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 […]
If you play a competitive sport at almost any level you will become aware that there are people who are better than you and others who are better than them, and so it goes until you get to Roger Federer. There are almost limitless gradations between beginners and champions, yet at every level of ability […]
I had a lot of fun with the last .21 model from PMC, the twenty.21 is small and energetic with a lot of charm, a genuine pocket rocket of a speaker that makes up for its limited bass extension with superb timing and musicality. So when the twenty5.21 turned up I was expecting the same […]
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 […]
When you make as many loudspeakers as Bowers & Wilkins do it must occasionally get difficult thinking up new range names. Before the 700 series there was the CM or compact monitor series that sat between the 600 and 800 ranges, a range that grew out of one model in a distinctly organic fashion. So […]
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 […]
Mains power; can’t live with it, can’t shoot it! Now that most consumer electronics are run on switching power supplies and every home has a wireless network, the power is as polluted as the Yangtze river (but hopefully not as wet). Audio equipment manufacturers attempt to minimise the problems that this introduces but there’s only […]
The stuff that goes around cables has a clear effect on the way they sound, it’s as important as the conductor itself in many respects. The Japanese have long favoured the sound of cotton but the majority of high end cables have PTFE insulation or dielectric to separate conductors from one another. The Chord Company […]
A couple of years ago German loudspeaker maker ELAC employed ex KEF and TAD engineer Andrew Jones, it proved a good move especially when the budget Debut B6 garnered itself so many awards. Since then Andrew has introduced his favourite loudspeaker technology to ELAC’s range in the form of concentric mid/treble drivers, where the high […]
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 […]