Sony amplifiers had abandoned their unique but unstable V-FET output transistors by 1979, and were inventing in new ways – the goal was to bring an interesting twist to a standard design. As a result, Sony engineers placed the power transistors on the main circuit board from the center of the new TA-F range upwards […]
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In 2016, this £1,250 integrated amplifier was released. It features five line inputs, a moving magnet phono stage, and aptX wireless Bluetooth, however it lacks DAC functionality. Aside from the Bluetooth, which is unabashedly a convenience feature, this amplifier looks a lot like something from the 1980s. It’s a big, Class AB thug with a
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From 1974 to roughly 2004, Sony produced cassette decks. The machines evolved dramatically over those three decades; they began as top-loading devices with small VU meters, slow ballistics, Dolby B and Chrome tape capabilities, and little else. They were multi-motor, had Metal switching, Dolby B, C, and S, electronic meters and tape counters, and a
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The Revolver turntable, designed by Sundown Electronic Engineering, Ltd. (also known as The SEE Corporation) in Warrington, England, was aimed at a very specialized segment in the budget audiophile turntable market in the 1980s. It was distributed through a network of small, independent specialty hi-fi stores. When you took into account the expense of an
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It’s difficult to overstate the significance of Compact Cassette as a format in 1979. The Long Playing record was nearing the end of its life cycle – or so we believed – with an increasing number of consumers opting for pre-recorded cassettes over vinyl. At the time, the quality of LP pressings seemed to be
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Noise-cancelling technology was not new when Sennheiser’s PXC-250 portable headphone was released in 2005, but here was a cheap, practical, and stylish implementation of it. Sennheiser’s noise-cancelling technology is known as NoiseGardTM. The device works by two small microphones inside the earpieces sending any noise they detect to an amplifier, which then inverts the phase
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‘Retro’ was all the rage in the early years of the new millennium, and in hi-fi, the rebirth of the BBC LS3/5a loudspeaker was at the forefront of the trend. The shameful truth was that this iconic little mini-monitor was a terribly defective, if cute, design even back then. New drive units, cabinet technology, and
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When it was first released in 2010, this dual mono integrated Class AB powerhouse (claiming 125W into 8 Ohms) was a costly piece of kit at £5,750. It’s solidly constructed and polished, but it’s not a £6,000 Japanese device — there’s no luxuriously covered brushed aluminium, astonishing shutlines, or a plethora of elegantly performing buttons.
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TDK’s Tremor ‘multimedia loudspeaker system’ (as they used to call them back then) was one of the most intriguing designs of the decade, in my opinion, when it was introduced in 2001. The Tremor S-150, S-60, and S-40 were the company’s original speaker systems, with a total of three available. Each had a powered subwoofer
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Does the world really need another cable brand? New cable companies come and go like ships in the night. Well, maybe. The packaging was the first positive evidence of the SLiC’s quality, as it was significantly less ornate than most cable brands, implying that more of the money was spent on the cable itself. It’s
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