This is the one product that has captivated the public’s attention in recent years. Like the Dual CS505 turntable, NAD 3020 integrated amplifier and Mission 760 loudspeakers before it, here is an ‘affordable audiophile’ product that sounds far better than it has a right too, and costs rather less than it should… The M-DAC, which […]
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Since he “foolishly decided to become engaged with creating hi-fi,” Rob Watts has gone a long way. He cofounded Deltec Precision Audio after graduating from Cardiff University in 1984 and quickly established himself as a talented electronics engineer. Then he went on to digital, where the PDM1, his first Bitstream DAC, raised some eyebrows. He
Turntables are a particularly highly contested niche in hi-fi’s arena of items that aspire to be ‘the greatest.’ Others claim it’s a Garrard, Roksan, Oxford Acoustics, Voyd, Pink Triangle, SME, Oracle, or Continuum, while others swear it’s a Garrard, Roksan, Oxford Acoustics, Voyd, Pink Triangle, SME, Oracle, or Continuum. The Goldmund Reference, on the other
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When you hear “British hi-fi,” you immediately think of Linn, Naim, Rega, Cyrus, and Creek, firms that rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Quad, SME, KEF, Leak, and Wharfedale, all of which gained popularity in the 1960s, will also be significant for elder audiophiles. But what of Britain’s lost hi-fi brands, the ones
April Music was originally introduced to me during the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The individuals behind this young South Korean enterprise struck me as engaging and imaginative. It produced several excellent sounding hi-fi singles under the Stello brand name, in the Japanese high-end mold. A few years later, this strange object appeared,
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The NAD 3020 was undoubtedly the finest hi-fi success story ever reported at the start of the 1980s. This small integrated amplifier had a tremendous impact on the cheap hi-fi market, and for good reason. The infant New Acoustic Dimension, introduced in 1979 and priced – for a brief, fleeting moment – £59, sounded significantly
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Vinyl began declining in popularity in the early 1990s. It had a ‘end of the century’ vibe to it, as if the sting of death will befall it soon long. As a result, the availability of low-cost, high-quality cartridges began to dwindle. The Ortofon VMS series was silently being phased out of dealers’ inventory lists,
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Simon Lee, the founder of April Music, is a hi-fi aficionado who left a solid profession to import obscure foreign brands into his native South Korea; he then decided to start developing his own designs as well. The DP200 you see here is one of the intriguing products that resulted. Although commonplace now, the concept
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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,
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A passive preamplifier is simple to construct; I’ve built several. Purchase a 50k ohm potentiometer from RS Components or a similar company, connect it to four phono connectors, and, if you’re feeling brave, mount it in a box with a knob! You can get great results for cheap, which makes you question why some people
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