The Rega R200 was the best cheap tonearm in the world until August 1983. It was an S-shaped, Japanese-sourced variation of the mid-range Lustre GST-1 that delivered good results for the £46 price tag. But then along came an arm with such an incredible price/performance ratio that the poor S-shaped Rega was forgotten about. The […]
Although no cassette deck has ever been compared to an oil painting, early specimens of the genre were particularly unappealing. Top-loaders from the 1970s were fiddly and unwieldy to operate, with controls strewn about indiscriminately, whilst front-loaders appeared bold and threatening. Forget about the physics of the machines. They were crude and clumsy, confirming cassette’s
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Pioneer’s legendary PL-12D is often regarded as the best cheap belt drive ever produced, and for my money, it’s not far off. However, as with so many items, something else comes along a few years later that is superior in many aspects but doesn’t completely outclass it. The SR-222/II from Sansui is one such deck.
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Sennheiser spent millions of Euros researching and creating the new HD650 in 2003, using technology created for its £1,000 MKH40 broadcast microphone to eliminate distortion and enhance clarity, while the sound balance was reported to be based on the Sennheiser Orpheus, which costs £10,000. It all added up to one of the company’s most popular
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The early 1980s were a period in which everyone was enamoured with new technology. From the video recorder to the ‘microcomputer,’ it appeared that anything with an LED display and an 8-bit silicon chip inside might solve all of the world’s problems. Sharp agreed, and applied its digital wizardry to the issue of LP track
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It’s not just about listening to music when it comes to hi-fi. Of course, its primary role is to sound good, but it also serves an aesthetic purpose. There’s no shortage of gear that excels at one of these functions, but it’s unusual to find something that excels at both, such as Lecson’s famed AC1/AP3
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In some ways, the decade of the 1980s was a difficult one for loudspeaker design. Despite the appearance of a handful of ‘milestone’ products, such as Celestion’s SL6 and Acoustic Energy’s AE-1, it’s difficult to say that these were entirely successful designs in and of themselves. Rather than being remembered for what they did, they
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Linn’s second-ever turntable design, dubbed “Son of Sondek,” had a lot to live up to. Linn’s attempt to entice silver disc customers back to vinyl was launched in 1987, just as Compact Disc was finally gaining traction. This means it had to outperform decent CD players, be simple to set up and use, and have
Tim de Paravicini, a bright former Lux designer who had previously worked with Antony at Michaelson and Austin, was the logical choice when Antony Michaelson needed his first Musical Fidelity integrated amplifier. Tim told me that the A1 started out as “a breadboard that I created for myself” in order to “replicate in transistors the
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The Philips-supplied laser pick-up system was meant to be separated from the CD12’s main chassis, making it immune to extraneous disturbances like loudspeaker vibration (both mechanically coupled and airborne). High-speed DSP was employed to control the CD control/servo circuits, and a puck was used to control them. The spindle motor was brushless for electromagnetically silent
