Page after page of criticism and opinion – sometimes dressed up as fact, sometimes not – on how bad Japanese amplifiers were in 1980 could be found in any British hi-fi journal. They claimed this was especially true in the inexpensive sector, where all of their “frills” meant money wasn’t spent on items that would […]
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Wharfedale’s XP collection debuted in autumn 1975 and quickly gained a following since each model had a nice tone, was well-made, and was designed in an appealing manner. It was a great hit, quickly becoming the go-to brand for entry-level, cheap loudspeakers, appealing to those who couldn’t afford Mordaunt Short, Monitor Audio, Celestion, or KEF.
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Reloop has been producing professional audio equipment since 1996, and a dedicated hi-fi section was established two years ago. The £650 Turn5 is the company’s top-of-the-line turntable, and it’s essentially an SL-1200 clone with the exception of the variable speed control and a distinct paint job… It’s not quite as good as the Technics, but
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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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