Hegel D50 DAC I was encouraged to do something unusual when reviewing Hegel’s latest digital to analogue converter the D50, that was to listen to the system without it then plug it in and listen to the same system and see if anything changed. The D50 has a device on board that should improve the […]
Rotel Michi Q5 CD transport and DAC Receiving any CD player for review in 2025 is a relatively unusual experience. Even though the death of CD is rather overstated, it might be fair to say that the format is enjoying a graceful decline. When I think about the players that I have received in recent […]
Topping D900 DAC Does it really need to be said that the time is long past when made-in-China audio kit was almost always a copy of western designs? Today, not only do a very large number of the west’s audio companies rely on China for high-quality, low-cost manufacturing, but China’s universities are churning out bright […]
Bonawatt Triton integrated amplifier There is often talk of technologies becoming obsolete and even in the world of audio it occasionally happens, but more often than not older tech carries alongside the new. Vinyl was written off as dead in 25 years ago yet appears to have the upper hand on its enemy CD today, […]
Atoll CD400 Evolution CD player and DAC We’ve all been lost in an internet rabbit hole, gone down a Youtube tunnel and found ourselves in no-man’s-land. Can you remember the last time you got lost in your own CD collection? The Atoll CD400 Evo sent me on such a journey. It took me so far […]
Heed Abacus S streaming DAC Hungarian hi-fi manufacturers are not two a penny, at least not among brands available in the UK. From what I have seen and heard from them over the years, Heed Audio like to do things a little differently. I purchased their Cannalot III, Class A headphone amplifier a couple of […]
Laiv Harmony DAC Way back in the 20th century, Sony and Philips set the CD standard at the maximum for current technology. A bit depth of 16 bits was the limit of what could be achieved for recording, storing and decoding as an affordable commercial product and was deemed adequate for good sound quality, providing […]
CAD 1543 MkIII DAC By the standards of domestic electronics separates hi-fi is pretty hairshirt stuff, it takes up a lot of space, isn’t very easy to use and sounds its best with media that you actually have to pay for. In an age of instant access and inexpensive alternatives it’s remarkable that anyone bothers […]
Emotiva XDA3 DAC/preamp The marketing line ‘why pay more?’ is as old as retailing itself but, for the longest time, it hasn’t prevented audiophiles answering quite reasonably: ‘above a certain level, small improvements start to cost a lot’. The law of diminishing returns has been a thorny fact of life for hi-fi owning music lovers […]
Cambridge Audio EXN100 streamer/DAC Sometimes a product arrives out of the blue with impeccable timing; so it was with the new network player from Cambridge Audio. The EXN100 is a complex beast, featuring a DAC to handle various digital inputs, comprehensive streaming abilities, internet radio and a preamplifier. Until Qobuz get their act together and […]
Electrocompaniet EC1M MkII streamer & DAC The ECM 1 MkII is not a new product but my attention was drawn to it by someone whose ears I have come to trust, namely Rich Trussel of Network Acoustics. Rich has a pretty fancy system with Vivid G2 speakers and a Soulution power amplifier, he must be […]
Bricasti Design M11 R-2R Classic DAC When Madrigal Labs folded in 2004 and the Mark Levinson brand they worked for was sold to Harman, Brian Zolner and Casey Dowdell combined their names with a little bit of Italian flare to create Bricasti Design. These guys are audio engineers to the core, not the sort of […]