QED celebrates Golden Anniversary XT
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 […]
The Townshend DCT Isolda advantage
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. […]
Oephi Lounge
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 […]
Atlas Arran
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 TPL cables
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 […]
Black Rhodium Polka S
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 the complete vinyl package
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 […]
Best Hi-Fi Components of 2021
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 […]
Zavfino 1877Phono Fusion MkII, Nova-OCC
You may never have come across the brand Zavfino before now, especially here in the UK, but that is all about to change as Audio Pinnacle, UK distributor of the excellent Audel loudspeakers, has added the brand to its portfolio of products. Pinnacle founder John Simm, told me that after a long search he had […]
LA Sound Titan & Corium
Lozzo Atestino near Padua looks like a typical provincial Italian town, with a castle, piazza and plenty of churches. It doesn’t appear to be the sort of place where you would find high end cables being manufactured from raw materials, yet this is where Comar S.r.l. who make the LA Sound range of cables is […]
OePhi Transcendence and Immanence
I consider it my primary duty as a reviewer to be honest with you, loyal reader, and so I must begin this piece by telling you that when our esteemed editor asked me if I would review cables from a new company based in Denmark called Oephi, I groaned inwardly. Not more cables? Do we […]
Atlas Hyper Z 2-4, Element and Ailsa Achromatic
There are cable buyers who purchase in the hope that new wire will somehow improve a system in which they find fault, and cable buyers who purchase in the hope that the new wire will let them hear the benefits of the wonderful new components for which they have parted with their hard earned cash. […]