Hi Fi News

If there was ever a year to celebrate the positive things in our lives, then 2020, the global annus horribilis, is that year. So stay home, spin up your favourite tunes and immerse yourselves in our annual Yearbook as Hi-Fi News & Record Review celeb

This show just gets better and better – and there is no more vivid indication that it is becoming a destination event than the number of ‘civilian’ audiophile visitors I recognised from the UK. The rooms of the Radisson Blu Sobieski hotel were filled

Southeast Asia’s largest audio event, the Hong Kong High End AV Show, took place over three days in 2019 at the Conference & Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai District, and was a roaring success. With exhibitors from around the globe – many appearing for

Investigative journalist supreme, Barry is the first with news of the latest developments in hi-fi and music technologies An avid collector of audio treasures, and life-long hi-fi addict, DP lends his ears and experience from analogue to digital is a

For the sixth year, the Prague Audio Video Show was held at the Hotel Don Giovanni, just five minutes by metro from the city’s historic centre. Taking place over the weekend of the 28th and 29th of February this year, there was no shortage of showsto

While our review of Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDeck turntable [HFN Jul ’19] appeared first, the less expensive StudioDeck, which will set you back £1199 without cartridge, is something of a ‘sweet spot’ candidate. It’s actually £1349 when fitted with the

There’s a great deal to be said for a flexible phono stage that offers numerous adjustments. And Primare’s £1350 R35 model here has no fewer than 29 gain and loading steps across its MM and MC inputs. It comes in a beautifully styled and finished enc

The company says that its Stellar range provides a taste of the ‘high end’ at affordable prices, its £2495 Stellar Phono built into a full-width silver grey or black chassis with casework in steel (not alloy, perhaps in an effort to improve screening

This latest version of the company’s affordable network audio player, the £1845 D2, is so light at 2.5kg that our stiffish Chord Company interconnects almost lifted it off its feet! Unlike its predecessor, the D1, which used a computer-style offboard

What the £499 MX-DAC offers the music lover with a limited budget is a full complement of inputs, sufficient features, luxurious styling and feel. But above all, its sound is genuinely astonishing. The MX-DAC has no remote or volume control to allow

Hot on the heels of its first headphone offering, the Solitaire P [HFN Jun ’20], T+A also has this matching headphone amplifier, the £6600 HA 200. And though the price may be high, it’s not hard to see where all the money has gone. While it may be sm

Aqua’s Formula xHD is the top model in a trio of DACs sharing the same converter architecture. This £11,990 design has what the Milan-based company calls ‘Optologic’ technology, with galvanic and magnetic isolation between analogue and digital sectio

In 1986, Arcam proudly unveiled the first CD player to be both designed and manufactured in the UK. Now owned by Harman, its CDS50 (£695) is the sole silver disc-spinner in its lineup, and it’s made in China. Here, the current ‘HDA’ look has taken ov

The US company Bicasti says its ‘more affordable’ M3 USB DAC – as compared to its M1 Dual Mono DAC, now in ‘Classic’ form at £9499 [HFN Jun ’11] – nonetheless offers ‘an incredible array of performance’. The basic version is offered at £5399, but thi

An ‘entry-level’ product in the company’s range, the £9950 MSB Discrete is an attractive proposition at the price, offering more than a flavour of the costlier Premier DAC [HFN Aug ’19], albeit without its Premier Clock and RCA outputs. The unit also

A‘DAC with benefits’ perfectly describes the MOON 780D v2 from Simaudio. At £13,500 it’s the Canadian company’s reference DAC, complete with a built-in streaming hub developed in-house. With several network products in its range, you can see the sens

Winning an EISA award last year for its highend H390 amplifier, Hegel now offers an entry-level £1500 integrated, the H95. This incorporates the company’s latest UPnP streaming solution along with a menu system that allows for those all-important ‘ov

Arcam has a new ‘HDA’ series of products in a matt grey finish, including this SA30 £1995 integrated. Not only does it top the range but it boasts new technologies that place it in the streaming amp category. To begin with, the SA30 adds S/PDIF digit

Nothing quite prepares you for the sheer visual impact of this huge 1.8m-tall speaker from Germany, least of all its moulded-from-ABS midrange horn exceeding the full width of the enclosure. Sensitivity is necessarily very high – Avantgarde claiming

Affordable omnidirectional speakers have never quite made it into the mainstream, but one company that produces sensibly-priced designs is Duevel. The £4k Venus compact floorstander is the middle model in a five-strong range and has been continually

There’s little to distinguish this £4499 floorstander from the earlier B&W 702 [HFN Dec ’17], beyond a rather snazzy wood finish to the cabinet, shinier trim-rings around the drivers, with a matching grille over the tweeter, and a metal ‘Signature’ p

Four years in development, the Ktêma was launched in 2010. Only recently has proper UK distribution been resolved and a HFN review made possible for this £25k/pr speaker. It is available in Satin Sycamore or gloss piano black – both having polished a

Following in the ‘multi-driver active speakers with clever DSP control’ path of B&Os Beolab 90 [HFN Dec ’16], we had the less ambitious Kii THREE [HFN Aug ’18]. But what you see here is the £29,990 THREE BXT – the Kii THREE atop a ‘bass bin’, to put

Exposure has made a foray into active drive here, in partnership with speaker brand Kudos, with a VXN-series crossover box tuned to the needs of the speakers, and inserted between pre and power amps [not shown here]. The Kudos Titan 707 model (£13,00

Ahybrid combination of a conventional passive midband and treble with an active bass section, the £34k 9H sits at the top of the Canadian company’s Persona range. The bass department is fully integrated into the design of the speaker, which only has

Outwardly unchanged from its twenty5.26 predecessor, the £8495 ’26i, says PMC, is ‘substantial re-engineered’, improving performance without moving away from the signature sound of its forbear. New here is the 19mm tweeter, designed in conjunction wi

Looking identical to the Scansonic MB5 loudspeaker [HFN Aug ’17] the £6249 MB5 B has been reworked by chief designer Benno Baun Meldgård to provide, he says, ‘an all embracing upgrade’. The midrange and bass drivers – four 115mm units, between which

Part of a range of seven loudspeakers, the £14,900 Olympica Nova V features the company’s ‘Lute’ internally ribbed cabinet design, comprising eight layers of real wood, laminated and shaped together under pressure. As for the cast aluminium cap, this

These floorstanders from SVS vaguely recall the monoliths from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bucking current trends, there’s not a curved edge in sight, and they’re available only in a Gloss Black finish (£1995) or a more prosaic Black Ash

This Danish company boasts that ‘A System Audio speaker is much faster than a conventional loudspeaker’. Time to buckle up, then… Its Legend 40 tower tested here is priced at £2900 and comes in either satin black or white finish. Unusually, the speak

Back in 1998 PS Audio introduced its first mains regenerator. It was a device born of the view that if you want the cleanest mains supply then you will need to synthesise it from scratch. A mains regenerator is, in essence, a high voltage power ampli

Released in 1977, B&O’s Beomaster 2400 receiver brought touch-sensitive operation and full remote control to a world that expected nothing more than knobs and buttons. Soon the company’s factory was unable to make receivers fast enough to satisfy dem

Group Editor Technical writer on all things audio for over 35 years, award-winning test engineer and current President of EISA, Paul Miller took over the editor’s chair in 2006 Up until the beginning of 2020, ‘virtual reality’ meant donning a headset

Technology journalist Barry Fox trained in electronics with the RAF and worked as a patent agent, but he gave that up to enter journalism. He is one of the world’s top technology writers The world is as it is, not how we might like it to be. This yea

Hi-fi reviewer Electronics engineer, music lover and former loudspeaker designer, Adam Smith is known to dabble with all audio formats, but is a committed vinyl fan at heart Even though bricks and mortar record shops drew down their shutters for a lo

Music Journalist Christopher Breunig trained as an architect but became won over by music and collecting classical recordings. He was Hi-Fi News’ Music Editor from 1986-2000 Most of my listening each month involves sieving new releases for HFN’s musi

Electronics Engineer Technician and writer on all things audio for some 30 years, Paul Miller took over the editor’s chair in 2006. He invented the QC Suite, used across the audio industry Sometimes I wonder whether our regular Vintage Review feature

Contributing Editor Mark Craven has been editor of Hi-Fi News’ sister title Home Cinema Choice for nearly a decade and has a passion for music, film and everything in between At times over the last three decades, my music listening has become stuck i

Contributor Steve Harris edited Hi-Fi News between 1986 and 2005. He loves jazz, blues music, vinyl and vintage hi-fi and anything that makes good music come to life In February, spending a happy day at the Audiojumble in Tonbridge, I had no idea tha

Pro-Ject Records PJR001 (two 180g vinyl LPs) Pro-Ject’s Heinz Lichtenegger always puts his money where his mouth is, and his long-promised record label kicks off with a stunner. This is a jazz feast, one LP recorded in the studio, the other live, Hei

Mobile Fidelity MFSL 2-469 (two 45rpm LPs) Though no fan of Dire Straits, I can’t deny the sonic brilliance of this, their fourth LP: dating from 1982 and their first to hit No 1 in the UK charts. As ever, the musicianship is sublime, and Mark Knopfl

E.A.R Music/Edel 0214706EMU (two 180g vinyl LPs) World-class jazz guitarist: check; 180g vinyl: check; small-group instrumental covers of peerless, familiar material: check. This could be either an audiophile LP that’s tedious beyond belief, or an al

COMPACT DISC SUPERAUDIO DVD BLU-RAY VINYL DOWNLOAD Mobile Fidelity MFSL1-415 (180g vinyl) Aside from the atypical hit single, ‘Centerfold’, the UK never ‘got’ Boston’s J Geils Band. But then this wasn’t a singles band. They arrived at the tail end of

Mobile Fidelity MFSL1-336 (180g vinyl); SACD: UDSACD-2205 Soft rock remains a guilty pleasure that will never attain ‘cool’ status, so approach this as if it were a Carpenters album. But to deny its pop perfection, tuneful brilliance, superb musician

Reprise 093624895206 (two discs, 180g vinyl) To mark this superb LP’s 20th anniversary, it has been remastered adding two unreleased tracks. It was something of a dream come true for Clapton, whose friendship with King went back decades. Duets of sta

Capitol 00602577842832 (two 45rpm LPs + two CDs + Blu-ray + 7in single) My go-to LP for visceral bottom-end impact, peerless musicianship and transcendent material has been ‘audiophiled’ so often, it may have beaten The Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore E

Intervention Records IR-SCD8 If you want to wind up Gram Parsons fans, just tell ’em you prefer this to the band’s debut, The Gilded Palace Of Sin. I do, falling in love with it even before discovering that ‘Wild Horses’ was lifted from The Rolling S

Rhino R2 596304/603497851133 (four CDs + LP) Much-loved, The Replacements merit this level of treatment, usually reserved for the likes of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or others of that scale. As with the Fab Four’s reissues, it’s an expansi

RPM Records QRPMT549 (three discs) If the name doesn’t mean a thing to you, that’s because the UK was deprived of this US powerhouse, now ironically a demigod for rockers in Germany. Pumping out the best party music and blue-eyed soul imaginable in t

COMPACT DISC SUPERAUDIO DVD BLU-RAY VINYL DOWNLOAD Vocalion CDLK4612 (multi-channel SACD) Long before Ken Burns’ dazzling TV history of country music in 2019, Vocalion was delivering sublime examples of the genre. Many of you not au fait with C&W mig