The Ear’s reviewers pick the best hi-fi of 2024 If you want to know the best hi-fi of 2024, the audio products that really wowed our reviewers this year look no further. These components that made a lasting impression, they are the ones reviewers would have held onto if they could and sometimes did. There […]
Living Voice OBX-R80 loudspeakers Living Voice was born out of desire to make loudspeakers that were suitable for the valve/tube electronics. Founder Kevin Scott got his start with Definitive Audio selling tube amplifiers and a small range of speakers that were suited to their relatively low power, but when such models as he considered of […]
Monitor Audio Gold 500 6G speakers I had not long read Trevor Butler’s review of the Monitor Audio Studio 89 speaker in this publication when I was asked if I would take a look at the top-of-the-range model from the newly launched range. This request was timely, as it caught me pondering that I had […]
Bowers & Wilkins 702 S3 Signature Bowers & Wilkins have established a working pattern over the last decade or so that sees certain models from their upper ranges upgraded to Signature status after they have been on the market for a while. We saw this most recently with the 801 Signature and this year the […]
Ophidian Ffion speakers As a reviewer who has form for turning the spotlight on less well-known brands, I find a particular pathology often on display in audio dealer showrooms really quite fascinating. Say a customer auditions three contending models of speakers; among them is one that isn’t the creature of a big brand A or […]
Art Emotion Carbon 6 loudspeakers The latest range of loudspeakers from Art may only have been in production for a matter of months, but they owe their existence to an ongoing quest by the company to refine its innovative cabinet designs and choice of drive units. This has resulted in the current comprehensive line-up of […]
Rega Aya speakers After decades of reviewing audio products, I cannot believe that this is the first Rega design to pass through my hands: the British company is long-standing and has a loyal following. It was therefore with more than the usual excitement of receiving a new item that I unboxed the floorstanding Aya loudspeakers, […]
Vivid Audio Moya M1 loudspeakers The Moya is by far and away the largest loudspeaker that Vivid have ever made, in fact it’s one of the biggest speakers that anyone has ever made outside of the wild world of horns. Each one is made up of six parts; a plinth, four bass cabinets weighing 60kg […]
Diapason Ares Excel speakers Having revelled in what several bookshelf Diapason loudspeakers from Italy can achieve, I was intrigued to note an inexpensive floorstander in the catalogue, the only other one being a £55,000 design and (way) over my pay grade. The Ares Excel is probably the narrowest floorstanding loudspeaker I have ever used (5 […]
Fyne Audio F703SP loudspeakers Surface area equals pi times the square of the radius is one of the equations that imposes immutable constraints on passive loudspeakers. Forgive the maths refresher, but the size of the driver or drivers has an effect on the lowest bass notes a speaker can produce, together with other parameters the […]
Audio Physic Codex loudspeakers I last reviewed Audio Physic speakers some twenty-odd years ago. I remember that this German company had novel ways of solving problems, and the speakers were so good I was sad to see them go. In the intervening years their presence had all but faded away in the UK, so they […]
Oephi Immanence 2.5 loudspeakers Reviewing Oephi’s standmount Transcendence 2 earlier in the year gave me a taste for the fast, dynamic and frankly thrilling sound of this Danish cable maker’s loudspeakers, it didn’t take long before a request was put in for something bigger. That bigger speaker is the Immanence 2.5, which is not the […]