This was a superb affordable audiophile valve amplifier that was launched in 2012 for the princely sum of £1,700. “The original Stereo 40 was born in 2000, and was at the heart of what we do, top quality amplifiers at a reasonable price,” said chief designer David Shaw. This is a jumble of ideas with […]
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With a number of specialist tonearm producers, the United States was a thriving market for turntables. Rabco, based in Maryland, was one of these companies, selling its complicated SL-8 and SL-8E tangential-tracking tonearms from the late 1960s onwards. Powered by two small electric motors, they amassed a small but devoted following, prompting the company to
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The Aurora was the company’s first turntable, and it cost little under £1,000 when it was released in 2014. It’s a high-quality skeletal belt drive design hewn from black acrylic with a low-resonance platter, just like the original from 2003. It lacks traditional sprung suspension and must be placed on a well-isolated table or wall
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A top Marantz engineer once told me, “The original Bitstream players sounded horrible.” You understand that this is strictly not for publishing, yet it is refreshingly open all the less. Others used more diplomatic terminology at the time, but it’s worth noting that the company didn’t release a flagship Bitstream system until 1994’s CD-15. This
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Some may dismiss this as merely another of the many power amplifiers made by the Salisbury solid-state specialists over the years, but I believe it has something unique to offer in the grand scheme of things. Naim Audio rose to prominence with the NAC 32 and NAP 250, despite not being the company’s first preamp/power
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Monitor Audio’s Radius 90, which retails for £350, is one of my favorite super-small speakers. It’s only 198x125x140mm in size, weighs 2.1kg, and has only 1.5 liters of usable space within. It was available in real wood veneer, piano lacquer white or black at the time of its launch — silver was no longer an
Monitor Audio Radius 90 Review Read More »
If, as LeCorbusier put it, “design is intelligence made visible,” then Roy Gandy, the Rega RB300’s designer, has a few extra brain cells. This tonearm is a seminal design that was initially introduced in the summer of 1983. Its tracking weight spring can be chastised for adding a tinge of hue. The RB250, on the
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The decade of the 1990s was perhaps equally as significant for digital audio as the decade before it, because it witnessed the first introduction of high-resolution recording and playback. The next wave of DVD players that followed towards the end of the 1990s were finally able to deliver 24-bit, 96Hz stereo, whereas Compact Disc had
When the 3155 was introduced in January 1985, NAD touted it as “two products in one.” “As a preamplifier, it rivals the sound characteristics of most discrete audiophile preamps while outperforming them in terms of operating versatility.” It pushes even problematic loudspeakers to shockingly high volume levels with clean, substantial, full-bodied musical sound that is
When Naim Audio released its first standalone digital-to-analogue converter towards the end of the first decade of the new century, it raised some eyebrows. The company stated that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to do one until it could provide something technically novel, which it did. The £1,995 Naim DAC was created with jitter in mind
