Tellurium Q Ultra Black II & Ultra Silver II speaker cables First of all, let me be clear about my long history with Tellurium Q loudspeaker cables. Many years ago, when I worked in the retail side of the audio industry, I bought with my own hard-earned (well I thought so) money, a pair of […]
Montaudio Bowen AC-1, Godley USB, Rakaia EH-1, Chatham SH-1 cable loom Apparently, there aren’t as many sheep in New Zealand these days so audio companies are taking up the economic slack, one such is Montaudio who make a wide range of cables and a beautiful rack, the Manuka MR, which is priced towards the top […]
William Eikos Terra Nova interconnect and Ultra Litz Field speaker cable Bill Funnell-Pilcher was a member of the Trichord triumvirate back in the nineties when it revealed that CD players could be significantly enhanced by upgrading the clocks within them, at the time the notion that clock quality mattered was a new one in digital […]
QED Supremus Zr loudspeaker cable When The Ear was offered one of the first samples of the new flagship QED Supremus Zr loudspeaker cable, we couldn’t resist. I personally was very keen to see what this British cable pioneer could do with this “no compromise” newcomer. Owned by Armour Home since 2004, cables and accessories […]
The Ear picks the best hi-fi of 2023 2023 has been a tough year for the hi-fi industry but that has done nothing to stem the flow of first class products coming to market. In fact there are even more extraordinary audio components to choose from than there were last year, with advances made in […]
QED Golden Anniversary XT speaker cable Like thousands of other lovers of quality home music and cinema reproduction, QED’s 79 Strand cable was the first specialist speaker cable to grace one of my systems. This cable has been on sale for forty-seven years, with their 42 strand cable a year older again. From memory, my […]
Townshend DCT Isolda and DCT 300 cables Townshend has been producing the DCT Isolda speaker and interconnect cable since the ’90s. Over that time, changes to the product have been incremental, which suggests they got the basics right in the first place. This review followed a chat between the editor and I regarding cable characteristics. […]
I would like to start this review with an apology to Joakim Juhl, the owner and chief designer of Oephi cables. He very kindly sent me a pair of the Lounge loudspeaker cables back in early August, followed shortly thereafter by a pair of the Lounge RCA interconnects. Now here we are in mid-November and […]
Despite knowing about cable manufacturer Atlas for many years, I only recently discovered that they are based just 25 miles away from me in Kilmarnock. It’s always inspiring to read about British success stories but local ones are even better. Founder and MD Kevin Kelly’s engineering background means the Ayrshire enterprise is very much science-led; […]
Tiglon’s 47-year-old founder, Kentaro Okino, became fascinated with the sonic properties of magnesium during his mechanical engineering studies and, after using it to suppress vibrations in loudspeaker stands and component isolation platforms, obtained an international patent in 2009 for its use as an electromagnetic wave shield in hi-fi cables. The Japanese company has been making […]
Investing in high-end audio equipment should take account of the cables used to connect the various pieces of equipment. It is so easy to upgrade one’s loudspeakers or a source component and neglect to appraise the quality of the interconnects or speaker cable. I have to confess that, using a Hegel H190 which combines the […]
Rega System One record player, amp & speakers At the last Bristol show, in the carefree days of February 2020, Rega launched its first all in one system and called it the Rega System One. Thanks to the pandemic the first examples of this system didn’t reach the shops until December last year, with a […]