LATEST ADDITIONS

Sumiko Palo Santos Presentation (£1995)

Ken Kessler & Paul Miller | Jul 16, 2010

Moving-coil cartridges have been around for more than a half-century, but they didn’t displace the moving magnet as ‘the audiophile’s choice’ until the 1970s. Before that, MMs ruled for two simple reasons: higher output and better tracking ability. For decades, Shure, Goldring, ADC and other moving magnetics were default purchases. They put few demands on phono stages, allowing the industry to standardise 47kohm inputs, and MMs (allegedly) took better care of LPs.

Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Clearaudio Concept (£1100)

Ken Kessler & Paul Miller | Jul 15, 2010

If someone had told you, even as recently as 2000, that the market would be overrun with genuinely stunning turntables at sensible prices in 2010, you might have snorted with derision. During the LP’s limbo period of 1985-2005, as it clawed its way back to its current ‘cool’ status, the focus seemed to be on extremely expensive high-end players. That limbo period is now over thanks to CD’s decline, and the black vinyl record is regaining small but steady market share, including crucially an audience amongst those born after CD arrived. Clearaudio has always had affordable turntables for newcomers, but the company created something special with the Concept, one of those rare occasions when the object isn’t merely greater than the sum of its parts: it merits, straight out of the box, a gold star, an Oscar and a Michelin rating.

Disc Players

Cambridge Audio 650bd (£400)

Paul Miller | Jun 16, 2010

So far there’s been no answer from Yamaha, Pioneer or Sony to the universal Blu-ray behemoths launched by Denon and Marantz. Since they were exclusively reviewed inHi-Fi News [Oct ’09 and Dec ’09], the £4500 DVD-A1UD and £5000 UD9004 have only been joined by slightly cheaper variants from the same stable. Although Marantz’s £2450 UD8004 could hardly be described as ‘cheap’. Instead, the first truly entry-level universal disc player has been launched from leftfield, from where no-one was looking – courtesy of the restless but hugely talented engineering team at Cambridge Audio.

Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Thorens Td 309 (£1250)

Steve Harris & Paul Miller | Jun 15, 2010

Looks can be deceiving. At first glance, you might think that the TD 309 was designed just as an eye-catcher, but in reality it is easily the most radical and innovative turntable Thorens has produced since the company was revived around ten years ago by the dynamic Heinz Rohrer. For the TD 309 project, Rohrer called in Fink Audio Consulting of Essen in Germany, best known for its expertise in loudspeaker design. But, as Karl-Heinz Fink says, ‘We are all turntable guys! We like turntables! And if you work on loudspeakers, you deal with vibration at a micro level, dealing with problems that are similar.

Disc Players

Naim Cdx2/dac (£3390/£1995)

Keith Howard & Paul Miller | Jun 14, 2010

From almost anybody else, the launch of a new outboard DAC would rate as one of the audio industry’s more mundane events. But a DAC from Naim Audio – called, yes, the Naim DAC – is a development of more moment. Not so much for what it is but because it unravels what was, until now, one of the marque’s design dogmas. Naim was late to the digital audio party, launching its first CD player in 1991, almost a decade after Compact Disc’s arrival.

Integrated Amplifiers

Nad M2 (£5000)

Richard Stevenson & Paul Miller | Jun 08, 2010

I find it very odd that the M2 is the most technically advanced and subjectively successful digital amplifier yet to grace my listening room. Until recently, right now in fact, NAD was not a company likely to spring to mind for its cutting edge technical innovation. The brand saw me through my penniless student days with a host of hi-fi products that majored on simplicity, great value and a remarkable immunity to spilt beer. But the M2 is very different.

Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Soundsmith Sg 200 (£5200)

John Bamford & Paul Miller | May 16, 2010

I can’t deny it. There is something highly evocative about a cartridge that glows in the dark. That’s right: two blue LEDs at the front of the Soundsmith cartridge light up to confirm its operational status. Just a gimmick? No, not really.

Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Pro Ject Rpm 10.1 Evolution Turntable (£2000)

Steve Harris & Paul Miller | May 08, 2010

Bigger and fatter even than the RPM 9, which it otherwise resembles, the RPM 10. 1 Evolution updates on the earlier RPM 10 with a better arm and other refinements. But the choice of materials is as important as the quantities of them. Pro-Ject’s Austrian founder and owner has been experimenting with different materials since the inception of the company 20 years ago.

Loudspeakers

Green Mountain Audio Eos (£4400)

Keith Howard & Paul Miller | Apr 16, 2010

The famous Bauhaus diktat ‘form follows function’ was an aesthetic imperative rather than an engineering philosophy, and a good job too, because for structural engineers in particular the concept was already old hat. All those Martello towers littering England’s south coast, for instance, are not round in plan view on a whim: it’s because castle builders, centuries earlier, had discovered that round towers better resisted artillery bombardment than those with corners. It’s natural to suppose that modern engineers would never do anything so crass as to make something fundamentally the wrong shape, but don’t be so sure. Most loudspeaker manufacturers have done it, continue to do it, and give every sign of proposing to do it in perpetuity.

Integrated Amplifiers

Devialet D Premier (£12,000)

Paul Miller | Apr 16, 2010

Once in a generation a company will emerge, often from left-field of audio’s mainstream, with a concept so original and innovative that it has the capacity to re-define the expectations of a product genre. That company is Devialet of France and its product is the D-Premier integrated amplifier, expected to cost around £12k when launched in the UK. Embarking on this review, little was known about the nitty-gritty of the D-Premier aside from its description as an ‘ADH’ (Analogue/Digital Hybrid) amplifier. It was not exhibited at CES in January nor formally announced to the press, so much of what we’ll discuss here is derived from very close inspection and even closer lab work, all exclusive to Hi-Fi News.

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LATEST ADDITIONS

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