2021 may not have been the year that many of us had hoped for, there was only one hi-fi show in the UK and not many more elsewhere, but that hasn’t stopped manufacturers both large and small who have produced some absolutely outstanding audio components in that time. Our best of the year round up […]
Vibrations; can’t live with them, can’t hear anything without them. In order to turn an electric signal into sound a loudspeaker has to vibrate, likewise a stylus is vibrated by the the side of a vinyl groove and this produces a (tiny) electrical signal. In an ideal world these would be the only things that […]
Vinyl is easily the most fabulous medium for recorded music ever created. It may not sound quite as good as tape nor have the potential for dynamic range and bass power available with digital but on the one hand most of the music ever produced is available on vinyl and on the other sound quality […]
Over the years I have experimented with various types of audio isolation system, with a view to eradicating the unwelcome effect of mechanical vibration and microphony on various parts of my audio set up. I have tried everything from squash balls cut in half (less mad than it sounds), through Sorbothane in various thicknesses and […]
Record cleaning is a topic which can spark off some lively discussions among vinyl lovers. Some believe in it, some swear by it and some are definitely sceptical. I am definitely a believer and own a well-regarded record cleaner which has served me well for a few years. A thing of beauty it is not […]
The nature of music is vibration, if air molecules didn’t vibrate we wouldn’t hear any sound. If that was only thing in an audio reproduction system that vibrated the audio engineer’s life would be a lot easier. Because the air has to be vibrated the devices that achieve that excitement tend to move as well […]
With many of today’s audio components requiring external power supplies there is the potential to upgrade performance by replacing these often inexpensive wall-wart style supplies with better quality alternatives made by third party companies. This is nothing new of course but the variety of DACs, headphone amplifiers and other components that have low voltage external […]
It says something about the state of British manufacturing when a brand that once adorned trains and jet planes is used by a cable company on a network switch, but English Electric became part of GEC in the late sixties and like some of the great audio marques of that era it pretty well disappeared. […]
IsoAcoustics isolating stands and pucks have been cropping up in recording studios worldwide since the Canadian manufacturer’s founding in 2012. In the last two years the company has focused its efforts on replicating this success in the consumer audio market and now offers an interesting range of audiophile isolation products. A few months ago I […]
A good friend of mine manages a high end audio shop in Central London, and we often chat about system tweaks and other audio trivia. For quite a while now he has been urging me to try Shunyata Research mains cables. He powers his own system (which is worth about the same as my house […]
The CAD GC or Ground Control devices were created specifically to combat the noise floating around on the AC power supply in your home that is created by switched mode power supplies, computers, wi-fi, routers etc. This noise is at high frequencies beyond the audible but it creates the noise floor of an audio system, […]
When I told an acquaintance that I was doing this review his cup of scepticism overflowed. Let me paraphrase, and sanitise, his comments for a mixed audience. ‘Ha! More snake oil. How can rational people be taken in so easily? It’s a wire with a plug at one end and an IEC socket at the […]