Despite not being a favorite of the British hi-fi press, Ariston Audio developed a great line of turntables for a decade and a half. The Prestwick company received consistently positive feedback, but it never quite managed to inspire hi-fi enthusiasts in the same way that Linn and Rega did. Regardless, its commodities were well-received and […]
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People are only now realizing the importance of a turntable plinth. A hefty plinth that stores mechanical energy like a mechanical capacitor should be avoided on any deck with an independently sprung subchassis; instead, it should be light. The issue is that light items aren’t always strong, which is why firms like Linn have typically
Denon’s TU-1500AE had a problem: it was the long-awaited successor to one of the best and longest-running budget tuners in history. True, there were a few fantastic rivals from NAD and Creek, but the Denon TU-260L sold well for a long time because it sounded rich and silky in a way that was surprising for
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In 2006, a new name entered the British hi-fi sector with the introduction of a modest line of mid-priced hi-fi separates. The best of these was the tube-buffered CD player, which sounded very different from its price competitors. It didn’t take the Astin Trew AT3500 long to develop a cult following. With UK design overseen
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Armar G Bose concluded that current loudspeakers simply didn’t offer when he created this really unusual gadget. He was fascinated by sound propagation and an outspoken supporter of spatiality in sound, but he considered most of the designs on the market were excessively directional. He thought a ‘pulsating sphere’ was the ideal shape for producing
Sure, it’s a beautiful nation, but it’s not the first location that comes to mind when you think of hi-fi pickup arms. New Zealand, on the other hand, is full of surprises, including the Design Build Listen Wand tonearm. Designer Simon Brown has created an intriguing product that reminds us that there are few new
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ATC is the loudspeaker firm with the most passion and soul in the professional audio market. Billy Woodman founded the company in 1974 to make drive units for broadcast and recording studios. Its first design was a strong twelve-inch woofer, which clearly indicated where his focus lay. By the mid-1980s, the firm was selling to
The conventional complaint to direct-drive, which involves a motor located directly in the center of the platter, was that you could hear it ‘cogging.’ This was a problem caused by the fact that the permanent magnet fields of a direct-drive motor are not uniform (they’ll always be stronger at the ends and weakest in the
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The DV505 was released by Dynavector, a modest Japanese technical firm, and it shook the hi-fi world. Instead of the normal sales pitch, the company revealed the results of its considerable engineering research into tonearm shape and resonance characteristics. The world took notice quickly, and the DV505 went on to win the Design and Engineering
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The £3,295 ATC SCM40 is unusual in that it doesn’t look or feel like practically any other loudspeaker in its price range. It’s almost as if someone forgot to style it, as if three (albeit unusual-looking) drivers were thrown into a box supposed to do the job and then left. This stands in stark contrast
