Just over a year ago Chord Co, cable mongers to the pace, rhythm and timing cognoscenti, introduced Tuned ARAY to its Sarum range of top ranking interconnects. I got fabulous results with this cable, it’s the first Chord Co cable that has really made an impression, and I have subsequently used Sarum Tuned ARAY analogue […]
Ayre is one of those companies that quietly gets on with producing innovative, well thought out and in my experience great sounding hardware. I have tried amplifiers and CD players in the past and always mourned their loss when the review period came to an end, so when the opportunity arose to listen to the […]
A former turntable manufacturer turned data storage giant has built an audio oriented NAS drive that gives streamers a real shot in the arm. Maki Electronics Laboratory Co was set up in 1975 to make high mass turntables with outboard motors and silk thread drives along with line level preamplifiers. No power amplifiers ever emerged […]
Can this Musical Fidelity integrated with onboard DAC sound as good as it looks? Réne closes his eyes and lets the music work its magic. When I was asked to pick a Musical Fidelity amplifier for a review I was attracted to the beautiful silver front and the quietly shining LEDs of the M3si, but […]
René didn’t like class D amplifiers but that has all changed now that he’s heard this remarkable pairing from NAD. High resolution, power and features, what’s not to like?Several years ago I considered New Acoustic Dimension, NAD for short, to be a high profile manufacturer specializing in mid-fi that also tried its hand in the […]
This is a DAC with a difference from a Dutch startup that seems to have considered all the options and produced a humdinger straight from the gate. Products from small new companies are often fraught with challenges as far as the consumer is concerned. Can I trust this (new) brand? Will it last? What if […]
I don’t know about you but Elipson’s spherical Planet loudspeakers are among the most attractive in the business, the timeless geometric design has been in production for decades and deservedly so. I guess it was inevitable that one day they would come to the conclusion that some matching electronics might not be such a bad […]
Like father, like son is certainly true for Paul and Scott McGowan of PS Audio. Scott developed his own amplifier under the name of his father’s company but financed it with crowd sourcing website Kickstarter. It’s a totally different amplifier to anything PS Audio has yet made, both in looks and technology. The Sprout is […]
Naim's qutest streaming amplifier is 2 and for its birthday the engineers in Salisbury gave it a new antenna and access to more music than you can shake a baton at. Why review this 2014 revamp of Naim’s most affordable streaming amplifier now? Because alongside the rest of the Uniti range it recently gained two […]
Dutch DAC specialist Metrum Acoustics has always been at the forefront of digital technology, but with its latest creation it has re-written the rules of digital to analogue conversion so comprehensively that René had no choice but to buy one. The story of Metrum Acoustics started for me in 2010 when the first NOS Mini […]
Want a streamer but don't want get involved with networks and separates? Novafidelity's X12 is about the least expensive answer on the market. There are a number of ways to get into music streaming, apparently the simplest is to add a DAC to a computer but what that doesn’t reveal is that you need to […]
Bluesound is NAD in disguise. Made by the same Canadian parent company this range of streaming audio products ticks all the boxes in René's list of what's required in a decent multiroom product. The market for products that can rip, store and play music is rapidly growing and has full press attention worldwide, but that […]