2021 may not have been the year that many of us had hoped for, there was only one hi-fi show in the UK and not many more elsewhere, but that hasn’t stopped manufacturers both large and small who have produced some absolutely outstanding audio components in that time. Our best of the year round up […]
Chord Electronics’ much anticipated 2yu network bridge started shipping proper this summer, more than a year after its big reveal in early 2020 just before Covid put a rather big dampener on things. 2yu is built specifically to partner 2go and allows the bolt-on streamer/server originally designed for Chord’s award-winning Hugo2 portable DAC/headphone amp to […]
It’s funny how, after all my years in evaluating both hardware and software in the home music replay industry, there are still some venerable (not old but respected and well-established) names that have not passed through my listening room. In the speaker line I’ve had most types here, including stats, planars, horns, infinite baffles, plasma […]
Historically at least priorities in audio have varied between the UK and the US. Americans hold that the loudspeaker is the most important part of any sound system, they tend to spend more on speakers than any other part of the audio chain. In Britain, ever since a certain Scotsman started preaching that the source […]
Vertere Sabre moving magnet cartridge When the Vertere Sabre arrived, the first thing to admire was the manner in which it is packaged. It is bolted to the door of a two tier plastic structure with two knurled thumb screws. Simple and effective. Having liberated it from that safe environment, mounting it on to my […]
My last Tellurium Q review was back in August of this year, when I reported the results of my listening tests with the Mk II version of Tellurium Q’s Black RCA interconnects. Three months on and the latest Mk II version of a Black series cable has arrived, this time in the guise of a […]
Vibrations; can’t live with them, can’t hear anything without them. In order to turn an electric signal into sound a loudspeaker has to vibrate, likewise a stylus is vibrated by the the side of a vinyl groove and this produces a (tiny) electrical signal. In an ideal world these would be the only things that […]
You may never have come across the brand Zavfino before now, especially here in the UK, but that is all about to change as Audio Pinnacle, UK distributor of the excellent Audel loudspeakers, has added the brand to its portfolio of products. Pinnacle founder John Simm, told me that after a long search he had […]
Egglestonworks is one of those American brands that you rarely encounter on British shores, its loudspeakers have tended to be large, masculine in style and very often black. Qualities that do not endear them to the limited space in homes on this side of the Atlantic, so it was encouraging to be introduced to Emma […]
It’s been such a long time coming that some people in the head-fi community were beginning to wonder whether California’s Audeze had lost interest in the high-end headphone market. After the launch of the company’s flagship LCD-4 in 2017, which Stereophile’s John Atkinson claimed was the finest sounding headphone he had heard in 45 years, […]
Back in April of this year The Ear published my review of the Kudos Cardea C20 floorstanding loudspeakers. To save you the trouble of trawling that far back, I’ll summarise my findings – I loved them. Fast forward to September and I was offered the chance to hear the smallest of the current Cardea family, […]
Colorado-based Sparkos Labs quietly built a reputation designing high quality, discrete op-amps, voltage regulators and power supplies for other headphone amp manufacturers and DIY upgraders. This is why I was surprised when their recently appointed UK distributor asked if I’d be interested in reviewing the Aries headphone amplifier, which is not only Sparkos’ first retail […]