Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Hi Fi News

Voodoo or Science – what is the way to high-end sound heaven? That was the working title of a seminar for Germany’s High End Society, moderated by Fink Audio team’s Karl-Heinz [see p50] and including Reiner Fink (ex of Philips/Marantz), Thorsten Feuerherdt (CEO of Manikin Electronic), Wolfgang Beckmann (Sound Artist) and yours truly. Held at this year’s Munich High End show [full report next month], the discussion also included questions from a packed audience, though any who had attended expecting a factional bun fight were sadly disappointed! In practice, the life-long experience of our group was reflected in a general acceptance that ‘voodoo’ – the term used to describe any inexplicable or ostensibly dubious sound tuning idea – was simply ‘science’ that we didn’t currently understand or could measure. So…

Two new speakers have been added to Stratton Acoustics’ Element range. The Element 6 [above, left] and Element 8 [above, right] join the company’s Element 12 and flagship Elypsis 1512, but opt for more compact, standmount cabinets. Both speakers sport a 29mm, decoupled soft dome tweeter mounted into a waveguide, plus a rear-facing, flared-profile reflex port. As the name suggests, the Element 6’s carbon fibre bass/mid driver measures 150mm/6in, while the Element 8 receives a 200mm/8in unit. The speakers’ handed cabinets, made from an ‘acrylic-silica reinforced polymer matrix’, feature CNC-machined aluminium baffles. Pricing is £15,000 (Element 6) and £20,000 (Element 8), plus £3500 for matching aluminium stands. Stratton Acoustics Ltd, London, 07932 783767; www.strattonacoustics.com…

Another company marking a milestone this year is Greece’s Ypsilon, the new Anniversary edition of its venerable PST100 preamp launched to honour its 30th birthday. An all-analogue, tube-based design, with 400x 180x410mm (whd) milled alloy chassis, it offers 5x unbalanced (RCA) and 1x balanced (XLR) line inputs, plus outputs on RCAs and XLRs. Under the hood, it retains the point-to-point wiring, C3m pentodes and 6CA4 rectifier tube of the original, but aims to sweeten performance with new input and output transformers, plus ‘high quality’ film capacitors. The front-panel display has also been refined. Ypsilon Electronics, Paiania, Greece, 07901 001192; www.ypsilonelectronics.com…

Review: Ken Kessler Lab: Paul Miller Shall we first dispense with the debate about what constitutes ‘expensive’? Just as ‘luxury’ means anything more than you need, ‘expensive’ means anything more than you’re prepared or able to spend. I’m not about to gloss over the fact that £18,000 for a stereo amplifier isn’t chicken feed to most of us, even in a world of amplifiers costing 30 times that amount. However, in the context of the Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems range and the norms in today’s high-end hi-fi market, its Pendulum Integrated Amplifier begs precisely that ‘which must not be expressed’ if we want to avoid a mailbag of protest. So I’ll say it anyway – it’s a bargain. If you have always coveted one of Dan D’Agostino’s designs, possibly…

Review: Mark Craven Lab: Paul Miller In this era of all-in-one amplifiers and ‘crossover’ products, where even a tube amp might come to market with a built-in USB DAC [see p74], there’s something refreshing about Californian brand Pass Labs. Now approaching 35 years in business and named after founder and chief designer Nelson Pass (also the man behind Threshold in the 1970s), the company has long been known for its focus on frill-free, performance-first designs. Yes, its current product catalogue spans 18 amplifiers, but all are analogue-only. If you’re interested in digital inputs, network audio and touchscreen controls, you can move along. But stay, in the words of Pass Labs, for ‘simplicity and power’. Selling for £7850, in just the one (very smart) silver aluminium finish, the XA30.8 auditioned here…

Review: Mark Craven Lab: Paul Miller Hailing from Treviso in northeast Italy, Unison Research is a brand with an obvious love of tubes, to the point that you half expect to find a hot bottle or two incorporated in its Malibran and Max loudspeakers. Its CD players, the Unico CD Uno and Due [HFN May ’16], have tube-based output stages, while the solid-state amps in the same series have tube-based inputs. But the company is best known for its all-tube amplifiers, of which there are 15 spread across integrated, pre and power ranges. The Triode 25 Black Edition integrated, selling for £3900 in just the one colourway, is an upgrade of the standard Triode 25 [HFN Jul ’15], which remains on sale for £3400. It’s also positioned above the entry-level…

FLORIAN WEBER Imaginary Cycle (96kHz/24-bit, WAV) www.ecmrecords.com; ECM 2782 Even by ECM’s standards, this release from composer/pianist Weber is both idiosyncratic and esoteric, but the fact it’s also so approachable ensures its appeal. A series of extended pieces – ‘Opening’, ‘Word’, ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Blessing’ – are topped and tailed with a Prelude and Epilogue, the album drawing on a wide range of stylistic influences, drifting from the contemplative to the near-meditational. And while Weber’s piano is always front and centre, the rest of the instrumentation adds to the fascination. There are quartets of euphoniums and trumpets, a flute, and even a serpent, that curvaceous early brass instrument, intermingling and creating unusual textures to match the way the music progresses from the relaxed to the complex. Add to the mix the usual…

ARABELLA STEINBACHER, LUXEMBOURG PO/GUSTAVO GIMENO Beethoven & Lentz: Violin Concertos Pentatone PTC5187240 (downloads to 192kHz/24-bit resolution) Steinbacher has the measure of the space and serenity which mark out the Violin Concerto from almost everything else Beethoven wrote. Her phrasing soars, her tone sweet as honey, and engages with every note of the symphonic texture which is so admirably sprung and shaped by Gimeno. Without interrogating the piece on the micro-level of Eberle/Rattle [LSO Live], they draw the ear in to the mystical G minor episode of (i). And if you come for Beethoven, stay for the Georges Lentz, which integrates refreshingly modern solo writing within a continuously evolving, 35m narrative. There’s an ‘environmental’ subtext, but the music stands on its own compelling terms. PQ Sound Quality: 90% CHAUVIN, GLASSBERG, REILAND,…

The BBC’s outside broadcast engineers often have to work in cramped conditions, for example in OB vans, where the steady proliferation of equipment puts cunning stowage, tidy habits, and a strict diet for the occupants at a distinct premium. Studio monitor loudspeakers are particularly difficult to locate sensibly in these circumstances, and the design aim behind the LS3/5a was the provision of a small but high quality monitor, in which some slight sacrifices in ultimate bass response and loudness could be accepted for the sake of compactness. BOX CLEVER In the event, these sacrifices have proved to be remarkably slight, and the outcome is a true bookshelf unit with a frontal area almost the same as that of this magazine (the LS3/5a is a few centimetres taller and a few…

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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 Now Deputy Editor of Hi-Fi News, 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 STEVE SUTHERLAND…

QOBUZ CURATION Subscription music streaming platform Qobuz is seeking to boost its appeal to audiophiles with label-focused curation. Blue Note, Motown, Deutsche Grammophon and 4AD are among the imprints now supported by dedicated pages, alongside new sections spotlighting award-winning albums, genre ‘essentials’ and an Album Of The Week. Established in 2007 in France, Qobuz claims to provide access to over 100 million tracks, including hi-res FLAC files up to 192kHz/24-bit, for £12.99 per month. www.qobuz.com ON-THE-GO UPGRADE Described by Bowers & Wilkins as its ‘most advanced wireless headphone yet’, the £399 Px7 S3 makes several improvements over the brand’s previous Px7 S2e. These include new 40mm biocellulose drive units with discrete amplification, an uprated Bluetooth module supporting aptX Lossless and aptX Adaptive, 96kHz/24-bit playback over USB-C, and refinements to active…

21-22 JUN North West Audio Show, Cranage Hall (De Vere Cranage Estate), Cheshire; http://audioshow.co.uk 08-10 AUG Audiotechnique AV Show, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre; www.audiotechnique.com/avshow 27-28 SEP The UK Hi-Fi Show Live, Ascot Racecourse Grandstand, Ascot Berkshire SL5 7JX; www.hifishowlive.com 24-26 OCT Audio Video Show Warsaw 2025, Radisson Blu/Sobieski Hotel, Warsaw, Poland; www.audioshow.pl 25-26 OCT Paris AV Show; https://en.parisaudiovideoshow.com…

Review: Jamie Biesemans Lab: Paul Miller With the arrival of the ES-28N, loudspeaker designer Karl-Heinz Fink has reached a key point in his career. Positioned above the previously launched – and lauded – ES-14N [HFN Jul ’23] and ES-7N [HFN Nov ’24], this three-way floorstander, priced £7500, marks the conclusion of Fink’s campaign to revive stalwart British brand Epos. Perhaps other ranges will follow, but for the moment this speaker is touted as ‘number three out of three’. Fink has stated his intention not to cash in on the craze for ‘nostalgia’ products that resurrect past designs, however much they were appreciated back in the day. Instead, using engineering know-how honed by designing speakers for numerous companies over the past decades, his Epos creations are thoroughly modern – but also…

Review: Mark Craven Lab: Paul Miller While the usual rallying cry of a Hollywood producer is for any movie sequel to be ‘bigger and better’, Piega’s approach for the Gen2 iteration of its Premium 301 loudspeaker is to make it better while also making it smaller. And considering the original model, released in 2019, was itself described as a ‘compact loudspeaker with a baffle about the size of an A4 sheet’, this is perhaps something of an achievement. Ticketed from £2500, Piega’s Premium 301 Gen2 is a true miniature, similar in overall size to an LS3/5a [HFN Jun ’25] or System Audio’s Signature 5 [HFN Feb ’25], and smaller than the likes of KEF’s LS50 Meta [HFN Jun ’21]. Some manufacturers have a habit of advertising any compact standmount as…

Review & Lab: Paul Miller From selecting its own copper ore, drawing and refining its strands at a partnering mill and meticulously hand-fashioning its premium products, Germany’s In-akustik has been approaching cable construction with a passion since 1977. The pursuit of an air dielectric, preferable but less practical than PTFE, HDPE, PP or PVC, is a particular mission for this brand and one taken to its next level in the Referenz LS-4005 AIR. Priced at a not inconsiderable £7019 for a 3m stereo set terminated in bananas or spades (or £7799 for superior SBW connector types), this cable is still arguably the ‘sweet spot’ in its Reference range – the very new LS-8005 AIR being about four times the size and nearly three times the price… WEB OF WIRES Now…

The Aqualung sessions got underway in earnest in December 1970 at Island Records’ new recording studio on Basing Street in London, with Terry Ellis co-producing with Ian Anderson. The Basing Street studio was, in effect, a converted chapel in a cavernous church – a ‘cold and echoey place’, by all accounts. Embryonic versions of ‘My God’ and ‘Wond’ring Aloud’ were cut prior at Morgan Studios in Willesden, in April and June 1970, respectively. Both early takes have since appeared as bonuses on Aqualung reissues. Also recording at the Basing Street studio concurrent with Tull were Led Zeppelin, for the purposes of tracking their seminal Led Zeppelin IV LP. As per Anderson, Zep had taken to using the ‘much more manageable and nicer-sounding room’ in the converted chapel, while Tull had…

HEDVIG MOLLESTAD TRIO Bees In The Bonnet Rune Grammofon CD RCD2237; LP: RLP3237 Guitarist Hedvig Mollestad grew up with jazz, studying at the Norwegian Academy Of Music, but had an epiphany in her early 20s when she first heard Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath – her instrumental trio combine the fluidity and harmonic vocabulary of jazz with the power and visceral excitement of rock. Drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad and bassist Ellen Brekken are equally adept at playing with space (‘Lamament’) and brutal heavy riffing (‘See See Bop’), and Mollestad is one of today’s most exciting guitarists. Her solos incorporate a Jimi Hendrix-like love of timbre with ecstatic, repeated single notes and runs of thrilling speed, and the trio create a firestorm on the rollercoaster rhythms of ‘Apocalypse Slow’. MB Sound…

The true nerds among you will already be bristling. Forty years? Who doesn’t know that Manfred Eicher founded ECM in 1969? It’s true – and for the first 15 years of its existence, ECM carved out a distinctive niche as a jazz label, often recording American artists in Europe and selling coals back to Newcastle with best-selling albums such as Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert of 1975. Nor is it quite true to say that Eicher ventured into classical in 1984 with the launch of ECM’s ‘New Series’ imprint. In the new Compendium issued to mark that label’s 40th anniversary, you won’t find pioneering Steve Reich albums such as the Octet or Tehillim. I will leave it to my esteemed colleagues to wax lyrical about the impact of ECM on…

The letter from Robert Roy in HFN Apr ’25 reminded me of a chat I’d had with a friend on the cost of new vinyl records. My friend thinks the labels/retailers are charging too much, but as Robert (and Ken Kessler) remarked, the cost of new vinyl isn’t far removed from what it was 40 years ago if you account for inflation. And the quality has improved. Obviously these days people are used to accessing massive libraries of music through subscription streaming services, plus films and TV shows through Netflix. In this respect, paying £25 or similar for a single vinyl LP will appear expensive, but you are buying and owning a physical item, rather than, in essence, renting a digital file of possibly inferior quality. Mark Craven replies: On…

Review: Tim Jarman Lab: Paul Miller Whatever else can be said about Albarry Music’s amplifiers, they looked fantastic – products that proudly had their works on show, but done with consummate grace and restraint. The M408 was the first amplifier from Albarry, one of many boutique firms that sprang up in the early 1980s in reaction to the mass-produced ranges from Europe and Japan. FOUR SQUARE In total, Albarry’s amplifier system came as four units, the DMP 1 stereo preamplifier, the APS 1 outboard PSU and two M408 monoblock power amplifiers. They were all of matching size and style so could be attractively placed together on an equipment rack, though the M408s were often located close to the loudspeakers to reduce cable losses. The output power was rated at 40W/8ohm…

Having previously launched its SCM20ASL in 2024 as a ‘Limited Edition’ to mark its 50th anniversary, British manufacturer ATC has put another version of the two-way active loudspeaker into full production. Designed for use in ‘small to medium’ rooms, and measuring 450x250x361mm (hwd), it partners a 150mm ‘Super Linear’ bass/mid driver with 25mm ‘S-Spec’ soft dome tweeter – each independently driven by Class A/B amplifier modules rated at 200W and 50W, respectively. Feeding the SCM20ASL’s active, analogue crossover network are balanced XLR inputs, located on a rear panel (with heatsink) next to controls for ‘Bass Shelf’ adjustment (±3dB) and input sensitivity. ATC says the crossover’s all-pass filtering improves phase response around the 2.2kHz handover, while the sealed 20-litre cabinet design maintains bass control ‘even when located close to walls’. Pricing…

Review: Adam Smith Lab: Paul Miller For a company that took three decades before introducing its first turntable, followed by a seven-year wait between the second and third models, SME seems now to be moving at a lightning pace. The flagship Model 60 arrived in 2022 [HFN Jul ’22], followed swiftly by Mk2 versions of the Models 12 and 15 over the next two years [HFN Jan ’23 and Jul ’24, respectively]. Now it has added two more turntables to its portfolio – the Model 8, replacing the Model 6 as SME’s entry-level unit, and the Model 35 seen here, slotting in below the Model 60. Retailing for £35,999 in black or silver, and £37,999 for anodised Midnight Blue or the steel-blue-tinged Gunmetal option of our unit, the family resemblance…

Review: Andrew Everard Lab: Paul Miller A rose by any other name is still a HiFi Rose? Well yes, it can appear that way: since it first arrived on the hi-fi scene, the Korean company has launched a head-spinning barrage of products, all of which can, at first glance, look rather similar. However, what’s been going on is a policy of expanding the appeal of the range upwards, downwards and outwards – the last, for example, by adding its own lineup of amplifiers – and introducing a programme of upgrades along the way. The result is a network player range now starting (at least in the UK) with the £2349 RS250A [HFN Feb ’23], moving up through the RS520 [HFN Jan ’23] – at £3349 complete with built-in amplification – and…

Review: Andrew Everard Lab: Paul Miller Underestimate the new generation of Chinese hi-fi manufacturers at your peril, be cause we’ve come a long way from cheap knockoffs of famous products, inexpensive music players and the like. Just as in the electric car industry, where Chinese companies are showing they have the skills and technology to match the very best, so it is in hi-fi, where brands including Eversolo [HFN May ’25] and FiiO – whose latest product, the £829 K17, we have here – are proving they can develop and innovate. Based in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, FiiO has gone from making neat digital music players [see boxout, p71] to offering a staggeringly huge ‘you want it, we probably make it’ audio range, from desktop DACs and amps to a selection of…

ORIGINAL VINYL & CASSETTE The original 1971 green label Aqualung LP [Chrysalis ILPS 9145, pictured] did the best it could do to replicate the band’s not-so-bad sonic intent. The debut cassette from the same year [Island ZCI 9145] featured a pink insert and labels, but a 1973 reissue [Chrysalis ZCHR 1044] switched these to green. QUADROPHONIC Like other artists of the time, Tull took to the quad format, giving Aqualung a 4.0 release in 1974 on eight-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape, followed by a quad LP in 1975 [Chrysalis CH4 1044]. As much as Anderson was intrigued, he still had qualms about it. ‘It’s kind of under-utilising the rear channels, isn’t it’? he recently mused to HFN. ORIGINAL CD & UPGRADES Aqualung landed on silver disc in 1983 [Chrysalis CCD 1044].…

THE MOVE Message From The Country Esoteric QECLEC2900 As a Move addict, I have at least five CDs of their fourth and final album from 1971, and this may be the best version yet. A masterpiece of unbridled eclecticism, it ranges from heavy to elegiac, novelty to vintage rock ’n’ roll. The UK has a curious relationship with The Move, thinking of it more as a Top Of The Pops band than nearly the equal of The Kinks, but this gem, which was recorded concurrently with the first Electric Light Orchestra album, is blissful British rock of the era. This newly remastered compilation, with excellent fresh liner notes, contains the nine bonus tracks from the 2005 reissue but the sound is superior, especially at the bottom end. KK Sound Quality:…

ANOUAR BRAHEM After The Last Sky ECM Records 75342877; LP: 7534425 (two discs) Tunisian-born oud player and composer Brahem continues to synthesise the Arab musical tradition with elements of western music and jazz. Here we have the lineup of 2017’s Blue Maqams, pianist Django Bates contributing only judicious amounts of western harmony over the secure foundation of Dave Holland’s bass, but with the excellent addition of cellist Anja Lechner, an ECM artist (and former member of the Rosamunde Quartett). As the lengthy liner essay explains, the context of this album is inevitably the tragedy of Gaza, and you could say that the music is more melancholy than ever. But the beauty of Brahem’s oud is transcendent. SH Sound Quality: 90% SCOTT HAMILTON Looking Back Stunt Records STUCD24072; LP: STUCD24071 The…

In PM’s boxout in the review of the System Audio Signature 5 [HFN Feb ’25], he did something I believe significant and possibly a little brave: he showed a graph of the uncorrected nearfield output of the loudspeaker’s port. His text also touched on the trade-offs involved with ported, reflex-loaded speakers. For me this debate goes back to the 1970s, and John Greenbank’s Tangent loudspeakers. John took an 8in bass and 0.75in tweeter and put them in two kinds of box: a smallish closed box, and a larger, ported box. He used the same crossover, I think built by Falcon Acoustics. I preferred the closed boxes. Less bass, but what was there sounded more natural and more immediate. The thing is, I reckoned I could hear other stuff coming out…