A relatively new kid on the block, Hegel is making waves in audio markets around the globe by thinking outside the box, as Trevor Butler discovered when auditioning their latest integrated amp with on-board DAC. Taking the smartly-branded white carton from Editor Kennedy I was staggered at the weight, after all this is just an […]
Focusing now on digital ingenuity, German brand Lindemann launches a new range of compact electronics. Trevor Butler put the top-of-the-range DAC through its paces and liked what he heard…Lindemann is an audiophile brand created by Norbert Lindemann back in 1993 with a range of integrated amps and speakers. Later a CD player and phono stage […]
2016 might have been a bad year for rock stars but it was a good one for audio equipment. We saw and heard a plethora of fabulous new components that made our systems sing and renewed our love of music. Rather than trying to find something worthy in a variety of categories we picked the […]
There are a few different ways to get music streaming into your life, you can hook up a laptop to a DAC or you can connect a hard drive and a streamer to your network. The former approach is popular because many of us have laptops, but these are compromised by the electrically noisy nature […]
Prism Sound’s reputation preceded it when it finally entered the domestic hi-fi business earlier in the year. The Cambridge based company has been making converters for the studio market since 1987 and its top pro DAC is a cult product amongst those in the know. PMC founder Peter Thomas has one in his main system […]
From the first digital to analogue converter ever made by Metrum Acoustics they have taken a different route to most manufacturers. The majority use conversion chips by Burr Brown, Philips, TI or Wolfson to name a few, Metrum selected an industrial DAC chip and claimed its high speed architecture improved the conversion. A lot of […]
Streaming audio is beginning to mature, there is a general consensus about how things should be done for best sound and ease of use, and even the spiky issue of which format to use is starting to become clear. But there are still two schools of thought, there’s the Mac and DAC with USB connection […]
A faun is a mythological figure; half man, half goat. However, there is nothing mythological about the two Pink Faun audio components that have been been in my system for some time now. And the only pink I see is in the LEDs on the front of the DAC and streamer from this Dutch company, […]
Despite being 35 years old the Halo Integrated or Hint is the first integrated amplifier that Parasound has made. It’s not clear why it took them this long but it may be something to do with the companies enthusiasm for offering more features than you can shake a stick at in products that have audiophile […]
In 1987 Arcam paved the way for the consumer DAC industry with the release of their Black Box, the very first outboard D/A converter to target this market. Somewhat ahead of their time, another 23 years would pass before Arcam returned to what is now a fiercely competitive sector, and a concerted effort has clearly […]
It all started when someone said it was hard to find compact amplifiers that you could plug into the USB output of a computer and use with a pair of small speakers on the desktop. It turns out that this is a relatively rare breed and the selection we have gathered represents a fair proportion […]
When it comes to audio components I prefer the designs of a knowledgeable person who follows their own path. A man, in this business it’s usually a man, who builds a design from scratch, using a love for music, technical knowledge and a commitment to excellence as the main tools. A man like Cees Ruijtenberg; […]