Primare PRE35 streaming preamplifier Primare is a Swedish company that conducts its design work in Sweden and manufactures in China. Their philosophy is based on the very Scandinavian concepts of lagom and hygge. Lagom roughly meaning ‘just the right amount, not too much, not too little, everything in perfect balance, harmony, and proportion – just […]
Emotiva XDA3 DAC/preamp The marketing line ‘why pay more?’ is as old as retailing itself but, for the longest time, it hasn’t prevented audiophiles answering quite reasonably: ‘above a certain level, small improvements start to cost a lot’. The law of diminishing returns has been a thorny fact of life for hi-fi owning music lovers […]
McIntosh C55 preamplifier McIntosh Laboratory Inc, to give the company its full name, has been designing and manufacturing high fidelity equipment in Binghamton New York since 1949, which means that when my family and I moved to Broome County (of which Binghamton is the largest town) in New York State in 1985, the brand was […]
Audia Flight FLS1/FLS4 pre/power amplifiers Italy is a beautiful country in parts, and the Italians are no strangers to the high life. I have never been brave enough to provide a home for any of the many exotic cars I often find myself drooling over, and their racing bikes tend to be too small for […]
Leema Neutron & Graviton pre & power amplifiers Leema Acoustics launched its Quantum range of entry level electronics late last year, the first to come our way are the Neutron, an analogue and digital preamplifier bristling with input options and boasting onboard DAC and MM/MC phono stage, and the matching Graviton is a 150 Watt […]
Benchmark DAC3 HGC DAC/pre and AHB2 stereo power amp I suppose it’s having grown-up with it, as it were, in my early BBC days but I just love the look, feel and operation of professional audio equipment. When the chance presented itself to try some Benchmark electronics from the US, I just could not resist. […]
Naim NSS 333 streamer, NAC 332 preamplifier, NAP 350 power amplifiers Apparently the NAC 332 is the first Naim preamplifier to have an onboard power supply. In a day and age when finding any preamplifier without its own power supply is unlikely this is hardly shocking but it’s clearly a change of approach for Salisbury’s […]
Bricasti Design M19 SACD/CD transport, M1 Series II DAC, M20 preamplifier and M25 power amplifier Bricasti products reveal their heritage in the casework design, a style that comes from company founders Brian Zolner and Casey Dowdell whose backgrounds were with Lexicon and who work closely with former Madrigal Labs engineers. The latter manufactured Mark Levinson […]
Moon 791 preamplifier/streamer/DAC and 761 power amp As the owner of a Moon integrated amplifier and streaming DAC, I have been looking forward to trying this combination since news of its launch surfaced earlier this year. Even for those new to this most prominent Canadian audio brand, we at The Ear feel that the launch […]
Naim NSC 222, NPX 300 & NAP 250 The Naim New Classic range marks the beginning of an era for the Salisbury based electronics brand, a company that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It is the first change to Naim’s core product line since the introduction of Naim Classic in 2002. The Mu-So and […]