Although it benefited from designer Jonathon Carr’s vast experience, this was not totally hand crafted by Lyra’s artisan Yoshinori Mishima when it was first released in the UK in 2007. Instead, the initial construction was outsourced. It was also the first to use a Namiki MicroRidge line-contact stylus, however it was wrapped in the traditional […]
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Monitor Audio should be commended for using ribbon tweeters in its flagship Platinum series, which debuted in 2007. A very good ceramic coated aluminium/magnesium ribbon HF unit rode shotgun with a single 6.5 inch Rigid Diaphragm Technology bass-mid driver on the PL100, which cost £2,300. The heft of a traditional dome tweeter, according to designer
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What’s not to like about the MD-90 from Magnum Dynalab? Any red-blooded radiohead will be enchanted by its delectable fascia, which is packed with analogue meters, LED numerals, switches, knobs, and the inscription ‘analogue FM tuner.’ If there was ever a product that extolled the virtues of its medium, this is it. The MD-90 instantly
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Mordaunt Short, founded in Fulham in 1967, quickly established itself as a genuinely middle-class loudspeaker brand, catering to those seeking high performance in a conservatively fashioned package. For example, the 1977 Pageant was a symbol of suburban respectability, a type of hi-fi Volvo. However, the brand underwent a series of transformations, including ownership changes and
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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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