When it was first released in 2010, this dual mono integrated Class AB powerhouse (claiming 125W into 8 Ohms) was a costly piece of kit at £5,750. It’s solidly constructed and polished, but it’s not a £6,000 Japanese device — there’s no luxuriously covered brushed aluminium, astonishing shutlines, or a plethora of elegantly performing buttons. […]
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Noise-cancelling technology was not new when Sennheiser’s PXC-250 portable headphone was released in 2005, but here was a cheap, practical, and stylish implementation of it. Sennheiser’s noise-cancelling technology is known as NoiseGardTM. The device works by two small microphones inside the earpieces sending any noise they detect to an amplifier, which then inverts the phase
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Sony amplifiers had abandoned their unique but unstable V-FET output transistors by 1979, and were inventing in new ways – the goal was to bring an interesting twist to a standard design. As a result, Sony engineers placed the power transistors on the main circuit board from the center of the new TA-F range upwards
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In 1883, Herman Thorens founded the company in St Croix, Switzerland. It began as a maker of musical boxes and related equipment, then manufactured its first Edison type phonograph in 1903, before concentrating on horn gramophones for the new shellac records. The company made cigarette lighters until 1964, and only stopped selling harmonicas in 1952
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Sony’s La Scala 1 system, which was released in the UK in 1995 and cost roughly £1,500 at the time, was later lowered to much less. The CDP-S1 CD player, optional MD-S1 MiniDisc recorder, TC-S1 cassette deck, ST-S1 tuner, and TAE-S1 preamp were all included. A pair of SA-S1 active speakers completed the kit, resulting
Most audiophiles thirty years ago believed that everything old was garbage and that all we needed to shape our brave new future was modern technology and fresh thoughts. Of course, this was only true up to a point, and now we’re rethinking previous assumptions as well. The new Wharfedale Linton Classic achieves exactly that; as
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Page after page of criticism and opinion – sometimes dressed up as fact, sometimes not – on how bad Japanese amplifiers were in 1980 could be found in any British hi-fi journal. They claimed this was especially true in the inexpensive sector, where all of their “frills” meant money wasn’t spent on items that would
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The Revolver turntable, designed by Sundown Electronic Engineering, Ltd. (also known as The SEE Corporation) in Warrington, England, was aimed at a very specialized segment in the budget audiophile turntable market in the 1980s. It was distributed through a network of small, independent specialty hi-fi stores. When you took into account the expense of an
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Cyrus Audio’s ONE integrated amplifier, which debuted at the 2016 Munich High End Show, is a Class D design that employs the company’s hybrid Class D technology’s third iteration. When headphones are plugged in, the power supply rails switch to powering the Class AB headphone stage, claiming 100W RMS per channel into 6 ohms. As
The Cyrus CD transport, which was released in 2011 for £699, filled a much-needed vacuum in a hi-fi world that was suddenly seeing a drop in the number of silver disc spinners being produced. Linn had already announced that it would no longer offer Compact Disc players, and the major Japanese manufacturers — with the
