520sw-510mk2-main

Way back in the day when Tom Evans was modifying Pioneer CD players with clock upgrades, let’s call it the nineties, he got enthusiastic about Jordan full range drive units. It happens to a lot of people but most stick them in wooden cabinets and make another me too product, Tom had a different idea. […]

Contour-20-grey-walnut-rosewood

Introduced in 2016 the Dynaudio Contour 20 is the smallest member of a range that keeps the longstanding Contour name alive for Dynaudio. Evolution has not only changed the size but also the drivers, the looks, the materials and the crossover into a modern product, looking extremely fresh for the Danish who have always been […]

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I imagine that even the youngest readers will have heard of the most famous BBC monitor speaker the LS3/5a, originally developed in 1975 for use in mobile recording vans to monitor speech. It was the successor to the LS3/5, and created because KEF no longer made the necessary drivers. The ‘a’ version made use of […]


TotemSky_BlackAsh

I heard a pair of the new Totem Sky monitors on a visit to a dealer, it was only a short listen but long enough to recognise the sheer quality and make me want to hear them at home. A couple of weeks later I picked them up and since then they have been making […]

Audioengine-HD6-walnut-

Active loudspeakers are hot, once the preserve of studio monitoring, speakers with built in amplifiers can be found across the board from Bluetooth boxes through soundbars to serious hi-fi. A brand that has been nibbling away at the affordable end of the audio market is Audioengine, an American company who’s direct approach at the Munich […]

Concept-20-black-white-3

I was well aware of the reputation of the British brand Q Acoustics prior to these products. It wins lots of awards and I’d heard them at several shows, so when I was offered the chance to hear them at home I got greedy and took both Concept 20 monitors and Concept 40 floor standers. […]


sony_SS-NA5ES_main

These little Sony speakers came up in a conversation I was having with a Hollywood film editor who’s heavily into hi-fi. He had heard them at a reviewer’s house in the States and said I should give them a go as he thought I would like them, knowing my love for BBC monitor speaker designs.  […]

DYN_Excite_X44_main

In the past I have not been a big fan of Dynaudio loudspeakers, not that I doubt their quality, but somehow my rooms and the speakers never were a good match. But times change even at Dynaudio and as soon as I heard a demo of the Excite X18 on T+A electronics I asked for […]

atohm-gt1hd-white-pair

Atohm may not be a familiar name to many readers, but when we couple Atohm to Devialet and mention that these two companies brought us the Devialet Ensemble 120/GT1 it might a ring a bell. Atohm is a French company that was chosen to supply loudspeakers for a Devialet package that is sold worldwide under […]


elac-debut-b6-pair

For a long time German loudspeakers were considered heavy in the bass and bright in the treble, but that was last century, things have changed. Maybe ELAC considered this when they opened a second research centre, this time in the USA, to finally shed that image. The designer in the USA is Andrew Jones, a […]

Harbeth-40

There are more than a few reviewers around the world who own Harbeth speakers and I am among them. So when the first pair of Harbeth’s new M40.2 flagship monitor arrived in the Netherlands, I was one of the first to give them a listen. I instantly loved what I heard and when the opportunity […]

dali-opticon-1-2-main

Small loudspeakers are attractive to nearly everyone, even audiophiles, and modern technology makes it possible to reduce cabinet size without losing too much quality. As the majority of speakers in the world attest it is possible to produce satisfying music even if the lowest bass notes are lost in the process. In their favour smaller […]