Pioneer’s legendary PL-12D is often regarded as the best cheap belt drive ever produced, and for my money, it’s not far off. However, as with so many items, something else comes along a few years later that is superior in many aspects but doesn’t completely outclass it. The SR-222/II from Sansui is one such deck. […]
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The Rega R200 was the best cheap tonearm in the world until August 1983. It was an S-shaped, Japanese-sourced variation of the mid-range Lustre GST-1 that delivered good results for the £46 price tag. But then along came an arm with such an incredible price/performance ratio that the poor S-shaped Rega was forgotten about. The
The Planar 3 was a progression of Rega Research’s initial vinyl incursion, the Planet, and was released in 1978. This was a bizarre-looking design with three massive cast aluminium alloy spokes to support the record. Because this didn’t work out so well, a common mod was to place a glass mat on top of the
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It’s 1989, and the hi-fi world has changed dramatically. We’re still debating the advantages of digital audio – and unless you’re one of a select few hi-fi nerds around the world with early access to the new ‘Digital Audio Tape’ format, which runs at a heady 48kHz sampling rate, ‘digital audio’ means Compact Disc in
Philips CD850II Review Read More »
Philips, don’t you simply adore them? Whenever this inventive Dutch consumer electronics behemoth ventured near serious hi-fi, everything went horribly wrong. The company’s portfolio of avowedly high-end late-1970s esoterica, the ‘Black Tulip’ collection, was designed to take on both the Brits and the Japanese in one fell stroke. Unfortunately, it had about as big of
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Nytech’s iconic ‘Calculator Tuner Amplifier’ is virtually forgotten these days, although it made a big impact on the British hi-fi market when it was hot in the late 1970s. When it was first released in 1972, calculators were practically the width and depth of an LP record, and they, like the Nytech, were connected into
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The fact that multimedia speakers aren’t intended specifically for hi-fi is the main obstacle for most hi-fi enthusiasts. As a result, they can’t possibly be worth an audition, so the logic goes. Since the dark days of the late 1980s, when the first examples appeared, modest active designs used by students to beef up their
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Compact Cassette was still considered a novelty media in 1973, having been invented by Philips a decade before for dictation purposes alone. It was absurd to think it could deliver true hi-fi performance. Serious tape users possessed Revoxes, particularly the A77, or one of a growing number of high-end Japanese decks from Sony, Akai, or
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The original NAIT was the product that kicked off the ‘super integrated’ fad in the 1980s. Whereas “integrated” was formerly considered the poor relation of their high-end pre-power brethren, it became fashionable to opt for a high-quality one-box design with the same level of attention paid to internal component quality and circuit design. As a
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One poster on a Naim-friendly internet forum adds, “Naim Audio makes musical instruments, other manufacturers build hi-fi.” It’s an intriguing proposal since it captures the essence of what Naim Audio devotees see in the brand. Of course, flippant remarks like this aren’t entirely accurate, but they do provide some insight into why people love this
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