Seeing that Monitor Audio is celebrating its 50th birthday, it seems an ideal opportunity to look at one of the brand’s most popular models which has just has just been updated and relaunched. First launched back in 1999, the 7th generation Silver 100 remains a compact, two-way bass reflex design for stand-mount use, or bookshelf […]
Goodness, I can’t recall the last time I was able to put an FM tuner through its paces and yet there was a time when I used to undertake group tests, there were so many coming to the market. Having recently enjoyed the streamer/DAC/integrated SDA200 Signature from French manufacturer Atoll I jumped at the chance […]
For an inveterate tinkerer, playing with turntables, cartridges and pick-up arms has given me countless hours of pleasure. In many ways there’s nothing more satisfying than tweaking and easing settings to wring the very best performance out of a record player. Some, of course, make a living out of doing just that, and I’m sure […]
I’ll not beat about the bush. Until recently, I’d not heard any full-range Class D amplification that I felt to be on a level with what’s possible from well-executed Class AB or Class A amplification. While the Class D that I have heard did seem to give a good account of itself when asked to […]
Vivid’s Giya G1 Spirit is not only a dramatic looking loudspeaker, it is a radical reworking of how a loudspeaker is designed and built. It makes the majority of other speakers look like variations on a well worn theme, it makes wooden box technology look as outdated as the horse and carriage. The Vivid approach […]
Australia is not a country that’s often associated with high-end audio, I imagine that most of us would struggle to name a single manufacturer based there without the aid of a search engine. I first read of Serhan Swift a few years back when a friend paid a visit to their factory whilst on holiday […]
The loudspeaker market has been dominated by narrow baffle loudspeakers for so long that the appearance of wide/shallow retro style models is a welcome change. JBL was the first big brand to get this trend on its way with their reworkings of the L100, a 1970’s classic with a distinctive waffle style grille and aesthetics […]
Just how much do we need to spend to acquire a decent integrated amplifier? A budget of, say £1,000, will net a large number of candidates. But if we also want bona-fide high-end sonic credentials, then the number of options becomes markedly smaller. Readers who have read my short bio here on The Ear will already be […]
Loudspeakers can sometimes be the make or break of a system. After all, having got the system nicely set up, the right front end, amplification and cables a house move brings a new room and the delights which came before evaporate, then the realisation dawns that, no matter what, despite the rest of the system […]
This standalone upsampler exemplifies one key difference between digital and analogue systems. With turntables and tape recorders less is genuinely more, the fewer the elements that the signal has to pass through before it gets to the amplifier the less the signal is changed or degraded. With digital sources extra processing such as that provided […]
OK. So turntables are still the ‘new kid on the block’ after all this time, and still the debates rage regarding whether they should be suspended, rigidly mounted, plinth or no plinth, belt, idler or direct drive… But let’s face it, as with speaker types, or your preferred music to listen to, it’s whether a […]
It’s not clear when looking at a single product from M2Tech’s Rockstars range why they have a particular name, but gather the model names together and you have the Crosby power amplifier, Nash phono preamplifier and Young DAC as well as a Joplin ADC/phono stage and a Mitchell active crossover among others. Stills doesn’t seem […]