We are used to miniaturization today, the Japanese got very good at it many years ago so we tend to take for granted what are tremendous engineering feats. Nonetheless the feature count on the Mytek Brooklyn does take the proverbial biscuit. For a start it's both an analogue and a digital preamplifier with single ended […]
Does the name Gato Audio ring a bell? Does this Danish audio company have any presence where you are? If not that’s a pity because Gato Audio deserves your attention for the high standards it sets in design both inside and outside its products. I want to share the joy that this amplifier has brought […]
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 […]
Every streaming system needs a library, not the sort that furnishes a room but typically a hard drive where all your music is stored. You can get by on streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal if you want more music but there’s a monthly fee and a quality compromise. Most digital music libraries are stored […]
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 […]
Melco shook up my reference system last year when they leant me an N1A music server with USB as well as a direct Ethernet output, a spinning disc hard drive with linear power supplies that meant I no longer needed a network switch in the system. Having both outputs from the one device means it’s […]
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 […]
Streaming music over your home network is a great way to enjoy a collection once it is ripped to any kind of storage device. For many of us this could be a (dedicated) computer, a hard drive, a NAS or a music server. Playback could be in one location only or in multiple rooms with […]
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 […]