Some things will never change and we have little need to alter them. An instrument played in 1977, the year Dudley Harwood started his loudspeaker company, will sound the same in 2013 given the same room and the same conditions. So, if we were able to reproduce the instrument plausibly on a Harbeth loudspeaker then, […]
I used Focal loudspeakers in my own system for the 15 years up to 2010. Over that time different cone materials from Focal have all made their mark; first impregnated paper with a polyglass coating, later yellow Kevlar was in use and finally the W-cone in the Electra and Utopia series showed up. The W-cone […]
Brinkmann turntables embody the remarkable standard of German engineering better than many of their competitors, the pictures give you some idea of the build quality on offer but in the flesh this brute of a record player is a truly remarkable state of affairs. Everything is superbly finished, even the bits you can't see – […]
After several visits to the Blumenhofer Acoustics company deep in the Bavarian forests, I finally got the chance to listen to their Genuin FS 2 horn loudspeakers in my own living room. Size and weight were always a problem since I live on the third floor of an apartment building without an elevator, but we […]
Most audio enthusiasts are aware that Acoustic Energy made its name with the AE1 in 1988 but fewer are aware that this classic speaker has been transformed into a luxury model with high gloss ebony wood panels. Changes have also been made inside the box and therefore time has come to see what the AE1 […]
Trilogy is a small but ambitious British company that goes to massive lengths to build professional and fully featured electronics. And I mean fully featured, you wouldn’t guess by looking at the 909 preamp that it’s a hybrid design nor does it give any clues as to the flexibility of the control system, although the […]
Munich 2013 was the place to be for the launch of the latest PMC loudspeaker, the fact.12. The High End Show is filled with all kinds of loudspeakers from the almost affordable up to the very best and most expensive (not necessarily one and the same), it was the perfect showroom. The first notes I […]
When it comes to well designed and well-built German audio equipment there are many companies that deliver the goods but a list of names would never be complete, so I won’ try. I will make one exception however, Audionet, a company that makes a range of electronics including the DNP, a single box that does […]
I have been called a fool many times. In the seventies, when I was among the first to write about differences in speaker cables, and later when I discovered the same kind of sound changes with interconnects. In the nineties power cables became an issue. Now that streaming audio has usurped my CDs the time […]
In this part of the world small brand Japanese audio has a caché that you just can’t buy, it takes years of consistently high quality in build and sound to achieve but once established gives even new companies a leg up. The good work of Audio Note Japan, Koetsu, Shindo, 47 Labs and many others […]
Although there is a less is more ethos across the high end world few companies imbue their products with the degree of design purity that Primare does. This one suspects is down to their Scandinavian roots, that part of the world is well known for its clean, pared down design, frippery is not in their […]
Eminent Technology first came to my attention with a parallel tracking, air bearing tonearm which is apparently still available in limited numbers. So it was surprising to discover that they are now a speaker company, something that became apparent when I was asked to review the floorstanding LFT-8B for another publication a couple of years […]