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49 Articles

This page is always the last thing written every month. That way it grants us an opportunity to pick out a few highlights to whet your appetite and it can also act as a last-gasp effort to keep you as up-to-date as possible with any last-minute breaking news. And so it turned out this month as, with the UK Hi-Fi Show Live at Ascot Racecourse rapidly approaching (21 and 22 September), we were appraised of a raft of exciting fresh additions to the already-stunning lineup in Audiofile on p6 and 7. We’ve just found out that Swiss Piega loudspeakers makes it Ascot entrance courtesy of Henley Audio in its suite on Level 2. The second-gen Coax 611 floorstander will be driven by Musical Fidelity NuVista electronics. Soundfowndation’s demo area on…

IT’S THAT TIME of year again already and tickets are now on sale for the UK’s premier high-end audio event – The UK Hi-Fi Show Live, hosted at the Ascot Racecourse Grandstand, High Street, Ascot on Saturday and Sunday 21-22 September 2024. The event on Friday 20th is reserved for accredited press/trade only. Tickets cost just £20 (£30 for a weekend pass) via eventbrite.co.uk or using the links on the hifishowlive.com site. Concessionary £15 day passes will be offered for subscribers of Hi-Fi Choice and Hi-Fi News (print and digital subscribers will be contacted by email). See our website for further info. Among the exhibitors will be PS Audio, which last year launched its aspen FR10 loudspeakers at The UK Hi-Fi Show Live. This year it has chosen to showcase…

PRICE: £400 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: ROTEL.COM JAPANESE HI-FI BRAND Rotel has expanded its range of integrated amplifiers with the launch of the A8, which it describes as: “a new high-value model specially designed to offer a new audience of music lovers and vinyl fans the option to build their own, no-compromise, hi-fi-quality component system.” The A8 enters the lineup as the most cost-efficient model in the series while still being engineered as a Class AB fully integrated solution. Designed in a slim 60mm chassis, it is built around an in-house manufactured, bespoke, high-current toroidal transformer helping to deliver a claimed 40W of output power per channel into 4ohm loads. “The result,” says Rotel, “is a deep controlled bass energy, an ultra-refined midrange plus a highly detailed soundstage”. Inputs include three…

PRICE: £400 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: ASTELLNKERN.COM ASTELL&KERN HAS ANNOUNCED the launch of a new sub-brand, ACTIVO, its first product being the P1 Digital Audio Player. Ergonomically designed to sit in one hand, the compact but mighty P1 boasts a fluid user interface and smooth audio listening experience for up to 20 hours of continuous entertainment. Powered by an octa-core processor, it has been designed as a companion for a run, walk or workout, allowing users to experience lossless music without sacrificing their smartphone battery. With dual-band wi-fi and a pre-loaded Google Play Store, users can download and install the most popular music apps to stream from their favourite platforms. Boasting 64GB of internal memory with microSD support for up to 1.5TB for both downloading from streaming services or uploading from…

PRICE: £700 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: DENON.COM DENON HAS LAUNCHED its new Denon Home Amp, designed to bring legacy two-channel systems into its HEOS platform. The company reveals: “it easily adds any pair of loudspeakers to the HEOS wireless multi-room ecosystem, while also bringing high-fidelity audio with 100W of power per channel tuned by Denon Sound Master. “The Home Amp brings increased power and separation of a two-channel system to TV. HDMI eARC allows for one-cable integration with most modern screens, even those with integrated streaming. Additionally, the subwoofer out makes it easy to add a sub for extra bass. And because of its compact form factor, the Denon Home Amp can be placed virtually anywhere.” HEOS supports up to 64 zones of hi-res audio streaming, while the Denon Home Amp…

China in your hands

PRICE: £150-£180 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: FIIO.COM THEY’VE BEEN VERY busy over at FiiO, where the Chinese company is launching its new DM13 Portable CD Player and K11 R2R Desktop DAC/Amplifier. Featuring both 3.5mm single-ended and 4.4mm balanced headphone outputs, the DM13 portable CD player has been designed for use with a wide-range of headphones including FiiO’s own FT5 Planar Magnetic offering – the FT3 – alongside its new FA19 in-ear monitors. The addition of aptX HD Bluetooth means the DM13 can connect to wireless headphones or speakers and also features a dedicated analogue line-out, so it can be used with other equipment such as an existing hi-fi, active speakers or a radio/portable speaker with an auxiliary input. With a built-in battery that delivers up to a claimed eight hours of…

China in your hands

PRICE: £500 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: DYSON.CO.UK DYSON HAS INTRODUCED its first high-fidelity, audio-only headphone: the OnTrac. Each ear cushion is crafted from ultra-soft microfibre and high-grade foam for comfort and acoustic seal. With multipivot gimbal arms and a uniquely positioned battery in the headband, the new cans have been designed in a bid to ensure balanced weight distribution across the head. The company explains that the OnTrac features a custom Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) algorithm, which uses eight microphones, sampling external sound 384,000 times a second to cancel up to 40dB of unwanted noise. With 40mm, 16ohm neodymium speaker drivers and advanced audio signal processing, the company claims the OnTrac can reproduce frequencies from as low as 6Hz to as high as 21,000Hz. Meanwhile, the speaker housing is tilted 13˚…

National shelf service

PRICE: £225-£1,050 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: BLOKHIFI.COM THE UK’S MONITOR Audio Group has launched a new reimagined collection of Stax 2G high-fidelity furniture via its Blok brand. The units feature small, concealed, flush-fitting rubber bungs within the supports that carry the weight of shelves and any equipment that sits on them. These can be removed to allow the supports to be mass-loaded with inert acoustic material, for greater structural rigidity of the entire unit, while also greatly reducing any vibrations and resonances that might occur within the music system itself. Silicon isolation pads are also integrated between each shelf and into the base of the support structure in a bid to ensure that shelf absorption works at its most optimum, reducing resonances and vibration being carried through the shelves. Level best…

National shelf service

PRICE: £1,300 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: CAMBRIDGEAUDIO.COM CAMBRIDGE AUDIO HAS unveiled its Evo One one-box wireless speaker, designed by Red Dot Award-winning designer Ged Martin. Taking the hi-res capabilities of the company’s Evo 75 and Evo 150 (HFC 477) streaming amplifiers, the Evo One is described as an: “omni-directional audio experience”. The company explains that Evo One allows listeners to use almost any music service and is powered by Cambridge’s 4th-generation StreamMagic platform, which also lies at the heart of its network players including the CXN100 (HFC 518) and MXN10. It features 14 drivers comprising four 25mm silk dome tweeters, four midrange 57mm aluminium cones and six 70mm long-throw bass drivers, and they’ve been designed to surround the Evo One in front, side and rear-firing configurations to deliver a wide sound…

Cheers big ears!

PRICE: £700-£800 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: ZEITGEISTGERMANY.COM ZEITGEIST GERMANY IS: “on a mission to bring art and soul to the mundane world of in-ear monitors”. How is it going about it? “By creating high-quality, high-comfort IEMs from extraordinary organic materials, backed by a wealth of audio expertise.” The brand has launched with two new earphone collections: Artisan and Whisky, while a third Trees collection is due later this year. All are handcrafted in the company’s workshop near Heidelberg and Zeitgeist says no two earphones are ever the same: the different textures, grains and colour variations in each material ensuring every offering is truly a one-of-a-kind. The Artisan collection is based on Karelian birch (also known as Masur or Nordic Curly Birch), a prized wood with a distinctive curling pattern. The company…

Cheers big ears!

PRICE: £1,270-£2,300 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: DS-AUDIO-W.BIZ SOUNDFOWNDATIONS.CO.UK JAPANESE OPTICAL PHONO cartridge pioneer DS Audio has introduced its new entry-level DS-E3 cart, featuring the company’s third generation of optical cartridge technology. DS Audio explains that its optical cartridges dispense with the usual moving-magnet and moving-coil designs and instead employ an optical system that converts stylus/cantilever movement into audio signals. The theory is this completely eliminates the electromagnetic forces found in traditional MM and MC designs, resulting in a lower noise floor. The company says the new DS-E3 replaces the previous DS-E1 and draws on technology developed for its flagship models to take the design and performance to even greater levels, all while maintaining the same price as when the DS-E1 was first launched in 2019. Diamond geezer Independent LEDs and photo-detectors…

Go with the PRO

PRICE: £800 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: PROJECT-AUDIO.COM HENLEYAUDIO.CO.UK THREE YEARS AFTER releasing the commemorative Debut PRO (HFC 847) turntable, which was originally made to mark the company’s 30th anniversary, Pro-Ject Audio Systems is updating the deck with a new model. The Debut PRO B takes the design of its predecessor but adds new balanced technology for reduced noise and interference, when the turntable is partnered with one of the company’s balanced phono stages and cables. The Debut PRO B’s features include a new pre-adjusted Pick-IT PRO Balanced moving-magnet cartridge – which normally retails at £200 – an 8.6in one-piece carbon-aluminium tonearm with fully adjustable VTA and azimuth, a nickel-plated aluminium tonearm bearing block and a non-magnetic aluminium platter with TPE damping. There’s also motor suspension with improved damping, a precision belt-drive…

Go with the PRO

PRICE: $250-$600 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: ROCKSTEADYAUDIO.COM CALIFORNIAN COMPANY ROCKSTEADY Audio has announced the launch of the newest version of its Stadium speakers and subwoofers – Rocksteady Stadium 2.0 – which it says will offer all the features of the original, along with several major enhancements with upgrades also incorporated into the sub: the world’s first and only portable subwoofer. Version 2.0 will introduce Rocksteady’s newly conceived, aluminium-coated and reshaped speaker cones, which feature dynamic and responsive driver assemblies, new antenna and drivers for longer range and connectivity, plus a new processor, circuitry and architecture to help the speakers run cooler and the batteries last longer (30 hours is claimed). In the new model, Stereo Mode optimises the sound profile for immersive, stereophonic soundscaping. In Long Range Mode, the left and…

PRICE: £180 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: OPENROCK.COM HONG KONG-BASED COMPANY OneOdio has announced the launch of a new open-ear headphone: the OpenRock X, designed to be used while exercising. At the heart of these buds is a custom dynamic driver and a 14.2mm long-stroke loudspeaker, which features a high-quality nanometer bio-fibre and cis-molecular polymer diaphragm. The company reveals that this construction has been designed in a bid to ensure extremely low distortion and high resolution, “delivering a richer and more delicate sound”. Enhancing this setup is a magnetic circuit system with a high-tension 9999 pure-copper large black coil and an N45 neodymium magnet, “boosting low-frequency density for a powerful auditory experience”. The in-ears boast OneOdio’s proprietary BassDirect acoustic cavity technology and come equipped with a LISO 2.0 algorithm. OneOdio says: “the…

Unique group tests

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER GROUP TEST SOME MANUFACTURERS SUPPLY their amps pre-run in and others don’t. So all units are switched on 48 hours before testing and treated to a CD player spinning IsoTek’s Test And Burn In disc on repeat, while connected to speakers. Each is then played for a few days in our reference system, to further run them in. Each amp is placed on a Townshend Audio Seismic Shelf, specified to hold the weight of the heaviest here. Two different speakers are used, to see how each amp performs with a relatively easy load and then a harder one. The JBL L82 MkII has a quoted sensitivity of 88dB and nominal impedance of 8ohm. The second is Neat’s Majistra with the same sensitivity, but 4ohm impedance. Listening centres around…

Unique group tests

SO YOU’VE ENJOYED your time with your £1,500 integrated – be it an entry-level Naim Nait, Exposure 2010, Roksan K3, or whatever – but now your system is crying out for something better. You want more power, greater detail, better stereo imaging, and less midband mush. Most of all, though, you crave a more musical sound. As good as your amp may be, you’ve heard more costly systems make your favourite tunes sound so much more rousing. So where do you go? In the old days, the obvious way to go would be a pre/power amp combination. But for a number of reasons now, that’s much more of a high-end thing. These days, there are many integrated amps occupying the middle price sector, and it seems strange to pay for…

Cyrus i9-XR £3,600

If you’ve been making class-leading, compact integrated amplifiers since the early Nineties, how do you keep things fresh while building on your redoubtable past? The i9-XR is Cyrus’ answer to this question. It uses a subtly tweaked version of the company’s classic aluminium case, the backlit LC display is revised and there are classy new buttons beneath, which are slick to use. Any previous Cyrus owner will be instantly familiar with the ergonomics, yet find them even better than before. Cue up a beat-driven track and this amp gets the bit between its teeth immediately The same can be said of what’s inside the sleek black case. The manufacturer says that the i9-XR puts out 98W RMS per channel into 6ohm, which is a lot of power given the compact…

Cyrus i9-XR £3,600

NAD M33 £4,000

Traditionally known for its affordable amplifiers that offer great sound-per-pound, NAD Electronics also sells higher-end products under the guise of its Masters Series. The M33 is its flagship integrated, and offers a welter of facilities. Top of the list is its BluOS hi-res streaming functionality, which effectively makes it a music source too. BluOS is described as the: “only true wireless high-resolution multi-room system available today” and it’s certainly a long way away from the line input-only Sugden and Rega! The M33 is wide and spacious and brings an atmospheric feel to the music As if that wasn’t enough, you also get DIRAC Live, which is a highly effective DSP-based room correction solution. The M33 has NAD’s MDC (Modular Design Construction) slots, which allow further expansion for future new technologies.…

PrimaLuna EVO 200 £3,100

PrimaLuna founder Herman van den Dungen knows that buyers in this market want reliable, user-friendly products that are also tweakable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the EVO 200 integrated epitomises this, by offering lots of sound-per-pound, plus a variety of options. It comes supplied with EL34 power valves as standard, which is a tube famous for its sweet sound – although KT88, KT120 or KT150 can be used thanks to the amp’s Adaptive AutoBias circuit. There’s a surprising amount of detail here, but what counts is its excellent soundstage It puts out an impressive quoted 44W RMS per channel with EL34s (or 45W with KT88s), meaning that it’s far less speaker sensitive than most valve amps, including the Synthesis overleaf. Although not quite as petite as the Roma 96DC+, it is still compact…

PrimaLuna EVO 200 £3,100

Rega Aethos £3,300

Best know for its turntables, Rega Research’s range of electronics and speakers followed many years after the launch of the original Planet record player in 1975. Surprisingly perhaps, considering that designing amplifiers requires a very different skill set, the company has done very well with its electronics. The Aethos is its latest mid-market integrated offering and is based loosely on the Elicit-R (HFC 374), but with a claimed 125W per side as opposed to 105W. It’s arguably the most minimalist design here, with only the Sugden coming close in the ‘less is more’ stakes. This is because it eschews features like DACs, streaming and Bluetooth. Surprisingly, you don’t even get a phono stage. There are five line inputs, plus a tape loop and power amp in and preamp out sockets.…

Rega Aethos £3,300

Sugden A21 SE Signature £3,300

For a British specialist hi-fi company that started in 1967 – by James Edward Sugden – this brand has a pretty low profile. But while it hasn’t spread its net especially widely, its popularity goes very deep. Many Sugden customers swear by their amplifiers, especially the A21 which was the world’s first-ever commercial pure Class A amp, it started as a 12W-per-channel stereo integrated, and has slowly grown in power over the years that followed. Jim Sugden wrote many technical articles, including for HFC sister mag Hi-Fi News. His highly respected design has been gently updated over the years and the 30W A21 SE you see here is one of its offspring. Sugden’s thinking was conventional Class AB amps suffer from switching distortion, as the output transistors are turned on…

Sugden A21 SE Signature £3,300

Synthesis Roma 96DC+ £3,300

There’s an element of quirkiness to this company’s designs, and the Roma 96DC+ integrated does little to change this. It’s pleasingly compact by valve amplifier standards and sports a small but thick aluminium frontispiece, inside which the large volume knob nestles. Oddly, the power switch to its left doesn’t have a pilot LED, so you need to look to the source display to see if the amp is on or off – or put your hands over the valve cover to check for heat! This cover is unscrewable should you wish to show off your tubes, but when in situ is much safer for those with pets or young children. This 96DC+ model adds a built-in DAC over the standard version, but sacrifices a stereo RCA line input, making a…

Synthesis Roma 96DC+ £3,300

Group test verdict

GROUP TESTS ARE often hard to rank, because everyone’s buying priorities are different. So, this ordering is weighted towards sound quality, with power and feature count being second and third priorities. In sixth place is the Synthesis Roma 96DC+, which some may prefer to all the others here. It has a particularly sweet and friendly midband that makes listening to music a pleasure. Yet it’s down on power compared with the group, which in turn makes it sound weaker than most – especially at higher volumes with inefficient speakers. The Cyrus i9-XR is a wee bit better-sounding than the NAD with most music. It offers a clean, detailed and dry sound, and is a fluent musical communicator with only a slight lack of power marking it down. The NAD M33…

Group test verdict

Smooth operator

HIGH-END DESIRABLES IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Think valve amplifiers, and the chances are the image brought to mind is that of a minimalist device with little apart from a source selector, volume control and output stage. And when we’re talking about valve preamplifiers, things might be even simpler. Well, clearly that particular memo went straight into the junk folder at McIntosh Labs’ HQ in upstate New York, as the new £12,000 C2800 valve preamp is anything but minimalist. This imposing product has no fewer than 16 inputs, seven of them digital and two of the other nine ready for a brace of turntables – more home automation connectivity than you can shake an Ethernet cable at – and even a dedicated iOS and Android app for setup and control. Valves not…

Smooth operator

Located in the middle of the range of AVID HIFI’s three high-end MC cartridges, the Boron has many of the design features of the top-of-the-range Reference Ruby, such as the generator assembly and magnet design. The magnet assembly is housed inside the black main body and the front gold section with the boron cantilever protruding from the lower part offers a degree of protection for the coils. Another gold section at the rear also provides protection for the fine wires from the coils as they make their journey to the four cartridge pins at the back. I particularly like the clip-on stylus guard, which slides on to the body from the front to protect the stylus when not in use. In common with AVID’s Reference Ruby cartridge, the body of…

It’s been quite a while since Cambridge Audio updated its Melomania earbuds, but it recently launched into a flurry of activity with the Melomania M100 and forthcoming Melomania P100, which will be its first over-ear. The M100 certainly gets off to a good start, providing a major upgrade from what’s come before. It’s a more compact design than the chunky, bullet-shaped earpieces used in previous models. And, along with ordinary silicon ear-tips in three sizes, there are two sets of memory foam tips to provide a good fit. The M100 also has an IPX4 rating for water resistance. The design may be more compact, but the 10mm drivers are larger than the 5.8mm ones in previous models (and Cambridge points out that it uses recycled neodymium magnets, along with 50…

The French connection

In case you’re thinking, as I was, that French speaker maker Triangle is a little late to the affordable wireless standmount scene with its Borea BR02 Connect and BR03 Connect, we’d be forgetting that a couple of years ago, the Borea BR02 and BR03 BT were already testing the water and, indeed, making waves. Their updated Connect replacements stick with Bluetooth rather than a wi-fi network as the streaming medium, but throw in a few more connectivity options (mostly TV related) to keep up with the ever more demanding audience. It’s the smaller and less powerful Borea BR02 Connect on review here – an intriguing lower-priced powered alternative to Klipsch’s true active The Sevens (HFC 517), which did so well in our recent active wireless speaker roundup. Like the Klipsch,…

The French connection

Beats Solo 4 (HFC 518) made quite a splash when it launched recently, but the Apple-owned company quietly introduced its Solo Buds at the same time, adding a new set of compact earbuds to its range for the first time. The over-ear Solo 4 received largely positive reviews, but was criticised for its lack of noise cancelling features, despite having a fairly hefty £200 price tag. The Solo Buds share that limitation – not to mention quite a few others – but it’s hard to complain about the price. The Solo Buds are the smallest that Apple or Beats has ever produced, weighing only 5.7g each, while the carrying case is 40 percent smaller than any previous model, but the rechargeable battery, an LED light to indicate battery level and…

Signed, sealed delivered…

Mining your heritage is big business for companies both in audio and a host of other product categories. A little taste of nostalgia to remind people of when things were a bit less awful (or at least differently awful) can go a long way at the moment. Sometimes, tapping into this back catalogue is not completely straightforward, however. Tannoy has a truly magnificent pedigree in the world of loudspeakers and had a Heritage range long before it was as fashionable as it is now, although the nature of its designs means they won’t appeal to everyone. Even a ‘small’ heritage model is a pretty substantial thing needing a fair amount of space. This is where the Autograph Mini comes in. It’s designed and built pretty much exactly the same as…

Signed, sealed delivered…

In our high-output phono cartridges Group Test (HFC 503), the winner was the moving-magnet Sabre from Vertere. Building on the success of this product, the company has gone on to produce the new Dark Sabre. Founder and chief designer, Touraj Moghaddam, says it offers significant improvements over its predecessor, the approach to design harking back to first principles, but his products benefit from years of experimentation and experience. As with the XtraX, the company’s premium moving-coil cartridge, the Dark Sabre is now fitted with a single crystal, nude micro elliptical diamond and dual aluminium telescopic cantilever to offer significant improvements on the Sabre’s diamond glued into an aluminium tube. The square shank diamond assembly maximises alignment precision, consistency and rigidity. The telescopic aluminium tube cantilever utilises two different aluminium materials…

Sennheiser’s really been on a roll recently, updating several of its products, as well as launching an entirely new range of Accentum headphones. Oddly, though, its Momentum True Wireless earbuds haven’t been refreshed since 2022, so the arrival of this 4th-generation model is perhaps a little overdue. The delay means that this is a fairly significant update, though, boasting a number of new improvements. The external design hasn’t really changed, but now offers a number of two-tone colour options – black and copper, black and graphite, and silver and white. It has the same 7mm dynamic drivers as its predecessor, which provide a respectable 5Hz-21kHz frequency response. However, pretty much everything else has been updated, starting with a sturdy IP54 rating for water and dust resistance. There are four sets…

Some online commentators greeted the announcement of Sonos’ first headphone by proclaiming it to be an “AirPods Max killer”. To be frank, that’s not saying much given the limitations of the Apple flagship headphone. In fact, Sonos’ ambitions with the Ace go much further – not simply creating its first high-end headphone, but also providing compatibility with its own range of soundbars to make it part of a wider home setup. The AirPods comparison is apt, though, as the Ace has a similar, sleek appearance – available in black or white – including a gleaming stainless steel headband. Sonos also matches Apple’s attention to detail – the headband, for example, slides smoothly into the body of each earpiece as you adjust the fit and swivels so you can fold the…

Some audio products are built for such a long period of time, you begin to assume that will be the case indefinitely. Rega’s trio of moving-magnet cartridges; the Bias, Elys and Exact (HFC 467) have been part of the audio landscape for decades and a mainstay of thousands of Rega turntables. The decision to replace them comes as something of a surprise, but the wait makes more sense once you realise the technology on which they are based is all new. The Nd models are – according to Rega at least – the first such design to use a neodymium magnet, which is the most powerful commercially available type. If there’s one thing that Rega has learnt from working with moving coils, it’s that the smaller the moving mass at…

The Seventies began large, and ended up small – in hi-fi terms, that is. During the early-to-mid part of that decade, the coolest thing that an audiophile could own seemed to be a huge Japanese amplifier, festooned with a variety of different knobs, buttons and, latterly, power meters. This could drive up to four speakers, either with them in two separate rooms or as a single 4.0 quadraphonic setup. Massive receivers, reel-to-reel tape decks and turntables ruled the roost, and the bigger the loudspeaker cabinet was the better… Then, around 1978, things started to change. The major Japanese electronics giants began to produce slimline amps and pertly sized matching tuners and cassette decks. More small speakers began to surface to match these new microsystems. Then Sansui’s J11 arrived in early…

Hi-Fi Choices YOUR LETTERS & QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Sponsored by: THIS MONTH ED SELLEY EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Active in the industry since 1999, Ed’s first record was Boss Drum by The Shamen. He splits his time between reviewing and protecting hi-fi kit from his son Will. NEVILLE ROBERTS EXPERTISE: ENGINEER Neville has an eclectic taste for classical baroque and jazz. His wife was forced to marry his transmission line speakers in the eighties and he collects BBC test card music. JASON KENNEDY EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Editor of HFC from 1998 to 2001, Jason’s first turntable was Rega’s Planar 3 and Elvis’ 40 Greatest Hits was his first vinyl, so don’t go stepping on his blue suede shoes. DAVID PRICE EXPERTISE: REVIEWER DP two-finger typed his first hi-fi review 25 years ago. Since then he’s edited Hi-Fi World and HFC. He…

Hi-Fi Choices YOUR LETTERS & QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Record inflation

By all accounts, the sale of vinyl is on the increase. In 2022, over 5.5-million LPs were purchased in the UK, which represents the largest volume of sales since 1990. In the first nine months of 2023, vinyl sales were 13.2 percent higher than in 2022. After 15 or more years of continuing growth, the renaissance of the LP still seems to be alive and well. In fact, HMV reopened its famous premises in Oxford Street in 2023 after a four-year absence. The store was originally opened in 1921 by Sir Edward Elgar, but closed down several years ago. HMV now sells a lot more than just LPs, but nevertheless the company has allocated plenty of space for vinyl and marketing is aimed at a younger customer base rather than…

Record inflation

Passing of a genius

Tributes to John Mayall on his death at the age of 90 recently were richly deserved. As the godfather of the British blues boom in the Sixties, not only Eric Clapton but also Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, the Fleetwood Mac trio of Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Cream’s Jack Bruce and Andy Fraser of Free all served their apprenticeships in his band. Less remarked, though, was the passing three days earlier of Toumani Diabaté, the greatest musician to come out of Africa since… well, some would say ever. Only a tiny handful of gifted virtuosi become synonymous with their instrument. It’s hard to think of the violin without remembering Yehudi Menuhin; the classical guitar with Segovia; and the sitar and Ravi Shankar. As the king of the…

Passing of a genius

You’ve gotta hand it to the old G.O.A.T. He may be 83 and decades past his sell-by date, but Bob Dylan’s still manufacturing headlines. His latest news-grabbing ruse is to ban the use of all mobile phones at the gigs on his November Rough & Rowdy Ways UK tour. Audience members will be required to have their phone zipped into a securely-sealed Yondr pouch on entry to the shows, to be released by staff on exit. Dylan’s not the first musician to come down all draconian on gigphone users. In 2013 Prince decreed his shows were subject to ‘Purple Rules’ which meant, among other things, no pics. When he played at South By Southwest, transgressors were tossed out by security, the grand irony being that the gig was sponsored by…

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings Woodland CD Acony Records WHEN GILLIAN WELCH released her debut album Revival in 1996, we filed her sparse, roots-based music under the tag ‘alt-country’. It was always a misleading term for her acoustic-based songs were traditional rather than alternative and certainly had nothing to do with the over produced, schmaltzy, ten-gallon hatted country music coming off the Nashville production line. Instead, Welch drew on a timeless well of folkloric music from what the critic Greil Marcus once famously called: “the old weird America”, located deep in the rustic, isolated communities of places like the Appalachians, where time passes slowly and tumbleweeds rather than technology seem to rule the back-porch way of life. By the time of Welch’s third album, 2001’s Time (The Revelator) the badging had changed…

I never wanted to be famous,” Ray Charles once said. “I only wanted to be great.” In the event, of course, he achieved both – and plenty more – as a towering figure in the history of popular music whose influence spanned genres and generations. As a musician he defied categorisation, fluent in all three of the building blocks of black American music – jazz, blues and gospel. He modestly called himself: “a good utility man” but by welding them into a new, coherent whole he can be credited with creating what came to be known as soul music. Frank Sinatra famously called Charles “the only true genius in show business” and the ‘g’ word featured in more than half a dozen of his album titles, although he was uncomfortable with…

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SUBSCRIPTION ORDER FORM HURRY OFFER CLOSES 31ST DECEMBER 2024 PRINT + DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION 13 issues delivered to you before the shops Free P&P Great savings on the shop price Digital access to the mag on multiple devices Access online archive dating back to Sep 2011 PRINT SUBSCRIPTION All issues delivered to you before the shops Free P&P Great savings on the shop price Never miss an issue SAVE 75% ON YOUR DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION* SCAN TO SUBSCRIBE IN EVERY ISSUE: Reviews of all the latest turntables, amplifiers, loudspeakers, DACs, CD players, streamers and hi-fi accessories. Plus: group tests, music reviews, opinions, news and all your hi-fi woes answered TERMS & CONDITIONS: Offer ends 31st December 2024. *This digital discount is only available when you subscribe to the ‘Print + Digital’ package. You…

FOLLOWING ON FROM Furutech’s NCF Clear Line Mains Optimiser (HFC 478) is this new version designed to be inserted into any spare RCA socket on your equipment (XLR versions are also available). The optimiser is intended to combat the noise that can enter an audio system and find its way into the signal path. This entirely passive product contains Furutech’s NCF (Nano Crystal Formula), which is a special crystalline material intended to generate negative ions to reduce static and also convert thermal energy into far infrared. The NCF is combined with nano-sized ceramic particles and carbon powder to make an electrical and mechanical damping material. The optimiser’s conducting parts are a one-piece construction made from rhodium-plated pure copper and injected with heat-resistant NCF liquid crystal polymer resin. They have also…

ALTHOUGH THE FACTORS affecting analogue and digital signals are different, it is important not to neglect the quality of digital interconnect cables, including those hooking up your streamer to your local area network. A standard Ethernet cable designed for computer applications is most probably not up to the job for audio use in terms of bandwidth and crosstalk between cable pairs. Low bandwidth will result in sloping edges of the digital waveform and crosstalk results in interference. All of this can cause jitter that the DAC then has to try and correct. The Shawline Streaming cable is part of The Chord Company’s Shawline range, which includes digital and analogue interconnects as well as speaker and power cables. It utilises high-speed, high-bandwidth silver-plated copper conductors that are individually shielded and insulated…

Recommends ESSENTIAL HI-FI YOU’LL WANT TO OWN CD PLAYERS Cambridge Audio AXC35 PRICE: £300 REVIEWED: HFC 454 Something of a budget marvel, you’ll have to work extra hard to get the AXC35 to put a foot wrong. Bass is firm, detailed and blessed with excellent timing; the tonal palette is pleasingly broad and clean; and though the soundstage doesn’t extend much beyond the speakers, there’s great depth perspective. Musical Fidelity M6scd PRICE: £2,500 REVIEWED: HFC 499 An exemplary player with more than a hint of star quality to it, the M6scd paints a broad and deep soundstage populated with solid, well-focused and perfectly placed images. Regardless of genre of music or production standard, its handling of spatial elements is among the very best in the business. Cyrus CDi-XR Phantom Black PRICE: £2,200…

“WE ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE”

Promise me you won’t headline this piece ‘Smells Like Halloween Spirit’.” I promise. “Really promise!” OK, I really promise. Billy Corgan’s got a bee in his bonnet about being compared with Nirvana. It’s not the only bee buzzing around his noggin as it happens. But right now he has a Halloween show to do, in his hometown of Chicago, so we’d best let him get on with it. Half an hour later, he’s finished performing Spaceboy and he’s not a happy bunny. The song, off Smashing Pumpkins’ latest staggeringly good LP, Siamese Dream, is about his younger brother Jesse who’s watching from the balcony. Jesse was born physically impaired and it was thought he would never talk or walk unaided. But Jesse has just graduated from high school and Billy’s…

“WE ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE”

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

1 EAT IT UP Henley Audio has entered a new distribution agreement for the UK and Ireland with European Audio Team (E.A.T.), the specialist high-end manufacturer from Slovakia, which deals in turntables, complementary accessories and electronics. The latest E.A.T. range is produced in Europe and is available to view at: henleyaudio.co.uk, and the first stocks will land soon. 2 GREEN DAY Ruark has unveiled a new limited-edition Pine Green version of its R1 Mk4 radio. Featuring a handcrafted wooden grille, it has been crafted in collaboration with music therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins – which uses the power of music to break through the barriers of disability, illness and injustice. A donation to the charity will be made for every one of the R1 Mk4 radios sold. The R1 Mk4…

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

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SAVE 30% ON THE SHOP PRICE 3 ISSUES FOR £11.99! With FREE P&P, never miss an issue! SUBSCRIBE SECURELY ONLINE TODAY! https://checkout.avtechmedia.co.uk/EGENC OR CALL 01858 438446 LINES OPEN MONDAY TO FRIDAY – 9AM - 6PM Calls are charged at the same rate as standard UK landlines and are included as part of any inclusive or free minutes allowances. There are no additional charges with this number. Overseas calls will cost more. TERMS & CONDITIONS:. *UK print subscriptions offer only. AV Tech Media Ltd collects your data so that we can fulfil your subscription. We may also, from time to time, send you details of AV Tech Media Ltd offers, events and competitions but you always have a choice and can opt out by clicking on the unsubscribe button at the bottom…

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ELIPSON PLANET L GOLD EDITION Our reviewer reckons: “Any rival I can think of at this sort of price with more low-end shove or more cohesion when you push them hard cannot match the lack of colouration and imaging on offer here and they certainly don’t look like set dressing on a Seventies sci-fi show as they do it. This is an interesting update that makes a talented speaker that little bit better.” To read more about how it shapes up, make sure not to miss next month’s issue. ALSO: REVIEWS Sennheiser Accentum Plus noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones, Audiovector QR1 SE standmount loudspeaker, Loewe We. HEAR Pro compact bookshelf loudspeaker and a Group Test of higher-end standmount loudspeakers. FEATURES Music Legends, Music Reviews, Reasons To Be Cheerful, our comprehensive Buyer’s Guide and sharp-as-nails Opinions…

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