You’ve seen one Auralic product, you’ve seen ‘em all. Or at least it sometimes seems to be the case when reviewing products from their G series where the case looks pretty much identical from one to the next. But look beyond the box or look a bit more closely at it and you start to […]
Cartridge design has changed very little over the years. There have been some differences in the generator unit itself, but most still revolve around the ‘wiggle a magnet inside an electrical coil’ (or vice versa) principle. As with anything, exotic materials can be employed, and in some cases the magnetic field is created using field […]
When I interviewed Naim designer Steve Sells a few years back I asked which amplifier he used at home, he said the Supernait. It’s perhaps surprising that the man who developed the Statement, Naim’s most ambitious amplifier ever, uses one of the more modest models for his listening pleasure, but there’s nothing like a good […]
Italy has a long tradition of producing high quality audio equipment but Gold Note only came to my attention in recent months. Based in the Florence area, this is a company determined to cover every audio enthusiast’s needs, with a range of turntables, cartridges, CD players, DACs, amplifiers and loudspeakers. They are now being distributed in […]
There are those who consider network music servers as little more than glorified NAS drives in nice boxes, and it’s not hard to see why given that both do a the same job and contain the same basic elements. Which is some kind of disc drive or solid state memory that’s controlled by a computer […]
In the studio world all loudspeakers are actively driven, Yamaha’s once ubiquitous NS10 being the exception that proves the rule. In an active speaker the crossover is electronic and comes before the amplifiers which are directly connected to each drive unit. It’s an approach that has huge advantages in so many ways yet despite the […]
I have to say that I rather like the vintage B&O turntable that Sonus faber have chosen for the video that heads up their page for the Sonetto range, it’s a beauty. Probably doesn’t do justice to the loudspeakers but aesthetics count, especially if you’re Italian. The Sonetto range is a good example of this, […]
BorderPatrol DAC SE digital to analogue converter BorderPatrol is a small company whose proprietor Gary Dews started out working with Audio Innovations (which became Audio Note UK), so you won’t be surprised to learn that its speciality is tube electronics. Gary was originally based near Brighton in the UK but moved to Maryland in the […]
It’s been a while since I lived with an MSB DAC, but I have very happy memories of those occasions when one was left in my care in the past. The company has always been at the leading edge of digital technology with several firsts to its name and some very ambitious products in its […]
Do you ever have one of those ‘am I imaging this?’ moments when listening to hi-fi? It happens to me sometimes, at which point I invite an innocent civilian to listen and tell me what they think. Usually it is my very patient wife who is nearest to hand, and so it was that she […]
It is a long time since I had a separate pre and power amplifier in my system, the last being the highly accomplished Naim NAC 552 pre and NAP 300 power amps. They had to be sold when redundancy struck in 2008 and we needed to turn some of our less essential assets into cash. […]
It can be all too easy to take things for granted I find, you can use something for years and fail to find anything to better it and still don’t climb to the top of the nearest tower and shout about it. But when the manufacturer makes a change to it, the option to right […]