ATC aren’t into change for changes sake, they won’t revise the range every year or so just to refresh its profile in the market, indeed even when they give something a major overhaul as is the case here the appearance remains much the same. The only external difference between the new CDA2 and its predecessor […]
Merging Technology Player & Power streamer and power supply I don’t suppose it’s deliberate but some companies manage to come up with the most confusing naming for their products and Merging Technologies has joined the club. Originally the Swiss brand brought out the NADAC network attached DAC, essentially a digital to analogue converter with a […]
The Chord Mojo DAC and headphone amp is a very nice piece of kit, compact and solid with coloured controls and amazing spec for the size and price, but it was designed to be used with a smartphone, which while undoubtedly very impressive devices are not the last word in high fidelity. A smartphone is […]
Last year Auralic introduced two new products that significantly upped the standard of build seen in their range up to that point. It’s not that the standard Vega or Polaris aren’t well executed and finished but rather that the G2 products are bigger, more substantial and have a form factor that fits in with high […]
Way back in the day, let’s call it the early seventies, a clever Scotsman made it clear that contrary to prevailing theory that loudspeakers were where it’s at, the turntable was in fact the source of the signal and thus the most critical element in the system. He was right and went on to sell […]
It’s been a bumper year for great new products at the Ear, there have been so many that our list has had to be expanded to cope. But fear not these are still the most essential new products to appear in 2017. The first one has not yet been reviewed on the Ear but René […]
It came as a surprise when I noticed that people were using the word Sonos as a generic name for streaming or multiroom sound systems. The brand has made it to Hoover status in under 15 years. It did this by making affordable attractive products with a control system that anyone could use, in the […]
For a long time Metrum Acoustics could only supply digital to analogue converters (DACs) at either end of the scale, they made expensive ones and relatively affordable examples but there was nothing in between. This gap has now been filled with the Onyx and Jade converters, derived from the Adagio and Pavane models with almost […]
In our steady progress through Auralic’s slowly expanding range of streaming devices we have enjoyed the Aries Mini network streamer and Altair streamer/preamplifier, so it made sense to move onto the Altair based all in one integrated amplifier, DAC and streamer the Polaris. This was until recently the top model but the introduction of the […]
When Naim announced the new Uniti models last year little did we know just how different they would be to the range that was replaced. Gone is the brushed aluminium facia and black paint finish and with it the straightforward rectangular box construction. Now we have a shiny and slick bit of casework design that […]
It says something about the size of the German market that AVM, a brand with a substantial range of high end hardware, was virtually unknown on these shores until it started working with PMC. AVM’s products have so much consistency of industrial design that it’s difficult to tell them apart at a glance, it’s hard […]
Ken Ishiwata is a bona fide hi-fi guru, he’s got the look, the clothes and the underground lair, I mean listening room, to die for. In an unassuming office building in Eindhoven, Holland, Ishiwata has created one of the best sounding rooms in the world (see more here and here). This is where he refines […]