Readers may recall that I wrote enthusiastically about Hegel’s entry-level Röst integrated amplifier/DAC back in 2017 and was very excited when an upgraded replacement was announced late last year. The Hegel H120 is born and, to all intents and purposes, looks almost identical to the Röst which I have continued to use with great satisfaction. For those […]
I left hi-fi retail in 2015 and moved to Devon, bringing with me the best system that our limited budget would allow, and made a few purchases on the advice of respected industry friends to ensure that I could continue to enjoy my record collection for as long as possible. Included in the equipment which […]
For a small island, Great Britain has an extraordinary number of very accomplished manufacturers of excellent audio equipment. In recent years many famous brands have been taken over by foreign conglomerates, but some have remained proudly British in both their design and manufacture. One such company is Exposure, who have been proudly creating and building […]
With audio just part of their electronics portfolio, Trigon is a German brand with top engineering credentials. Trevor Butler takes a look at the latest design, the heavyweight Exxceed integrated amplifier. Having relied on Trigon monoblock amplification in my main system for several years now I was interested to see the release in Munich last […]
Back in 2009, just after I moved into the audio industry having been a customer of it for almost 30 years, I heard a Lyngdorf all digital amplifier for the first time and was sufficiently impressed to buy one to use in my own system. It was radically different from what had gone before and […]
A friend has described (on more than one occasion) the times he lay on his teenage bed playing Close to the Edge through headphones and feeling like he was levitating, such was the potency of that classic Yes album. I didn’t do that, no headphones for a start, but if the Moon homepage is any indication it seems that […]
I originally heard about this beefy integrated in discussions with Rega’s electronics guru Terry Bateman in mid 2018, but the Aethos didn’t make a public appearance until the Bristol show in February 19, and even then was only at the prototype stage. It took another eight months to go into production, clearly Rega doesn’t like […]
Back in the first decade of this century before the advent of the Supernait 3, I was a well-paid employee of a well known high tech firm, that’s when I bought my first piece of Naim equipment, a CD5X disc player. Within five years that had somehow grown into two racks of Fraim, with a […]
One of my very first reviews for the Ear, almost a year ago, was of the YBA Passion IA350 integrated amplifier and the matching CD430 disc player. I was very impressed with them and so when the UK distributor asked if I would like to hear the most recent Heritage amplifier, the A200, it was a pleasure […]
To describe the Norwegian-conceived Hegel H190 as merely an integrated amplifier does it a disservice. Successor to the award-winning H160 it benefits from company founder Bent Holter’s refined SoundEngine2, first seen in the more powerful H360 model and boasting ten-times lower distortion than the first-generation. Added to this the unit’s onboard streaming ability (Tidal, Spotify, […]
I have always been a sucker for Constellation Audio, before I even heard one I was smitten. There are many ultra fi electronics brands in the high end omniverse but none makes products that look as good as a Constellation. The Integrated 1.0 is the most affordable complete amplifier in the range yet it still […]
Recently I seem to have had a lot of contact with Italian audio components and the latest to grace my equipment rack is the Norma HS-IPA1. Packed into its diminutive case work there is a solid state amplifier, a phono stage, a headphone amplifier and a DAC, which is really quite remarkable. Norma is based […]