Tuners are rarely sought after. Even the best representatives of the species, such as high-end turntables or gigantic open reels, struggle to stir passions. But Aiwa’s AT-9700 was different: it was one of the first tuners with a digital frequency display, and it was super modern in the 1970s sense. This seemed to be the […]
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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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In comparison to any modern music portable, Sony’s WM-D6C Walkman Professional cassette recorder is a massive, brick-like device. It’s ridiculously large by today’s standards, measuring 180x90x40mm and seeming like an eighties phone compared to the latest iDevice. When you look closer, however, you’ll notice the best-sounding portable ever created… Let’s not forget that Sony, not
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Loudspeaker design isn’t the dark art that some consider it to be. Speakers aren’t immune to physics’ laws; in fact, it’s the principles of physics that decide the sound of any particular product. Simply put, there are the cabinets to get right, the drive units to get right, and the interplay between the two to
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