Vinyl was in its harvest years in 1975, a decade after stereo LP became widely used in the United States. Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd, and Electric Light Orchestra broke sales records with their mega-selling albums and extravagant packaging, while Queen and Wings sold previously unheard-of volumes of 7 singles. Vinyl seemed to have no competition;
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Trio/design Kenwood’s team was the first to look into the acoustic qualities of materials used in turntable construction, making it the most complete Japanese turntable of its time. This iconic high-end turntable was decades ahead of its late-nineties, early-seventies rivals — and similarly pricey. It cost four times as much as a Linn LP12 when
Sony’s first CD recorder was released in late 1998 in the company’s native market of Japan. It was a surprise at the time, because Sony had previously stated that MiniDisc was a competitor to Philips’ (then) new CD recordable format, and that as a result, no CD-R machines could be expected! It was odd because
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Beryllium has a lot of advantages. Only Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium are lighter (more stable) metals in the Periodic Table. This results in an extremely sturdy structure for any given weight, which is ideal for loudspeakers! It is significantly more adapted to moving air than anything constructed of heavy old Magnesium or Aluminum, which may
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The TC-152 is one of the most widely available classic Sony portable tape decks, with TC-152s appearing out of nowhere! That’s because they’re tough tiny things, capable of working over the decades. It didn’t bring anything new to the party when it was released in 1974, other from attractive aesthetics and good ergonomics, which may
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This is one of the most cheap tiny speakers in recent memory. It’s a two-way reflex ported bookshelf design, as expected, but that’s where the routine ends. It has an Usher UA25-10 25mm silk dome tweeter and a KSW2-5029B 125mm mid/bass unit with a polypropylene cone; the latter is an interesting choice; this material was
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The Philips CD100 – and with it the new Compact Disc format – was released on October 1, 1982, and it came at a good moment for the music industry. The once-dominant LP format was on the decline; seven years earlier, it had sold a staggering 91.6 million discs in the United Kingdom, but by
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We’ve seen a quiet revolution in stereo amplifier design over the last few years, as we’ve seen a shift from one style of creating power amplifiers to another. In the grand scale of things, the delayed transition from Class AB to Class D functioning is noteworthy for a variety of reasons – probably on par
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The A-400 integrated amplifier from Pioneer was released in the spring of 1990 to rave reviews in the United Kingdom. The fact that Japanese amplifiers had been regarded with great distrust in the British press until then, simply because they weren’t particularly audiophile in orientation, played a part in the dynamic. For example, a decade
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It’s unfortunate that so many outstanding brands have faded away, from Leak and Garrard in the United Kingdom to Micro Seiki and Sansui in Japan. In the 1970s, the latter was one of the most well-known Nipponese brands, with a proud array of high-end, high-quality items with an uniquely slimline yet powerful sound. The Sansui
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