Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Hi Fi News

Lockdown was, on the whole, not an especially edifying experience for most, although it did allow many music lovers to rediscover the joys of physical media, and the vinyl LP in particular. No longer rushing from place to place, listening ‘on the fly’, more people were enticed by the intricacies of album art and the ritual of slipping a precious platter from its sleeve, savouring the expectant hush that heralds a stylus dropping into the groove. Sales of turntables, arms and cartridges improved but it was vinyl’s overtake of CD that had its foot put firmly on the gas. 2021 saw the gap close but 2022 was the first year since 1987 that LPs outsold CDs. Naturally I’m not the only interested party reporting on this boost to the vinyl…

The R&D project that culminated in Magico’s £1,000,000 S9 loudspeaker has now yielded a revamped version of the company’s more affordable S3 model. The floorstanding cabinet, featuring machined aluminium panels and top/bottom plates, was modelled by Magico’s new in-house 3D laser interferometry system, while Klippel measurement fine-tuned the driver layout. The S3 uses a 28mm diamond-coated beryllium tweeter, its design informed by that of the S9, plus upgraded 5in aluminium/graphene/carbon-fibre mid and pair of graphene Nano-Tec bass drivers. Outriggers, feet and driver chassis have also been upgraded. Pricing is £56,998 or £66,000, depending on M-Cast or M-Coat finishes. Magico Loudspeakers LLC, Hayward CA, USA, 0208 971 3909; www.magico.net…

Named in honour of ‘the largest and most powerful terrestrial mammal in North America’, the new Bison loudspeaker series from Canada’s Totem Acoustic features one standmount and two floorstanders, with more promised in the future. Leading the stampede is the £4395 Bison Twin Tower, a two-way model with dual 5.75in bass/mid drivers and a 1.3in ‘laser-etched’ textile dome tweeter with neodymium magnet. This bespoke HF unit is also present on the £3295 Bison Tower and £2495 Bison Monitor – this last model opting for a smaller 5.25in bass/mid unit. Totem Acoustic says the floorstanders, which are supplied with a revised iteration of the brand’s ‘Acoustic Decoupling Claws’, with optional spikes, offer a subjectively warmer sonic signature than the Bison Monitor, thanks to an extended bass response (down to a claimed…

24-26 FEB Bristol Hi-Fi Show, Marriott City Centre Hotel, Bristol; www.bristolshow.co.uk 05 MAR Spring Audiojumble 2023, The Angel Leisure Centre, Tonbridge, Kent; www.audiojumble.co.uk 18-21 MAY High End, Munich, Germany; www.highendsociety.de 17-18 JUN North West Audio Show, Cranage Hall (De Vere Cranage Estate), Cheshire; http://audioshow.co.uk 29-01 OCT The UK Hi-Fi Show Live, Ascot Racecourse Grandstand, Ascot Berkshire SL5 7JX; www.hifishowlive.com…

Prior to his death in 2012, Jim McCrary shot over 300 album covers. But Carole King remained a favourite subject. He remarked that in front of the camera she was ‘as natural as anyone. You learn a lot about people as a photographer. When you turn the camera on some people, it is a frightening experience for them. It brings out their insecurities’. McCrary also shot the covers of King’s next two albums, Music and Rhymes & Reasons. Self-taught, his album cover work began when he was hired by A&M records in 1967 as its chief sleeve snapper. Some of his first work is featured in the collage of negatives assembled for the sleeve of Burt Bacharach’s Reach Out the same year. The Carpenters’ 1969 debut album was also his…

Pedigree? You want pedigree? How about the inventor of the 300B triode? Western Electric’s provenance beats all comers, the company dating back to 1869, which kinda trumps any other manufacturer’s claims for longevity. Here it is 154 years on with the Type 91E integrated amplifier to dazzle those wedded to single-ended triodes (SETs), yet with enough modern details, both sonic and functional, to ensure it is regarded as a 21st century tube amplifier. Priced in black or gold for £16,998 or £18,500 for the nickel (silver) finish, the Type 91E’s model name exemplifies its descent from the original Western Electric 91A of 1936. It is the antithesis of traditional SETs: instead of minimalism or hair-shirt self-abnegation, the 91E is as contemporary as an integrated amp can be in the post-streaming…

Everything about the Audiovector R 8 Arreté is impressive, from the size and scale of the speaker – it stands 144cm tall and weighs over 72kg – to the seemingly fiendish complexity of the design, which appears to have drivers firing and venting in all directions. The piano-lacquered Italian Burl Walnut veneer, seen here, is gorgeous too, and offered alongside Italian Grey, black and white finish options. But although this floorstander looks and feels like a flagship model from the Danish company, its £53,495 price tag is still a world away from its big brother, the 157cmtall £190,250 R 11 Arreté. If all that’s too rich for you, the entry-point for the Arreté range is the R 1 standmount, at just under £5000, although this and the R 3 and…

Every pick-up mechanism – whether moving-magnet, moving-iron [HFN Nov ’21, HFN Jan ’23], strain gauge [HFN May ’21], ‘optical’ [HFN Jan ’19, HFN Feb ’21, HFN Dec ’22] or moving-coil – has its ‘sweet spot’ among all the individual design compromises. MC pick-ups employ very powerful fixed magnets that develop a focused magnetic field within which the coils move, attached to the rear end of the cantilever. The more turns in each coil, the higher the achievable output, but this adds to the overall moving-mass, the coil impedance and self-inductance which, variously, compromise the achievable high frequency response, tracking, phase linearity and transient performance. Reduce the number of coils, and the moving mass, impedance and inductance are all reduced to good effect, unless the output is now so low that…

These days we could probably name no more than 11 or 12 manufacturers of TVs, but ask us about loudspeakers and you’d fall asleep before we’d got as far as companies beginning with the letter ‘D’. The industry appears to be in rude health, with models to suit all tastes and budgets, and there are plenty of options that you might not have come across before. Kroma Atelier’s Stella Xtreme perhaps being one of them. This dramatically styled floorstander sells for £28,800, but such a price doesn’t even put it above the half-way point in the Kroma Atelier portfolio. Ever since the company launched in 2016 as Kroma Audio, before adopting a name to reflect new ownership and a ‘focus on artisanal production’, it has been busy assembling a range…

After delighting headphone lovers with the HA 200 DAC/amp [HFN Aug ’20], which nicely matched the Solitaire P headphones introduced at the same time, T&A has been on a roll. The HA 200 transpired to be just the first in a range of units forming the new 200 series – all compact separates, but all designed to dovetail seamlessly together. To flesh out the range, the German company introduced a standalone DAC and two choices when it comes to amplification – the stereo A 200 [HFN May ’22] or monoblock M 200, both based on Purifi’s Class D Eigentakt modules [see PM’s boxout, p71]. So it didn’t take a genius to see what was missing: a source component. Enter the MP 200. DIGITAL ALL THE WAY Priced £4400, this networked…

ORIGINAL LP The original UK pressing [Mercury MERH 58] of the album is still relatively easy to come across in near-mint condition (hardly surprising for a record that made No 2 in the charts and sold eight million worldwide), and while it is said by some to suffer from slightly trebly mastering compared to its American PRC Recording Company counterpart [422-824 300-1 M-1], it still holds up well, as of course do the songs. CD RELEASE Songs From The Big Chair came out in the year that Compact Disc is often said to have gone truly mainstream, and while on its initial release in 1985 it sold considerably more on vinyl and cassette [Mercury MERHC 58] than it did CD, this situation would of course change with the shift in…

Barry Fox trained in electronics with the RAF and worked as a patent agent, but he gave that up to enter journalism. He is one of the world’s top technology writers We are now into Phase 2 of the vinyl revival and, as was the case the first time round, people are discovering the downside of playing LPs, which is that they can become dirty and scratched. At the Harrogate Hi-Fi Show in September 1977, turntable maker Garrard unveiled the SR101, the first, or one of the first, consumer Scratch Suppressors. No electronic device can work instantaneously, so the Garrard box had to store the sound signal long enough to enable its detection circuitry to sense transients, decide whether they were part of the music, and mute them if not.…

Peter Quantrill has been writing about music for magazines and record labels for 30 years. When not hunched over a CD player, he’ll be at a concert, or the cricket Lining up potential reviews last autumn, I got hold of the latest volume (at the time of writing) in Christian Thielemann’s latest Bruckner cycle (again, at the time of writing), this time conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. The Fifth is a personal favourite ever since listening to the Hallé and Skrowaczewski rendition one evening in the mid-’80s, or what I could make of it through a BBC broadcast half obliterated by FM hiss as my aerial was on the fritz. This must be Thielemann’s fifth recording of the Fifth, I reflected. Then doubt and confusion came over me. Not whether it…

I just want to share an observation. Since the black and white TV era, sets have offered greater and greater resolution, with 4K and even 8K models now the norm. So how come most people listen to music on radios or MP3 players via poor quality headphones? The older I’ve become the more I’ve improved my hi-fi hardware to give me the best musical experience I can afford. It is anathema to me to listen to an iPhone through a £20 Bluetooth speaker at work (a hospital operating theatre is where this takes place). When I try to explain the benefits of hi-fi to friends and colleagues I am usually met with a blank stare and the phrase, ‘but I can’t hear the difference!’. You can if you open your…

A brand new company, Samuel Johnson was founded by a group of enthusiasts, most of whom had met through their work with a Scottish-based manufacturer of control systems for industrial applications and who discovered further common ground in a consuming interest in hi-fi. With an established background in the design and manufacture of precision electronics, the team has enjoyed something of a headstart in the new venture. Much of the groundwork had already been done, proven either through those aspects it has in common with sophisticated control circuitry (power supplies, for example) or through gradual development over the years on the designer’s private workbench. An immeasurable additional advantage was that so many of the component sourcing, board and fabrication issues were already resolved. Samuel Johnson Audio is based in Prestwick,…

BARRY FOX Investigative journalist supreme, Barry is the first with news of the latest developments in hi-fi and music technologies PETER QUANTRILL Peter Quantrill has been writing about music for magazines and record labels for 30 years. He is HFN’s master of the classics KEN KESSLER is a long-serving contributor, luxury goods writer and champion for the renaissance in valves and reel-to-reel tape MARK CRAVEN Editor of our sister title Home Cinema Choice, Mark’s passion for music extends from stereo to multichannel and Dolby Atmos TIM JARMAN Co-author of a major hardback on historic B&O equipment, Tim continues to research, repair and write about vintage hi-fi for HFN ANDREW EVERARD has reviewed hi-fi for over 30 years and is still effortlessly enthusiastic about new technology, kit and discovering new music…

NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN Parasound founder Richard Schram has announced the sale of the amplifier/preamplifier-focused audio marque he founded in 1981. David Sheriff, a former USAF pilot and now an entrepreneur and systems consultant, has acquired the San Francisco-based company. Sheriff’s plans include extending Parasound’s worldwide reach through investment in its ‘partner network’. www.parasound.com VINYL FASHIONISTA Following collaborations with music artists Parov Stelar, Metallica and The Beatles, Pro-Ject has turned to clothing brand Fred Perry for its latest special edition turntable. Dubbed the Fred Perry x Pro-Ject Record Deck, this £450 vinyl spinner is inspired by Pro-Ject’s Essential III and Debut Carbon EVO models. Available in three colourways, it comes with an aluminium tonearm, Ortofon OM10 cartridge and acrylic platter mat with Fred Perry’s laurel wreath logo. www.project-audio.com…

While Tapestry’s cover art is imprinted on so many fans’ memories, that’s helped by the classic status of the disc it housed. And some of her other releases look pretty good too, even if their music didn’t stay the course in all-time-greatest lists. King’s 1970 debut Writer is graced by a stylish sleeve featuring a Guy Webster photograph of the artist clad in a floral-print dress [top right], the autumnal setting emphasised by the black and white framing, backed by a rainbow. It’s an image of possibilities and cautious optimism, while the Jim McCrary photo on the front of King’s third album Music, released just a few months after Tapestry, is all about certainty, as the new singer-songwriter sensation is simply sat at her piano with a reflection of Laurel…

Founded in 1869, seven years before Edison set up his laboratory, Western Electric is so long-established that the company predates that other milestone in audio and electronics – the century-old BBC. Many of the company’s achievements, beyond the two most relevant here – the development of the 91A single-ended triode amplifier of 1936 [pictured, right] and the 300B triode of 1938 – are at the very least peripheral and at best directly related to our passion. Among the specialised pursuits of the company were telephony and cinema sound and, unsurprisingly, for much of its history it was a subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T). It was an early globalist, establishing works in Belgium, while entering a joint venture with Japan at the tail-end of the 19th century. A story…

The story behind the founding of Audiovector in 1979 is a familiar one: Ole Klifoth said, ‘I couldn’t find the speaker of my dreams, so I decided to build it myself’. Using his criteria of ‘linear dynamics, linear phase and low compression’, his goal was to produce natural-sounding loudspeakers for music lovers, and the ideas embodied in the company’s first model, the Trapez, still informs the brand’s designs more than four decades later. And it has led to some radical thinking in the way the company builds speakers, seen in those various ‘Concepts’ mentioned in the main review, and including the use of precision-cut ‘Nanopore’ foam to line the walls of the enclosure. Fitted to the curved shape, this means that, as well as curtailing standing waves through its cabinet,…

When ELAC relaunched its turntable lineup in 2017, earning an EISA Award along the way for the Miracord 90 Anniversary, it wasn’t at first clear the German audio brand actually intended a concerted push into this back-from-the-dead product category. After all, there was a lot going on at the company [see boxout, p55] and this turntable was presented as a celebration of ELAC’s distinguished history. Yet that particular award-winning Miracord 90 model [HFN Jul ’17] – which led into a regular edition – was only the start. Several more accessible vinyl players followed, including the Miracord 50 and Miracord 70 [HFN Jun ’18], positioning ELAC both in the entry-level and midrange markets where there’s stiff competition from the likes of Pro-Ject, Thorens et al. SECONDS OUT, ROUND TWO Now we…

Hi-Fi News’ readers will be very familiar with Purifi’s range of Class D amplifier modules, including the superb Eigentakt solution used in recent T+A and NAD products [HFN May ’22 and Oct ’22, respectively] but the company’s expertise also extends into loudspeaker driver development. All three moving-coil drivers used in the Stella Xtreme are sourced from Purifi (which also supplies detailed ‘plug ’n play’ cabinet and crossover application notes) but it’s the two PTT6.5X04 bass/mid units that are arguably of most interest here. The deep magnet, voice coil and suspension design of this 165mm driver work in tandem with the ‘Neutral Surrounds’ to deliver what Purifi claims is a driver ‘that truly cracks the extended-stroke code’. Its aim was to exceed the bass performance of a large-cone/short-stroke driver using a…

While some brands maintain a steady rotation – evolution – of their products, others, including Constellation Audio, hit on the jackpot early and feel little inclination to change a winning formula. So while we’ve already tested the £73,500 Centaur II 500 power amp [HFN Dec ’19] we missed out on the £53,998 Constellation Centaur II Stereo. Until now… The Centaur II Stereo remains the most affordable amp in the Californian company’s Performance Centaur lineup, which also includes the Centaur II Mono power amp, available at the same price per mono chassis. It’s all part of Constellation’s modular approach to amplifier design: take the same basic chassis and juggle with the proprietary N-type amp modules and power supplies [see PM’s boxout, p67] and you have a whole range of options. It…

The A 200 power amp [HFN May ’22] and HA 200 headphone amp [HFN Aug ’20] join the MP 200 and DAC 200 in T+A’s compact quartet. The former rounds off a very capable three-box system [as auditioned by Jamie, above]. The A 200 is a Class D design, rated at 125W/8ohm, and utilises the Purifi Eigentakt technology first seen in NAD’s M33 and C 298 models [HFN Aug ’20 & Oct ’21]. In practice the A 200 delivers closer to 145W/8ohm and 285W/4ohm with an almost identical 146W, 289W, 290W and 152W into 8, 4, 2 and 1ohm loads, respectively, under dynamic conditions [see inset Graph]. And, just like NAD amplifiers of old with their ‘soft clipping’ circuit, this T+A amp has been engineered to ‘soften’ the blow near…

COMPACT DISC SUPERAUDIO DVD BLU-RAY VINYL DOWNLOAD THE 8TH WONDERS OF THE WORLD The 8th Wonders Of The World BeatRocket BRCD169 Like the Harlots opposite, this is an amazing find for archive dredgers enamoured of the myriad genres of rock in the 1960s. As such, it’s impossible to categorise this forgotten NY band, as the 13 tracks here – four from two singles and nine previously unreleased – embrace everything from cod-British Invasion/Fab Four Wannabee pop to surf to psychedelia, along the way sounding like someone fed the Nuggets garage rock compilation into a computer and asked an algorithm to create a pastiche. This really is amazingly accomplished (US-style, not 1970s British) punk that – again like the Harlots – begs the question: how did these guys not become a…

BILL FRISELL Four Blue Note 4552313; LP: 4552315 (two discs) After countless recordings on many other labels, the celebrated guitarist made his first Blue Note album with his cello-and-vocal Harmony quartet (2019), returning to a guitar/bass/drums trio for Valentine (2020). But this time he took three trusted colleagues from earlier projects into the studio with only sketches of the music to be played, and came out with an album of cohesive, absorbing music. ‘Pioneers’ has Frisell typically evoking old times and open spaces with churchy harmonies, saxophonist Tardy chiming in perfectly, the result uplifting. And Clayton’s piano solo ‘Always’ is spare and beautiful, each note dropping into place like a jewel. SH EMMET COHEN Uptown In Orbit Mack Avenue MAC1195; LP: MAC1195LP (two discs) Since the release of Future Stride…

While his main and interest is all high-end audio, Barry Willis also writes, about the culinary industry, visual art and theatre for a huge variety of US, newspapers and magazines Throughout the history of science and engineering, many phenomena have been accurately observed but incorrectly explained. Among these is the preference of some music fans for analogue recordings over digital. With only anecdotal evidence to support his hypothesis, a good friend and audio industry icon asserts that digital’s step waveform causes a stress reaction in listeners. This would be true if anyone listened to an unconverted digital signal, but the step waveform does not survive digital-to-analogue conversion – not in ‘Red Book’ compact discs, and certainly not in any high-resolution recordings. PRE-FLIGHT CHECK Some digital artefacts may in fact cause…

Steve Harris edited Hi-Fi News between 1986 and 2005. He loves jazz, blues music, vinyl and vintage hi-fi and anything that makes good music come to life February 2020 wasn’t the best time to launch a new business. Though not so bad, perhaps, if you were offering something that might keep people happy if they were stuck at home, as was the case with the UK’s long-promised Jazzed streaming service. Exclusive online concerts and sessions were always part of the Jazzed offering. But when lockdown put an end to all events with an audience, live streaming became all-important. Over in America, as a direct response to the pandemic, came the launch of FanTracks, ‘a live streaming and fan engagement platform that allows consumers to continue enjoying the live music experience’.…

I listen daily to both BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music via my hi-fi system, which uses a B&O BeoSound Moment music streamer. This pulls in radio through the TuneIn platform. Recently I have been hearing that the BBC will cease using a particular technology which means I will lose the BBC stations. The BBC website says I should listen via its ‘Sounds’ platform. It also suggests I buy new equipment that supports the Sounds app. The BBC is also broadcasting a warning informing listeners that they should contact the manufacturer of any equipment they currently use to listen on. At the time of writing it appears to me that neither B&O nor TuneIn are aware of the change in the way the BBC operates. A couple of years back…

LAS VEGAS SHOW REPORT Two-part coverage starts with source components and amps. WILSON AUDIO SYSTEM 6 The ‘WATT/Puppy’ reaches new heights in its latest form. DCS DELIUS D/A CONVERTER Digital leader dCS offers a slightly more affordable DAC. REL STRATA III We hear the latest version of this popular subwoofer. MYRYAD MP100/MA240 Beautifully made pre/power combination from Myryad offers good looks and watts to spare. MIRAGE MRM-1/BPS 1501 A high-quality compact speaker, with the Canadian company’s own matching subwoofer. SIX PHONO STAGES MC/MM preamps compared: Cyrus aEQ7, Lehmann Black Cube, Michell Delphini, Musical Fidelity XLP2, Paul Hynes Design VV1/VH1 and Sphinx Phono. ACOUSTIC RESEARCH SM20 Is this baby loudspeaker a budget winner at the price? HANGO PLAYER The ‘personal jukebox’ that boasts a built-in hard drive!…

Rotel has entered the growing ‘just add speakers’ market with a streaming integrated amp claiming 2x80W/8ohm and 2x150W/4ohm. The £2499 S14 adopts the company’s familiar brushed metal finish in silver or black, but adds a full-colour display to show album artwork/information and to assist in its configuration. Network audio – including Tidal, Qobuz and Spotify – is delivered via wired Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections, and the S14 also integrates Google Cast and Apple AirPlay 2. Wired hookups include a headphone output and analogue inputs, coax and optical inputs, plus USB-B for computer audio to 384kHz/24-bit. Under the lid, the S14 has a 32-bit ESS Sabre DAC, ‘oversized’ toroidal transformer and high-current transistors. The Rotel Co. Ltd, Tokyo, Japan, 01903 221 710; www.rotel.com…

Despite its long history of innovation, Western Electric was a casualty of the US government’s anti-trust breakup of AT&T in 1982. WE’s decline led to its entire IP being acquired by the entrepreneur Charles G. Whitener in 1995. Some 28 years later we pick up the trail with Charles and the remarkable Type 91E amplifier… That said, many audiophiles may still rue this amplifier’s omission of balanced XLR inputs. Ironically, WE itself was party to the development of balanced line audio for, typically, high impedance microphone amps in the late 1930s, the 600ohm standard coming out of the Bell ’phone system. Nevertheless, Charles is of the view that the added complexity of a balanced application, ‘particularly when the interconnect is less than ten feet, typically outweighs any advantage over a…

Has it really been 40 years since Jonathan Carr and Stig Bjørge founded what would become Lyra? Did I really play with a (Scan Tech) Tsurugi, launched in 1986 and which I still have, when Maggie was PM? As I have enjoyed Lyra cartridges for over half my life, including many happy hours with the mono Kleos, the £3095 Kleos SL arrived with positive anticipation. Having recently achieved the refurbishment of the aforementioned Tsurugi, I was struck by the clarity of purpose which Lyra has maintained over the decades, not least the removal of the cartridge body. On the Tsurugi, two screws released it. For its Lyra MCs, they’ve done away with it altogether. I’ve heard conflicting arguments for and against what Lyra calls a cartridge played ‘in the nude’,…

Having an HQ in the German port of Kiel is no coincidence as ELAC was originally focused on hydroacoustics (sonar), only launching a turntable in 1948. A spinoff – sold to a UK defence group – remains to this day a major producer of sonar systems, proving there are more ways to earn money from sound than catering to hi-fi buffs. So when ELAC dived back into the turntable scene in 2016, the company was already celebrating its 90th birthday. Nevertheless, ELAC opted for major expansion rather than retiring, grabbing noted loudspeaker designer Andrew Jones after his departure from Pioneer in 2015, opening up US offices, and acquiring engineers from Audio Alchemy a year later. This led to a plethora of new ELAC products, including the well-received Debut speaker series…

A Rose by any other name? As has happened in the past, Korean manufacturer HiFi Rose has launched a new version of an existing model – in this case its RS250 network player – with worthy specification changes and a suffix to set the two apart. But there’s a mild inconsistency here, for when the company upgraded the RS150 [HFN Jun ’21] to the current version, due to a DAC chip change forced upon the company by the 2020 fire at AKM’s semiconductor plant in Japan, it became the RS150(B), selling for £3899, but the revised RS250 is now the £2349 RS250A, available in either silver or black finishes. Again, there’s a chip swap at the heart of the new machine – along with other audio-related changes – but this…

Alta Audio, likely a new name to most UK hi-fi enthusiasts, was created with the idea of finding new solutions to old problems. Founded over 30 years ago in New York, USA, its £10,000 Alec floorstanders are the central models in its Statement series, above the standmount Alyssa and below the magnificently monikered Adam. Those ‘problems’, identified by owner and founder Michael Levy while studying at the engineering department of NYU, concerned bass extension and losses within a cabinet arising from unwanted vibration. Levy’s solution to the latter is Alta Audio’s ‘DampHard’ compound, which comprises multiple layers of materials of varying densities. DampHard is used in the Alecs’ baffles along with extensive internal bracing and careful shaping of the cabinet. The intention is to craft an enclosure whose vibrations are…

Fitzwilliam String Quartet Decca 4557762 (6CDs) First issued by L’Oiseau-Lyre in 1978 and still a classic – searing in the first Scherzo, nonchalant in the finale’s main melody. Brodsky Quartet Chandos CHAN10917 (6CDs) Warm, spacious Chandos sound complements the straightforward, communicative power of the Brodsky’s second cycle. Shostakovich Quartet Alto ALC5002 (5CDs) Claustrophobic Russian digital stereo from the mid-’90s with a high strung, authentically Soviet vibe, first issued on Olympia. Quartetto Noûs Brilliant Classics 96418 (2CDs) An excellent start to a new cycle from the Italian ensemble returning to Soviet-era performing traditions: relentlessly intense. Albion Quartet Signum Classics SIGCD727 Brand-new both as a recording and in style, more playful in the scherzos than older versions, icier and withdrawn in the Adagio. Novus Quartet Aparté AP271 More legato and a richer…

A key figure in the production of Songs From The Big Chair was a man without whom, it might be speculated, the band would never have had hits in the first place. Keyboard player Ian Stanley met the group on the Bath music scene, and offered to produce Orzabal and Smith’s first steps into synth-pop after they’d left mod outfit Graduate. He had his own eight-track studio and the resulting demos helped get the band signed to a label. As Orzabal recalled to Radio One’s Richard Skinner, by the time they were ready to make Songs From The Big Chair, ‘This eight-track had grown, with the money we’d made from The Hurting, and Ian and I set up a 24-track studio. We sort of built it ourselves, hammering in all…

1966 The Soul Brothers – Studio One’s house band – release Hot Shot with the hit single ‘Wakie Wakie’ 1968 Now widely regarded as the first ska record, ‘Easy Snappin’’ is a hit for the pianist Theophilus Beckford 1968 Clement Dodd produces ‘Real Rock’, an instrumental reggae song by the Jamaican band Sound Dimension 1969 In Memory Of Don Drummond is released after the trombonist and composer passes away that year 2020 Delroy Wilson compilation album Dancing Mood is released in the States on the Studio One label 2022 British label Soul Jazz reissues the label’s albums in chronological order, including Studio One Women…

Mark Craven has been editor of Hi-Fi News’ sister title Home Cinema Choice for nearly a decade and has a passion for music, film and everything in between For fans of heavy metal music, there’s always excitement when Metallica announce a new studio album – partly because the thrash legends have only released ten since 1983, and just three in the last 19 years. So the surprise confirmation of a new record, to be called 72 Seasons and available from April, was greeted with glee by ’Tallica fans, as was the out-of-the-blue new single ‘Lux Aeterna’. But then the usual thing happened. Metallica, for those not familiar with the world’s biggest-selling metal band (unless you count rockers like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin), have a history of doing some weird stuff…

I’ve just read Ken Kessler’s review of the Lowther Almira horn speakers [HFN Nov ’22] with great interest. Having lived for over 20 years with Veritas H1 horns, which use very similar Lowther DX2 drivers, I began to wonder whether the need for the speakers to be fully ‘run in’ had been properly taken into account. I don’t know about this latest incarnation of the DX3, referred to in Ken’s review, but I do know all the previous incarnations of Lowther drivers required some hours on them to open their sound up further. Even after being run in, if not used for a period of time, typically over the summer months (especially if SET amplification is part of the setup!), many users will switch on their amps and leave the…

Hands up those who have seen a Bryan amplifier before, let alone heard one. Me neither – until I unpacked the Mark III Model 500/700 pairing seen here. The first 500 arrived when higher-power transistors were beginning to be used in quality audio, yet while the technology became universal, British brand Bryan sank without trace. The Cheshire company’s first range of stereo transistor amplifiers was launched in 1963 – a respectably prompt start for such a small manufacturer. One advance brought by higher-power transistors was that they made it possible to eliminate the component that was the most difficult to design when it came to valve amplifiers: the output transformer. This transformer is needed because valves are high impedance devices. They work at high voltages yet pass on small amounts…