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I have been involved in reviewing hi-fi equipment for some time now, but only occasionally have I been genuinely excited but also nervous about receiving a piece of equipment to audition. When the editor told me that his request to Linn Audio for a review sample of their range-topping LP12 had been approved, I actually […]

Rega System One

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 […]

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The wonderful thing about turntables is that they inspire a wide variety of ideas about how best to go about the tricky job of extracting the vibrations from a vinyl groove. On the one hand they are pretty crude, all that’s required is to get the groove to rotate under the stylus at the right […]


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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 […]

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Vertere Sabre moving magnet cartridge When the Vertere Sabre arrived, the first thing to admire was the manner in which it is packaged. It is bolted to the door of a two tier plastic structure with two knurled thumb screws. Simple and effective. Having liberated it from that safe environment, mounting it on to my […]

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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 […]


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Almost a year ago The Ear published my review of the VPI Prime Signature turntable, which you can find here. In summary, I found it to be an excellent machine, with fine build quality and excellent sonics. Here we are, an eventful 12 months later, and I have had another VPI machine in my system, this time […]

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I recently posted on an audio themed social media group that I was about to embark on a review to compare a second generation cable to its predecessor. Another member, who is not somebody known to me, jumped in and told me in no uncertain terms that without a double blind listening this would be […]

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The BBC runs a very popular police drama called Line of Duty, the latest season of which is currently being broadcast on Sunday nights. One of the most common comments on-line and in the press about this gripping series concerns the barrage of acronyms and abbreviations threaded through the dialogue. My theory is that the […]


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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. […]

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I first visited Monmouth County in central New Jersey in December 1981. I had joined a company called Perkin Elmer Data Systems which was based in Oceanport, New Jersey and was sent there, with a British colleague, for two weeks to learn all about the products which I was going to be selling. This was […]

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I have been fortunate enough to have had two Vertere Acoustics turntables through my system for review, and found them both to be class leaders at their price point. I am a great admirer of Touraj Moghaddan, as a designer, as an engineer and as a brilliant ambassador for our sometimes erratic industry. Having founded […]