China was beginning to make major inroads into the world’s hi-fi market towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, taking advantage of its low manufacturing costs to manufacture enormous and impressive amplifiers for less money than expected. However, the introduction of Class D technology enabled Japan to fight back. It’s a […]
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This moving magnet cartridge was introduced in 1978 and sold for the princely price of £37, which was a lot of money for a phono cartridge at the time. In a world where a £25 Ortofon VMS20E was deemed lavish, most British purchasers regarded the new Rega as a high-end product. It was designed to
Ken Ishiwata, a Marantz brand advocate, says, “When I first heard CD, I was surprised.” “I saw the potential of what this tiny disc could achieve — it was incredible.” What astonished me the most at first was the lack of surface noise, as well as the measurements – I appreciated the clear sine waves,
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Traditionally, British hi-fi amplifiers start off as integrated amps and then progress to preamplifier/power amplifier combos as the price grows. If you’re spending more than £2,000, you won’t be able to get a one-box amplifier — you’ll need two. That’s why, when it debuted in 1990, Musical Fidelity’s A1000 was a bit of a fish
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It’s all forgotten now, but there was once upon a time when a costly – but not exorbitantly priced – turntable appeared, battled the best of the best, and triumphed. That is, almost. The JBE, you see, was an underground sensation for a brief period around the turn of the 1980s. Despite its high quality,
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When Compact Disc was first introduced in 1982, there was a lot of debate over how it sounded. There were two separate CD player tribes at first: Philips-based units and Japanese-based machines. The former had DACs that only went up to 14-bit resolution but oversampled the digital datastream four times, such as the Philips CD100.
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The M1, which is currently in the ‘where is it now’ category, first emerged on the analogue scene little under a decade ago and made more of a ripple than a splash, if only for a brief while. However, it did not sell well, and the ever intrepid Antony Michaelson quickly went on to other
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The Jelco Ichikawa Jewel Company, based in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro area, is one of the country’s many small-scale precision engineering firms. It has been producing since 1920, and by the 1970s, it had naturally shifted its focus to turntable parts in response to the hi-fi craze of the period. Over the years, it has done a
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The first Compact Disc players were released in 1982, and British purchasers received them a year later. This generation has mostly been forgotten since then, which is a shame because many of them sound considerably more ‘analogue’ than many of today’s high-end esoterica. A good example is the Marantz CD-54. It’s a late first-generation design
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Anthony Michaelson uncorked the Cockburn’s Special Reserve, polished the silver, and introduced a celebratory collection of Tri-Vista items in 2003 to honor the two decades since its legendary Dr. Thomas preamp first hit dealer shelves. The Tri-Vista 300 integrated amplifier (of which only 500 were created) and the Tri-Vista CD/SACD player (of which only 800
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