my own sense of money really is.