Like father, like son is certainly true for Paul and Scott McGowan of PS Audio. Scott developed his own amplifier under the name of his father’s company but financed it with crowd sourcing website Kickstarter. It’s a totally different amplifier to anything PS Audio has yet made, both in looks and technology. The Sprout is […]
Naim's qutest streaming amplifier is 2 and for its birthday the engineers in Salisbury gave it a new antenna and access to more music than you can shake a baton at. Why review this 2014 revamp of Naim’s most affordable streaming amplifier now? Because alongside the rest of the Uniti range it recently gained two […]
Dutch DAC specialist Metrum Acoustics has always been at the forefront of digital technology, but with its latest creation it has re-written the rules of digital to analogue conversion so comprehensively that René had no choice but to buy one. The story of Metrum Acoustics started for me in 2010 when the first NOS Mini […]
Rega’s latest integrated fills a gap in the range with yet another highly entertaining and engaging amplifier that combines more musicality and precision than most of the competition can muster. We are big Rega fans here at the Ear so when the company introduced the new Elex-R integrated it didn’t take long to get hold […]
Want a streamer but don't want get involved with networks and separates? Novafidelity's X12 is about the least expensive answer on the market. There are a number of ways to get into music streaming, apparently the simplest is to add a DAC to a computer but what that doesn’t reveal is that you need to […]
René gave this review the title: The pure one, a reference to the neutrality and clarity it brings to the party. An absence of character that does wonders for the finest recordings. Readers might remember how much I fell in love with the Harbeth P3ESR mini monitor loudspeaker last year. So when the chance came […]
Bluesound is NAD in disguise. Made by the same Canadian parent company this range of streaming audio products ticks all the boxes in René's list of what's required in a decent multiroom product. The market for products that can rip, store and play music is rapidly growing and has full press attention worldwide, but that […]
An asynchronous USB DAC for tweakers and music lovers alike, Henry Audio has taken over where QNKTC left off to provide a different take on the challenge to make computer audio as hackable as the software used for playback. Henry is a USB DAC with a difference. It was created as an open source project […]
2014 was a good year for new kit, both René and I struggled to narrow our selection down to three piece each and many fine products were discovered that didn’t make the cut. But the six products below were the cream of the crop, the components that made our music sound more compelling than all […]
The largest model in the Rubicon range encourages René to wind up the volume and proves that, as in life, more is more when it comes to loudspeakers. On a recent trip to the DALI factory in Denmark I had the pleasure of listening to the complete line up of DALI Rubicon loudspeakers. It was […]
René waxes lyrical about a giant slaying, flax powered slice of affordable high end with a totally new Focal sound. Over a year ago I listened to and greatly enjoyed the Focal Aria 948 loudspeakers, the biggest model in the Aria range. The Aria 905 is the smallest speaker that Focal has made with a […]
The latest PrimaLuna power amplifier is for anyone who wants to create serious volume levels in the listening room, René must be among them.Last weekend we had some friends over for dinner, one of them is a music lover. The first thing he noticed was that I had amplifiers with (so many) tubes. He asked […]