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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Switching distortion is at the root of a lot of the problems with transistor amplifiers. The sound of those tiny three-legged semiconductors turning on and off on demand is ubiquitous, and most people have become accustomed to it — like rain in the winter. It also has a similar effect on sound; it becomes murky
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It shared much of its genetic make-up with a Philips machine – the CD303 – and was the top model in the company’s first generation range of CD players. To put it another way, its list of component parts reads like a wish list from a 1980s digiphile. The CDM-1 Pro mechanism, which has a
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This is one of Musical Fidelity’s numerous unusual yet appealing products, first released in 2002 as a direct competitor to Naim’s Nait 5 integrated. It was a lovely half-width integrated amp – the business has flirted with this format before returning to full-width – that made a style point of its sleek, custom-built aluminium extruded
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Any audiophile will occasionally peruse the pages of a hi-fi magazine – if they aren’t reading them religiously every month, that is. Had you picked up a copy of What Hi-Fi in 1977, the chances are that by the time you’d finished it, you would know that this amplifier was the one to buy, under
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Japanese manufacturers were fighting tooth and nail in 1980 to provide the cleanest and most powerful transistor amplification yet developed. Marantz was solidly in the Class A camp with a series of new-fangled MOSFET power amps, but Sony and Yamaha had lately gone down the V-FET road (with the TA-N7B and B2, respectively) and Pioneer
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It was difficult to get a competent affordable amplifier in the late 1970s. For showroom attractiveness, brushed aluminum-fronted Japanese versions with tone controls and power meters flooded the market. Sound quality had received little attention; most sounded bland and inoffensive at best, and terrible at worst. New Acoustic Dimension, a relatively new firm, saw a
The audio ability of a loudspeaker is inversely proportional to its aesthetic beauty, according to one of the universal principles of hi-fi. True, the Holy hi-fi provider has allowed an unique exception to this rule for a few high-end panel speakers, but other from that, it appears to apply to practically everything. So when I
The Marantz SA-12S1 is a big one, at 458x126x379mm, and is often finished in the company’s signature champagne gold. Twelve professional-grade Crystal CS4397 DACs and twelve custom HDAM copper-plated op-amps were installed inside, all of which worked in dual differential mode. Marantz’s proprietary Super-Ring toroidal transformer, as well as a separate transformer for the fluorescent
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