Music Systems

The M-301 microsystem was “refined to the essence of hi-fi perfection,” according to Aiwa’s 1980 brochure. It went on to say, “The 35 Watt System: Refinement, Ingenuity, and Performance.” It’s easy to chuckle at the marketing hype, but once you get past that, it’s a very astounding piece of gear. This is largely due to […]

Arcam began to redefine itself a few years after Linn’s Classik came by launching a line of sleeker, less specialized music-making equipment. The Solo was the first, and it was a sort of ‘next gen’ Classik, with cleaner and leaner lines than the Linn, a lovely finish, and a host of extra features. A year

What do you do if you’re a Japanese electronics behemoth with a respectable but uninspiring line of products and want to make a bold move for the niche high-end hi-fi market? Anyone who is still unsure should look at what Toshiba did with Aurex. It concocted a fancy Latinate name, applied it to some decent,

Do you recall the birth of the Squeezebox? It was introduced in 2003 as the SliMP3, an MP3-only gadget with a connected connection that required a computer programmer to interface it with its host computer – or so it seemed. Two years later, the Squeezebox a proper arrived, with Wi-Fi, a digital output, and native

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

Rewind to 1978 and recall the Toshiba Aurex System 15. The first of its kind, it was an exceedingly compact yet superbly built ‘mini component’ system meant to perform as well as – if not better than – its full-sized rivals. It was a brilliant concept that combined excellent sound quality (for an all-in-one system),