Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Hi Fi News

Our exclusive review of dCS’s incredible five-box streamer/DAC [HFN Feb ’25] has touched off some correspondence on the – er – touchy subject of its price tag [p119]. Similar outrage might be levelled at any number of the flagship products that grace our pages, but then Hi-Fi News is duty-bound to report from the cutting edge, even if that clifftop has become more precipitous over the last decade or so. Testing 100kg amplifiers and 200kg loudspeakers requires very specialised facilities [see p41], so the next time you see a very big speaker ‘reviewed’ elsewhere, spare a moment to ask how this was done… But let’s return to the sordid topic of coin and why the ‘high-end’ typically means ‘high-ticket’. The answer, in short, is economy of scale. At first sight…

Review: Adam Smith Lab: Paul Miller Transrotor might be a new name to many, but the company has a long and illustrious history [see boxout, p51]. However, this is the first time that its range of turntables has been officially available on UK shores – and what a range it is! The £4400 Massimo Nero TMD is eight steps up the ladder of an 18-strong selection that starts with the £3000 Max and culminates in the magnificent Metropolis FMD, which will set you back a not inconsiderable £180,000. The German brand also offers two tonearms, the TRA 9 and TRA Studio, both available in 9in and 12in versions, plus six turntable power supply options. Transrotor also manufactures three phono stages, two for MM or MC, and the third a fully…

Review: Mark Craven Lab: Paul Miller Hegel is fond of its idiosyncratic product names. In 2023 the Norwegian brand felt confident in christening its new CD player the ‘Viking’, ignoring a model number altogether [HFN Sep ’23]. In the same year it also launched the P30A preamp and H30A power amp [HFN Jun ’23] – separates also known as the Conductor and the Orchestra, respectively. 2024 saw the arrival of the H400 integrated amplifier [HFN Oct ’24], aka the Streamliner due to its networking features, and now we have the new D50, a DAC that Hegel says is ‘affectionately named the Raven’. This nickname gives the D50’s manufacturer plenty of scope for talking about it soaring above the competition, etc, but its origin lies not in music but in Norse…

I magine being George Gershwin. There you are at breakfast one day in January 1924, chewing over ideas for your next musical, when your brother reads out an announcement in the newspaper. The impresario Paul Whiteman has arranged a concert on 12 February. The concert will answer the question, ‘What is American music?’, and ‘George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto’. This is the first you’ve heard of it. Gershwin set to work. Lacking both time and experience of orchestration, he drafted in Whiteman’s chief arranger, Ferde Grofé. Gershwin was on a train to Boston when the Rhapsody In Blue took shape, all at once. ‘I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America – of our vast melting-pot, our incomparable national pep, our blues, our…

Producer Rupert Hine’s long-stated mantra was, ‘Start with an empty head. Then fill it with an idea’. The Fixx had no shortage of ideas when they convened with Hine and engineer Stephen W. Tayler at Farmyard Studios in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire, to tackle all that became Reach The Beach in 1982-83. ‘What makes it interesting is this is one of the last projects recorded using Farmyard’s Trident TSM console, which had no automation’, Tayler recounts to HFN. ‘Microphone placements and equipment choices were down to me. And we made good use of the room sound, particularly for the drums.’ By then, Hine and Tayler already shared much in-studio shorthand. ‘Rupert and I worked very much as a team’, Tayler confirms. ‘We started working together in 1980. We developed very early…

AUDIOPHILE: VINYL JOHNNIE TAYLOR One Step From The Blues Stax/Craft CR00803 (180g vinyl) A dozen perfectly remastered tracks from Taylor’s time at Stax (1967-74) focused on the bluesier side of this soul singer’s output, just as the title declares. Taylor, for my money, ranks with the very best, up there with Pickett, Tate and Wilson. This set shows just how skilled he was away from straight soul belting, as with his big hit ‘Who’s Making Love’. Instead, here you get both mellow and anguished performances which would impress Jimmy Witherspoon. The tracks include his hit ‘Cheaper To Keep Her’, while he delivers a stunning ‘Part Time Love’, first recorded by the similarly named Little Johnny Taylor. Full marks to the wit who used the blue Stax label on the A-Side…

MAKING A CASE FOR MC NO REASON TO SWITCH TO MM, SAYS READER In HFN Aug ’24, AB from Australia wrote in wanting to preserve a Koetsu Black Gold Line cartridge, on which he has 700 hours, until he can replace his Audio Research SP16 preamplifier with one that has an MC input. He was considering an Ortofon cartridge and received replies from both Ken Kessler and Adam Smith praising the Ortofon Black. But personally, if happy with my moving-coil pick up, I would not under any circumstance replace it with a moving-magnet. The remedy was a simple one: replace it with, say, one of the MCs from Audio-Technica’s range (the AT-OC9XSH with Shibata stylus to my tastes is preferable to the dull sound of a Koetsu cart) or select…

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You hold in your hands the world’s oldest and most respected hi-fi magazine – Hi-Fi News – where heavyweight audio engineering is our stock in trade. All our review products are typically subject to a one-month test process from shipping, unpacking, installation, photography, lab work, extended listening, disassembly/packing and collection. This practice was maintained right through the pandemic period, with full Covid biosecurity adding to the logistical complexity of our four-week issue schedule. But we did it… never missing one issue of the magazine or compromising the ‘Hi-Fi News Pledge’: 1. Our hardware reviews are never brief ‘hands on’ experiences of a product from a press conference, brand-led demonstration or distributor’s back room spun up into a four or five page article. 2. Products reviewed in Hi-Fi News already have…

Review: Ken Kessler Lab: Paul Miller A re you the hands-on type who finds most power amps a bit boring because all they have is an on/off switch? Manley Laboratories’ Neo-Classic SE/PP 300B monoblock (£13,699 per pair) is the opposite: it lets you fine-tune the sound by fine-tuning the applied feedback. Interactivity is just the start, redolent of the Marantz Model 9s and other amps of the 1950s/’60s which assumed user involvement including valve biasing. Better still, the Neo-Classic is one of those rare 300B-powered models which needn’t apologise for its power limitations [see PM’s Lab Report, p57]. Indeed, these turned out to be a wake-up call for me as I have always been rather ‘meh’ about 300B tubes. POWER UP While I have previously acknowledged their sweetness and warmth,…

Review: Jamie Biesemans Lab: Paul Miller Eversolo’s DMP-A8 [HFN May ’24] was an indication of the Chinese brand’s ambition to progress beyond affordable but very capable DACs and streamers into ‘real’ hi-fi territory. The DMP-A10, which ratchets up both features and finish, is the next step. It’s also Eversolo’s first full-sized component, alongside a new AMP-F10 power amplifier that’s clearly been designed to be a perfect visual match. While the £1890 price tag of the DMP-A8 helped it seem ‘a bit of a steal’, the DMP-A10 – almost double at £3590 – fits more into line with Eversolo’s premium rivals. However, just like the DMP-A8, this is a do-it-all device rather than a laser-focused hi-fi separate, as it can be configured to work as a standalone DAC, digital transport, streamer,…

It might well be Jesus. Or perhaps the devil. Or maybe even Father Christmas. But try as I might, I can’t discover any reliable resource which reveals who, in the whole history of popular music, has had the most songs written about them. With that in mind, and lacking any definitive evidence to the contrary, John Luther Jones is a viable claimant to the crown. A swift count on Wikipedia totals in excess of 40 ditties composed in his honour, the first written in about 1909. You’ll know John Luther better by his nickname, Casey. He was the brave railroad engineer who, in April 1900, perished trying to make up time driving the late-running locomotive Number 382. This ten-wheeler, known as the Cannonball, was on its way from Memphis to…

ORIGINAL VINYL & CASSETTE The first-pressing Reach The Beach MCA LP [205 479 in Europe; MCA-5419 in the US] is a sonically pleasing bridge between the then-burgeoning digital playback realm and the still-favoured analogue medium. Seek out the compact cassette [FXC 1002 in the UK; MCAC-5419 in the US] if you’re a Reach The Beach completist, but don’t expect much in terms of higher fidelity. (You’ll know exactly what we mean once you get to the muffled ‘Opinions’ and murky ‘Outside’ at the end of either side.) 12IN REMIXES Very much in fashion for the times, extended versions of both ‘One Thing Leads To Another’ [FIXXT 5 in the UK; MCA L33-1128 in the US, the latter on blue vinyl] and ‘Saved By Zero’ [FIXXT 4 in the UK; MCA L33-1128…

Like it or not, the future of radio is online, by Wi-Fi, wire, fibre or cellphone. Listening to Internet radio in homes, cars and on beach loungers is essentially free and easy. Virtually every streaming amplifier, computer, smartphone and tablet comes with some form of ’net radio reception. Broadband tariffs include all-you-can-eat or, at least, huge volumes of data. Yet my unhappy experiences with Internet radio have touched a nerve with several readers. The big new issues are the stations’ choice of codec and data rate, and the receiver makers’ choice of Aggregator or Portal. Codec and data rate dictate audio quality; Aggregator/Portals, which collate and index the thousands of Internet radio stations around the world, control what listeners can listen to. TUNING OUT Some portals (eg. Reciva from electronics…

In the UK, at least, Chanel is still known first and foremost as a signifier of French chic, whether in the image of Coco, or the perfume bottles reassuring husbands of a duty fulfilled, or in the handbags bought by women to please themselves. The news that it sponsors a biennial set of awards to creative artists took me by surprise. All the more so when I learnt that among their number last year, for the second edition of the Chanel Next Prize, was the Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. PROM QUEEN On the face of it, Thorvaldsdottir boasts impeccable credentials for such a prize. As the composer of Archora and Aion, meaty orchestral works commissioned by the likes of the BBC Proms, the Berlin Philharmonic and the LA Philharmonic, does…

Review: Tim Jarman Lab: Paul Miller Once CD players had become established it did not take long for hi-fi manufacturers to come up with new features and facilities to offer. Of these, the ability to play more than one disc at a time was perhaps the most intriguing and visually obvious. Toshiba was the first to produce a practical machine with the XR-V22 [HFN Jun ’24]. This could take two discs, but it was fellow Japanese brand Pioneer which led the field, coming up shortly afterwards with a six-disc cartridge player. This ‘universal’ cartridge system was common to all Pioneer’s multi-play models, allowing collections of discs to be rapidly swapped between systems at home and in-car. Not everyone wanted to lock their discs away in fiddly cartridges, however, so multi-disc…

B&W NAUTILUS 800 Alvin Gold assesses the crowning jewel of the British brand’s flagship loudspeaker series. KRELL FPB 400CX The American marque goes bigger than ever with a power amp. Martin Colloms reports. LET IT RIP  Tony Bolton satisfies his burning desire with a trio of twin-deck CD recorders from Denon, Harman/Kardon and NAD. REL STENTOR III Martin Colloms plumbs the depths with REL’s musically minded subwoofer. JMLAB ELEKTRA 926 David Allcock explores a Utopian-inspired floorstander from the French speaker brand. PRO-JECT DEBUT PHONO  Killer budget deck returns with a built-in phono stage. Tony Bolton takes it for a spin. PRIMARE PRE30 PREAMPLIFIER Stereo preamplifier from Sweden introduces affordable balancing, says Andrew Harrison. GAMUT CD1  Steve Harris on the Danish manufacturer’s 128x oversampling disc player.…

Over the weekend of February 21-23, the Florida International Audio Expo, founded by Bart Andeer and his partners, celebrated its sixth year as a showcase of high-end audio systems. Held at a new venue – the Sheraton Tampa Brandon Hotel near the Florida State Fairgrounds – the event brought together hi-fi industry leaders and boutique innovators. Demos featuring state-of-the-art gear attracted audiophiles to a sunlit setting where listeners could evaluate sonic performance, or just enjoy the music… Driven here by REF 330M amps from Audio Research [HFN Apr ’25], Oneiros Audio’s debut speaker is a 1.61m-tall floorstander with a flowing silhouette. The monocoque carbon fibre cabinet, said to benefit from F1-inspired engineering methods, weighs 140kg and houses pairs of custom-made graphene-composite bass and mid units, plus ‘diamond’ dome tweeter. www.oneirosaudio.com…

Review: Mark Craven Lab: Paul Miller Named after the Maine town where it started in 1984, although now based down the coast in South Thomaston, Rockport Technologies has been known by audiophiles since the 1990s as a manufacturer of high-end – and heavyweight – loudspeakers. The Orion floorstander tested here is no exception, weighing 163kg per piece and selling for £165,000. Suffice to say, it’s a far cry from the early sub/sat systems of chief designer Andy Payor [see boxout, p45]. The Orion sits one from the top in Rockport’s range, the flagship spot being held by the £229,000 Lyra. And because the manufacturer easily fits the definition of ‘boutique’, with a small staff and production runs that other companies would consider ‘limited edition’, there are only four other options.…

Review: Jamie Biesemans Lab: Paul Miller rue to form, Dynaudio showed a slew of products at last year’s High End Show in Munich [HFN Jul ’24] – including a new loudspeaker styled by Tokyo’s Keiji Ashizawa Design studio, plus a turntable built by Thorens. Also shown was this Contour 20 Black Edition standmount, now finally in production. This is a range of one – an elegant two-way with no floorstanding partner – but it serves a useful purpose, offering Dynaudio fans an option to bridge the £4500 Contour 20i and the premium £9600 Confidence 20. Okay, at nearly £6000 a pair, it’s not exactly midway in price, but does represent a tempting step up. There are upsides and downsides to the name ‘Black Edition’. It has the advantage of clarity,…

Review: Jamie Biesemans Lab: Paul Miller Talk about bursting onto the scene. Five years ago, few had heard of Perlisten even though the Wisconsin company had existed from 2016, ostensibly operating in stealth mode. Today it is an established name in hi-fi circles, abetted by two complete loudspeaker series featuring some ambitious technology. The four-way £19,000 S7t floorstander [HFN Apr ’22] had served as Perlisten’s flagship speaker until this £30,000 Limited Edition arrived two years later, boasting numerous detail enhancements. It’s at least 25kg heavier too, at 84kg per tower. ‘Limited edition’ on a loudspeaker generally means you can count on a special colourway, with an odd tweak here and there. In this case, however, the upgrades run more than skin-deep, and this is reflected in the price. Similar to…

It’s the early 1980s, and a new musical sound is beginning to take shape. The Fixx wasn’t yet in, but these five upstart British lads were already navigating innovative ways to fuse established rock tenets with new-wave sonics and heady, thoughtful lyrics. During a three-week tour of North America in November 1982 – ostensibly to promote their May 1982 debut LP on MCA, Shuttered Room – The Fixx were already performing a handful of songs that would ultimately populate their breakthrough MCA LP, May 1983’s Reach The Beach. IN AT THE DEEP END ‘When Irving Azoff took over MCA’, Fixx vocalist/chief lyricist Cy Curnin recalls for HFN, ‘he wanted to really get behind one of the label’s British bands. He asked [MCA UK MD] Stuart Watson to suggest some, and…

The simple white building in Watsonville, California offers not a hint about what takes place inside – the design and production of some of the world’s most advanced audio gear, including three models of digital-to-analogue converters, four models of power amplifiers, and various accessories. Founded in 1987 and incorporated two years later, MSB Technology began with two people in a small garage-like space. Today it owns and occupies a former auto dealership, has 16 employees, and ships to distributors worldwide, which in turn serve approximately 200 dealers. ROLL UP, ROLL UP The company recently hosted a factory tour arranged through the Audiophile Foundation, until last year known as the San Francisco Bay Area Audiophile Society. The name change was part of a drive to reach audio enthusiasts outside the SF…

I t’s hard now to imagine what life was like when humans could only communicate over long distances by waving flags or mechanical arms for someone to see through a telescope, by lighting fires at the top of a hill, or relying on the homing instinct of a pigeon. But that’s how it was until the electric telegraph arrived in the 19th century. It’s not even easy to imagine the pre-digital world of the mid-20th century. In 1965 the International Telecommunication Union published a 340-page centenary volume called From Semaphore To Satellite, telling the story of telecoms tech up to that point – which now seems like only the beginning. BRIGHT SPARKS  From Semaphore To Satellite deals with the long history of purely optical messaging before telling of some impractical…

You don’t have to be a marketing analyst with a subscription to the Financial Times to understand why SACD might win the format war. Clearly, the SACD crew has delivered more hardware and (most importantly) in the order of ten times more software than DVD-Audio, according to the estimates of music vendors I’ve canvassed. All of which makes the arrival of a high-end SACD player with a mid-range price point something worth considering. NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT Although the DVD-A format will never go away because it’s a fait accompli for future DVD players at all price points, SACD has reached a stage where some very finicky audio gurus are admitting they ‘prefer’ it to CD and DVD-A. I’m even sniffing a change in attitude toward multichannel. Am I…

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 – 8AM - 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…