Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Hi-Fi Choice

DETAILS PRODUCT Acoustic Energy AE1 Active ORIGIN UK/China TYPE 2-way active standmount loudspeaker WEIGHT 6.8kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 185 x 300 x 250mm FEATURES ? Quoted power output: 2x 50+50W from Class AB amps ? 1x 27mm aluminium dome tweeter with WDT waveguide ? 1x 125mm aluminium cone mid/bass driver ? 42Hz – 28kHz frequency range DISTRIBUTOR Acoustic Energy Ltd TELEPHONE 01285 654432 WEBSITE acoustic-energy. co.uk H aving set up shop 30 years ago, the ? rst speaker that Acoustic Energy made has gone on to become its most famous and enduring. The original AE1 was the little speaker that could. What it could do was largely de? ned by what the considerably older granddaddy of clas became a ? rm favourite with the pro audio sector and audiophiles that appreciated what…

IN-EAR HEADPHONES £330-£390 AS BOB DYLAN once sang: “The times they are a changin’”, and I’ll bet that there are plenty of readers who realise that occasions spent enjoying music on a home system is becoming less and less as listening time is resigned to the daily commute. Under these conditions, surely it makes sense to consider a set of high-quality, in-ear headphones to make the best use of all that travel time? What was once a marginal interest in audio terms, has exploded in recent years and the choice of models priced between £300 and £400 is a massive growth area. Journeymen With such a wide selection of models, drive technology has become extremely varied too. This luxury price point was once the preserve of models that employed a…

DETAILS PRODUCT Final F7200 ORIGIN Japan TYPE In-ear headphone WEIGHT 23g FEATURES • Driver type: balanced armature • Detachable cable • Ear hooks • Carry case DISTRIBUTOR KS Distribution TELEPHONE 01903 768910 WEBSITE hifiheadphones. co.uk C ompared with previous designs that we've seen from Final over the years, the F7200 looks almost conventional. It has a numeric-based model name rather than something that sounds like it should feature in a Star Wars movie, while the spec isn't particularly quirky and features nothing out of the ordinary. Like the Etymotic, this is another design that uses a single balanced armature in each enclosure, which also means that the internal volume needed to house the driver is relatively small. Final has taken this opportunity to shrink the external dimensions to create what it…

DETAILS PRODUCT RHA CL1 Ceramic ORIGIN UK/China TYPE In-ear headphone WEIGHT 14g FEATURES ? Driver type: dynamic and ceramic plate ? 2x detachable cables with ear hooks ? 6.35mm jack adapter ? Carry case DISTRIBUTOR RHA WEBSITE rha-audio.com I t has only been a few years since RHA arrived on the scene and the Glasgowbased manufacturer hasn't wasted any time in developing a range of models to suit all budgets. The CL1 Ceramic is its flagship offering and the only in-ear on test that doesn't use an armature, instead opting for its own unique twin-driver arrangement. The first is a dynamic driver that handles the frequency response from 16Hz to 8kHz, which then hands over to a ceramic plate transducer mounted in front of the first driver. This plate is exceptionally…

W e’ve seen several entrylevel phono stages from Rothwell in HFC in recent years, and my first impression of the upmarket Signature Two moving-coil phono stage is that it is a very well built unit with a thick steel casework. It’s a large component for a phono stage but has an elegant brushed metal front panel that’s home to just a power switch that gives a reassuring blue glow when powered on. The rear panel has the IEC mains input socket, gold-plated input and output phono sockets, load impedance and gain adjustment switches and an earth binding post. This is connected to the signal earth via a 100ohm resistor and the metal casework is connected to mains earth, as required for safety reasons. There is also an earth lift switch for…

W e all have at least one peculiar behavioural trait. Right? My father, for example, when confronted with a fried egg yolk, will swallow it whole like an oyster, wasting the only condiment a full English should ever need. I too have many idiosyncrasies to choose from, but one is particularly pertinent in light of this month’s Group Test (starting on p24). Given some time to myself to listen to music, I will frequently choose to do so using in-ear headphones, even when there is no pressing need to be quiet or mobile. Part of the reason for this stems from my past. Between 2002 and 2012, I spent a good part of my daily life commuting. Under these conditions, the bulk of listening I did was via in-ear headphones on…

I magine if LPs were supplied as 6in copies of the original 12in vinyl and that the audio quality of the music was reduced in order to decrease the groove spacing so that the record still plays for the same length of time. That wouldn’t be very acceptable, would it? Yet that is precisely what the recording industry is offering digital consumers today. Digital recording really became mainstream in the late seventies when companies like Soundstream in the US used it to make the master recordings from which LPs were produced. The digital recording process was supposed to offer superior quality to the 30IPS analogue tape studio master as digital recordings don’t suffer from tape hiss. These digital masters were 16-bit/50kHz sampling and the resultant files were considered to be very…

C ompared to many evolving categories of consumer tech, it is easy to overlook two-channel audio in terms of technical development, and consider that the fundamentals are all in place and all that is left for manufacturers to do is to tweak the fine details. The setup in this month’s Beautiful System will hopefully go some way to disabuse this notion. The functions of the equipment it comprises are roughly conventional, but after that any idea of conformity goes flying out the window. Take the KEF Blade Two. This isn’t simply a conventional speaker wearing a sharp suit, but a complete root and branch revision of how a speaker should function. The bulk of the technical innovation has been discussed in our Exotica review in HFC 420, but the vital idea…

I t is now 50 years since The Doors released their startling debut LP, which unleashed the audacious and unsettling poetic visions of Jim Morrison on an unsuspecting world – and a flurry of Doors-related activity is underway to mark this rather auspicious anniversary. The group’s self-titled debut album is being reissued this month in a new three-disc deluxe edition, featuring remastered mono and stereo mixes and previously unheard live versions of eight of the original album’s 11 songs, recorded just as the band was on the verge of superstardom (see p100). It follows closely on the heels of the release of London Fog 1966, an historic album of recently unearthed live recordings from a gig in a club on Sunset Strip shortly before the group signed its first recording contract.…

DETAILS PRICE £260 for a 1m pair TELEPHONE 01332 342233 WEBSITE blackrhodium.co.uk OUR VERDICT RESPLENDENT IN ITS bright violet-coloured braided sheath, the design of the Tempo is based very closely on Black Rhodium’s older Coda interconnect, but the insulation of the individual conductors has been increased from a thickness of 0.6mm to 1.2mm to reduce Transient Phase Distortion. It is terminated in the Graham Nalty Legacy Range GN-4G RCA plugs instead of the Eichmann Bullet plugs used with the Coda. The extra edge The conductors consist of 19mm x 0.3mm diameter silver-plated copper wires. Silicone rubber insulation is used to minimise distortion due to dielectric absorption effects, while the positive and negative cores of the conductors are connected in opposite directions, as Black Rhodium has found this reduces the noise…

DETAILS PRICE £50 WEBSITE amazon.co.uk OUR VERDICT WELCOME TO THE future, a time when you tell your hi-fi what you want to listen to and it’ll play it back to you. Want to turn the volume up or down, skip a track or switch from playing Lou Reed to Led Zep? Simple, just use you voice and your system will do the rest. Brave new world With its new Echo family of products (Echo, Echo Dot and Tap – the latter of which is not available in the UK), Amazon has come up with smart products able to respond to the owner’s voice, provide news and weather updates, control connected heating systems, dim lights and a whole lot more. So far, so brave new world, but what does the Echo…

M ove over Stockholm: when it comes to coolness, Gothenburg has all boxes ticked. Sweden’s laidback second city is a cultural oasis, so it’s little surprise that there are plenty of compelling reasons for vinyl tourists to head over and dig Göteborg’s bulging crates. This beautiful, compact city is easy to navigate by bus, tram or as a pedestrian. Don’t worry about the language barrier, either: just like the inhabitants of relaxed Scandinavian neighbour Copenhagen (see HFC 417), Göteborgare are friendly people capable of largely flawless English. HFC’s archaeologist of the city’s vinyl treasures is Don Brosnan (pictured), bass player with London-based band The Real Tuesday Weld, purveyors of jazzy, Serge Gainsbourg-influenced electronica. The group’s live shows in unusual, characterful venues – such as London’s Transport Museum and Tate Modern –…

THE LATEST INDUSTRY NEWS … PRICE: £5,999-£6,999 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 02890 279839 WEB: MARANTZ.CO.UK BILLED BY MARANTZ as "the new reference", the audio specialist introduces its Series 10 SA-10 SACD player and PM-10 integrated ampli? er ? agship components, with the latter proving a radical departure from the norm. For the ? rst time ever in a high-end hi-? application, Marantz uses an analogue high-speed Pulse Width Modulation switching power ampli? er section working in Class D. Brand ambassador Ken Ishiwata says this was chosen to give a high power output (2x 200W RMS into 8ohm, and twice that into 4) in a comparatively compact package; the PM-10 is still sizeable, but smaller than the Class AB monoblocks it supersedes. He emphasised that this was not done at the expense…

PRICE: £125-£250 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01344 893932 A familiar name to older hi-fi enthusiasts, German company Dual was once the largest manufacturer of turntables in Europe – its name a reference to the dual-mode power supplies the company pioneered in the early thirties for its gramophones, which could be powered either by electricity or their wind-up mechanism. Throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties Dual produced a series of class-leading products, and now as vinyl enjoys a renaissance, it has returned to the UK with three new offerings: the MTR-15, MTR-40 and MTR-75 with USB (pictured below). The £125 MTR-15 is the most basic offering of the trio, offering fully automatic operation. Styled like a pro-audio DJ deck, the £230 MTR-40 is a direct-drive turntable with variable speed control, but of…

PRICE: £21,000 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01423 358846 WEB: KARMA-AV.CO.UK If you’re in the market for a luxury all-in-one music player, MarkLevinson’s N°519 digital audio player may just be the ideal media hub for you. It’s a wired and wireless networkready DAC capable of handling 32/192 PCM music files with DSD support as well as CD playback via the front disc-loading slot. The black with silver trim aluminium housing is designed and built in the USA and the company claims it uses a pure path discrete, direct coupled, fully balanced, dual-monaural signal path for best performance. Around the back there’s a host of digital connection options, including balanced, coaxial, optical and USB asynchronous inputs. The unit can be operated from the colour display on the front panel or the supplied remote…

DETAILS PRODUCT AKG N40 ORIGIN Austria/China TYPE In-ear headphone WEIGHT 22g FEATURES • Driver type: dynamic and balanced armature • 3 tuning filters • Detachable cable with ear hooks and in-line remote • Carrying case DISTRIBUTOR Harman UK TELEPHONE 0207 0845392 WEBSITE uk.akg.com B etter known for its range of full-size headphones, including the groundbreaking N90Q noisecancelling design (HFC 405), AKG produces a small range of in-ear models of which the £850 K3003i is the fiagship design. The N40 isn’t nearly as pricey and opts for the combination of a dynamic driver to cover the lower registers and a Knowles balanced armature to cover the higher frequencies. Unique to the group, it comes supplied with three interchangeable tuning filters that allow you to tailor the frequency response output of the enclosure…

DETAILS PRODUCT Grado GR8e ORIGIN USA/Japan TYPE In-ear headphone WEIGHT 9g FEATURES ? Driver type: moving armature DISTRIBUTOR Armour Home UK TELEPHONE 01279 501111 WEBSITE grado.co.uk B rooklyn-based Grado has just three in-ear models in its lineup and is perhaps better known for its large collection of full-size headphone designs. The GR8e is the midrange model and uses an unusual driver application that has considerable potential. Like the Etymotic and Final designs, it employs a single driver in each earpiece to generate a full-range signal. While those models opt for a balanced armature configuration, the driver here is of the moving variety. This operates under similar principles but is larger, which means that it is much less dependent on the level of seal in the ear canal to generate believable low-end…

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of in-ear headphones at this price point and as this test demonstrates, there’s an abundance of talent. All six models have something to offer listeners seeking compact solutions, but the AKG N40 is perhaps the most compromised design here. It’s well equipped and comfortable, but the over enthusiastic bass sacrifices accuracy, making it the first model to fall. The compact Grado GR8e by contrast is a balanced performer and also beautifully made, but the lack of all-round abilities and useful extras count against it. The Etymotic ER4SR is a supremely accurate performer. The way that it unearths fine detail from a recording is truly outstanding and it gives the listener the sense they are getting exactly what the artist intended. With this, though, comes some downsides that…

E very great hi-fi brand has an iconic product, and for NAD it is the 3020 integrated amplifier. Launched way back in the late seventies, it was dramatically different to every other budget offering of the time. Small, largely devoid of facilities and presented in a dour, dark grey when bright brushed aluminium was the order of the day, it stood out a mile on dealers’ shelves. Inside, its feisty little power transistors put out a claimed 20W RMS per channel, which was low even then – yet it drove real-world loudspeaker loads brilliantly. Skilfully designed, it gave NAD a reputation for being the budget audiophile brand of the eighties, and beyond. The C 368 you see before you here has little in common with that seminal product, aside from that…

O ne area that smart multi-room audio systems can find challenging is talking to existing electronics that you already own. It’s all very well having slick speakers in another room, but if your smart device won’t connect to the equipment that’s already in place, it can leave you with two very separate systems. Musaic has shown a knack for multi-room speakers with the MP5 and MP10 (HFC 407) and recently launched the MPL, designed to handle integration with other hi-fi components. The premise of the MPL is simplicity itself. Built around an ESS Sabre DAC, it offers the same UPnP, internet radio and streaming services that the standalone speakers can access, but makes this output available via either an RCA analogue output or coaxial digital and Toslink outputs. Like other Musaic…

O ver the last few years, the inclusion of digital inputs to integrated amplifiers has become a must have for all new models. What started out as an addition to a few specialist products some time ago has now reached the point where we are more likely to remark if an amplifier isn’t so equipped. It’s a sensible approach and based on sound thinking. In a world where physical digital media is an increasingly rare thing, having an amplifier carry out both decoding and amplification makes perfect sense. Yamaha certainly thinks so and has fitted many of its integrated amplifiers with coaxial and optical digital connections. But the A-S801 goes a step further and adds a USB-B input that’s capable of supporting PCM up to 32-bit/384kHz and DSD128 native resolution. The…

H i-fibrands are often shuffled around the board like chess pieces, starting off with charismatic founders who build up the business, then sell them on to larger companies upon their retirement. Marantz is one such example – Saul B Marantz was born in 1911, and by his 30th birthday was a graphic artist with a passion for music. I wonder if he thought his name would live on, over one 100 years after his birth? Before the first microgroove LP was launched in 1948, Saul was busy designing his own hi-fi and duly launched his seminal Model 1 mono preamplifier in 1953. The Model 2 power amplifier followed in 1956, and then the Model 5 in 1959, a more affordable version of the company’s first power amp. The products that really…

L et’s start with some good news. The crisis in the recording industry is officially over, according to the BPI, the body which represents British record labels. Now the sales stats for 2016 have been compiled and the numbers have been crunched, “like-for-like growth in unit volume” was up 4.2 percent on the previous year, representing public consumption of 123 million albums. According to Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, we are at the dawn of a “new era for music”, in which industry investment in a digital future is bringing “compelling benefits for fans, artists and the entire music ecosystem”. As ever, the stats require some careful exegesis. First, the metrics by which the BPI now calculates ‘sales’ are convoluted. Physical sales and paid-for digital downloads are now added…

B uilt initially around the chalk-and-cheese duo of ex-punk Andrew Weatherall and soul boy Terry Farley, the Boy’s Own label – and its family of spin-offs – set the agenda for much of nineties’ dance culture. Back in 1986, the duo and a handful of conspirators set out to document the London club scene in a new fanzine: Boy’s Own. Inspired by Mark Perry’s legendary punk ’zine Sniffin’ Glue, the irreverent new wave of football mags such as When Saturday Comes and The End, created by Peter Hooton of The Farm, the first issue was suitably DIY. Irreverent, caustic and hilarious, it built up a cult following over the next six years. Simultaneously, the Boy’s Own crew started DJing around London and putting on parties, including one with a genuine claim…

Fronted by Dot Allison, One Dove was the great early-nineties band that got away. Formed in Glasgow and equally informed by both techno nights at The Sub Club and the checked shirt indie lineage that stretched back through Creation to Postcard Records, the combination of classic songwriting and clubland nous looked to have success nailed on. Their first release fell into Weatherall’s hands while DJing in Scotland. A reissue followed, which did well enough to bag the band a deal with Boy’s Own/London and the second single, the wonderful Transient Truth, led to real anticipation for the forthcoming album. Perhaps a little too much anticipation; Morning Dove White (1993) looked to be the record to repay London’s faith and, crucially, financial investment, and perhaps even be the next Screamadelica. Although…

DETAILS PRICE £199 TELEPHONE 0203 5442338 WEBSITE nunudistribution. co.uk OUR VERDICT FITTING COMFORTABLY INTO the palm of the hand, the compact uDAC5 headphone amplifier/DAC will handle most audio formats available to the highest possible resolutions. It measures just 68 x 21 x 45mm (WxHxD), weighs 100g and claims to offer a high-quality audio output when used as a desktop audio controller to an external amplifier as part of a hi-fi setup via the stereo RCA output or via the 3.5mm headphone jack on the front, and NuForce says it’s just as compatible with life on the move. Completing the output socketry lineup is a coaxial digital output socket to connecting to suitablyequipped amplifiers. There’s no dedicated power inlet and the uDAC5 gets its audio signal input and power directly from…

PRICE: £660-£1,236 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01237 423877 WEB: EXPOSUREHIFI.COM DESCRIBED BY EXPOSURE as being ideal for those that don’t want the cost or size of their system to spiral out of control, the new XM series ampli? er and phono stage are designed for users for who space is a premium. The XM5 integrated offers a claimed 60W per channel output (into 8ohm) and includes moving-magnet phono, line-level and ? xed gain AV inputs. Digital connections comprise two coaxial and two optical inputs able to accept signals up to 32/192 and a single USB port (up to 24/192 and DSD). It features a linear power supply with a 200VA custom-made toroidal power transformer. Meanwhile, the matching XM3 phono stage provides separate moving-magnet and moving-coil inputs as well as adjustable loading…

PRICE: £1,299 AVAILABLE: APRIL CONTACT: 03332 22877 WEB: TECHNICS.COM FOLLOWING THE LAUNCH of the ? agship SL-1200G direct-drive turntable reviewed in HFC 418, the Japanese tech giant introduces two additional models, but with more wallet-friendly price tags. The SL-1200GR and the SL-1210GR decks have an identical speci? cation, but come with silver and black plinth top plates respectively. The new turntables claim to utilise the same design principles as the ? agship SL-1200G, but with slightly different materials and applications. Parts from the SL-1200G are newly developed, and the twin-rotor coreless direct-drive motor designed for the ? agship deck is replaced here with a single-rotor design. Technics says precise motor control technology, the high-rigidity platter – weighing 2.5kg – and a high-sensitivity tonearm, have all been carefully tuned for the…

Hi-Fi Choice employs the most rigorous test and measurement regime in the business. Here’s how we do it... IN-EAR HEADPHONES GROUP TEST SETTING LISTENING LEVELS on an in-ear headphone is not an especially easy task to undertake, as the output from a driver diminishes to almost nothing a short distance from the earpiece. A slightly unorthodox approach using a measuring funnel with the in-ear inserted at the neck and an SPL meter ? xed into the funnel section allows for a baseline listening level to be set for each unit. Testing took place in two distinct stages. For the comparison programme, a Chord Hugo (HFC 386) headphone amp/DAC is connected to a Melco N1A NAS drive (HFC 397) via USB and the test program is sent direct using BubbleUPnP server…

DETAILS PRODUCT Etymotic ER4SR ORIGIN USA/China TYPE In-ear headphone WEIGHT 15g FEATURES Driver type: balanced armature 6.35mm adapter Carry case DISTRIBUTOR KS Distribution TELEPHONE 01903 768910 WEBSITE hifiheadphones. co.uk T he original ER4 in-ear first appeared in 1991, and the design has been under continuous development ever since. The Studio Reference version – the SR bit of its name – is the latest version to be released and it doesn’t look like very much has changed from the original. This is one of two models in the group to use a single balanced armature driver in each enclosure rather than multiple drivers in combination. The frequency response claims to be flat all the way down to 20Hz but there is also an Extended Response model (ER), tweaked for additional low end…

DETAILS PRODUCT Noble Trident ORIGIN USA TYPE In-ear headphone WEIGHT 24g FEATURES ? Driver type: balanced armature ? Ear hook cable ? Carry case DISTRIBUTOR Noble TELEPHONE 0208 9429124 WEBSITE nobleaudio.co.uk W e first saw the Californiabased brand Noble with its upmarket Savanna in-ears back in HFC 418. The Trident is also part of its generic fit Universal series, and is the entry-level in-ear in the range. It's the only model here to use three armatures a side. By Noble standards this is fairly limited as some of its designs have as many as 10 fitted in each earpiece, but it still gives the Trident an advantage in the way it goes about reproducing the frequency range. The drivers are housed inside the plastic enclosure and the moulded front section includes…

F or many manufacturers, evolution is a handy concept. It means that, like nature, your product line can progress in baby steps, making incremental improvements without putting undue strain on resources. It’s a way of doing business we, as hi-fi consumers, are used to and comfortable with, if seldom startled by. It would be fair to say Danish speaker brand Dynaudio has adopted this approach over the years with much success. But just occasionally – and because, unlike some smaller operations, it can afford to – it goes for the other, far more radical and costly option. Revolution. With the new Contour range, the initiative is partly literal. The distinctive bass-above-treble driver configuration of the now superseded Contour S series has been flipped 180°, so the tweeter’s back on top, as…

E ver since I discovered the Rotel brand in the late seventies, it has always managed to come up with capable, affordable components. The recipe has always been worthy, well engineered and understated products that don’t rely on superficial showroom appeal. The CD14 CD player and A14 amplifier combo here is no departure from this path. It’s Rotel’s mainstream, mid-market system that attempts to offer satisfying sound quality with the convenience facilities many demand Stylistically, the new CD14 is a subtle departure from Rotel products of yore. It has a drawer-loading disc arrangement (the company has used slot-loaders in the past), and has a slim, sculpted look with a refreshing minimalism to it. The brushed aluminium fascia bolts on to the player’s case, which is made of sparkle-silver painted steel. Whip…

I t’s surprising how few proper music servers there are on sale. Most hardened audiophiles stream their music via dedicated network music players, while fashionable young things all seem to think that the only way to play their tunes is via a Sonos. These two boxes from NAD’s sister company Bluesound International offer an interesting halfway house; effectively they form a high-quality music centre, which lets you store your music on its large internal hard drive – or play off another external drive – and stream music to multiple rooms around the house. No computer is needed, yet it plays hi-res files and also works with cloud music services and internet radio. The ability to rip CD and then store it on the built-in drive makes it far easier than tweaky…

I recently bought a fine example of the legendary eighties Mk1 Inca Tech, The Claymore integrated amplifier on ebay. On collection, the previous owner assured me it was a good runner in regular use. Under the hood, all looked ship-shape, but a scorch mark on the underside of the lid revealed a MOSFET had failed at some point. This had been replaced with the correct item, so all looked good. Usually, I plug unfamiliar, aged amps into test speakers, just in case they do something terminal to my reference speakers. This original Claymore (with a serial number of just ‘36’) sounded great, but the right channel was a tad down with a very gentle background hiss, which brings us to the age-old dilemma for many classic hi-fi enthusiasts. To refurb or…

F rom time to time we see interesting new variations on the traditional theme of loudspeaker production; sometimes manufacturers come up with better cone materials for their mid/bass units, and occasionally interesting tweeters pop up. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in ribbons, but other types have come and gone too. For me, one of the most interesting was the unique Linaeum ‘figure of eight’ dipole design, which the British hi-fi market saw in the rather odd-looking Realistic Optimus Pro LX5 in 1995. Blink, and you'd have missed it – but there are still a few around and it’s one of the more interesting speakers of its day; all the more so because it was a budget design. Conventional dome tweeters use a coil of wire through which the electrical…

By the time Karl Hyde and Rick Smith arrived at JBO, they’d been around the block a few times. They’d had a minor hit as Fleur with Doot Doot in the mid-eighties and released two pop albums as Underworld that had failed to set the world alight. Dropped by their label, they used their payoff to build a small home studio where their sonic experiments continued. Rave culture provided the inspiration: the pair grasped the importance of independent labels and in young Essex DJ Darren Emerson, they found the catalyst to change their sound. The first serious fruit of the new line up was the incredible Big Mouth/Eclipse single. Released under the name of Lemon Interrupt, these two lengthy instrumentals were instant classics. A second single went down just as…

During the eighties, cult indie act Felt released 10 singles and albums, but despite making what’s now recognised as some of the best music of the decade, enigmatic, frontman Lawrence (no surname, ever) began the nineties in retreat in New York, perplexed by his lack of commercial success. Seeing old indie chart rivals Primal Scream and The Stone Roses becoming mainstream fixtures spurred him to come home and throw himself into being an unlikely pop star. Signing to Boy’s Own, Denim – his new glam rock-inspired act – recorded their 1992 debut with Roses producer John Leckie alongside a string of session musos at the legendary RAK Studios. This Glitterbeat stomp through Lawrence’s Birmingham childhood was either 20 years too late or 18 months too early – way ahead of…

DETAILS PRICE £775 TELEPHONE 0208 2418890 WEBSITE isokinetik.co.uk OUR VERDICT MANY LINN LP12 and Rega turntables make use of a mainspowered synchronous AC motor to drive the platter via a belt. As a result, their speed, accuracy and stability depend entirely upon the mains supply. Unfortunately, the 50Hz mains frequency leaves much to be desired and the mains voltage can be subject to considerable fluctuation. Supply and demand All of this can result in subtle changes in pitch and timings of the audio signal and, in extreme cases, wow and flutter. The solution is to use a dedicated power supply that effectively regenerates a mains AC signal, which is independent of the incoming mains power supply. The Ultradrive is the top of the range off-board turntable power supply upgrade from…

DETAILS PRICE £220 TELEPHONE 01252 896040 WEBSITE numark.com OUR VERDICT THE CHOICE OF home audio turntables has dramatically expanded over the last few years and for the most part, the price of complete packages remains over £300. Things are a little different in the pro-audio scene as the choice at this price is impressive, and although the TT250USB is clearly aimed at modern DJs, it looks to be equally at home as part of a domestic hi-fi system. For £220 you get a direct-drive turntable with support for 33 and 45rpm speeds with the added flexibility of a +/- 10 percent pitch control on both. The arm is S-shaped with detachable headshell that’s fitted with Numark’s GrooveTool moving-magnet cartridge. It also comes equipped with an internal phono stage and a…