Sixty years since Hideo Matsushita founded Audio-Technica in a Tokyo suburb the brand continues its love affair with vinyl with the launch of a new ART series moving-coil
Celebrations have come thick and fast over the last couple of years, and to SME's 60th [HFN Jul '22], Clearaudio's 40th [HFN Nov '22] and Nagra's 70th [HFN Aug '22] we can add Audio-Technica's 'Diamond'. Naturally, the company has not missed the opportunity to mark the occasion by releasing a celebratory cartridge or two. There's the new £8900 flagship AT-MC2022 and the slightly more affordable AT-ART20 at £2749 that we have here.
Fauré Mark 2? Absolutely not, says Peter Quantrill, as he unravels the mysteries and contradictions surrounding this devotional work, and surveys its history on record
In 1941 the Vichy government of wartime France commissioned pieces from a wide range of composers as part of a nationalist cultural revival. Duruflé was 39 at the time and known more as an organist, not least because he withheld and revised far more music than he published, though in 1936 Paul Paray had conducted the premiere of three orchestral Dances which masterfully synthesise Debussyan impressionism and Ravellian shades of light.
Dutch tube aficionado, PrimaLuna, has offered an optional solid-state phono module with its amps for years, but now comes its first standalone, all-tube MM/MC preamp
With vinyl sales now surpassing CD, the revival is back with such force that the flood of phono stages and decks will surely continue unabated. More than that, it's enough for PrimaLuna to show its confidence in analogue to bring out its first EVO phono amp, the EVO 100 Tube Phono Preamplifier at £3398.
Offering all the functionality of full-sized components, this petite five-part '90s system took micro to the max, spawning imitations industry-wide. How does it sound today?
The first time I saw a JVC UX-1 it was pictured on the side of a bus. The image was part of an ad that carried the simple message 'All features, Great, and Small'. And this turned out to be true, for the UX-1 micro system had every function imaginable, sounded like 'proper' hi-fi and was tiny.
The original Halcro amp starred in a recent HFN Vault feature but, some 20 years on, the marque is back in the same iconic shape and with the same high tech claims...
Working out the brand behind the Eclipse Stereo power amplifier isn't hard: not only is the design a modern take on the iconic Australian Halcro amps of the past [see 'From the Vault', HFN Dec '22], but the product itself, with the power supply and amplifier suspended between two solid uprights, forms the letter 'H' – not a trick we've seen other manufacturers attempting!
Founded in New York, this facility would expand to three studios in the US, catering to stars like Stevie Wonder, Metallica and The Stones. Steve Sutherland has the lowdown
Chances are you won't be familiar with Marshall Chapman, but she's an American singer/songwriter and one of the unsung heroes of our story. On the 10th of January 1978, she was working on Jaded Virgin, her second LP, when a fire broke out in the studio next door. Chapman downed tools and helped other musicians and engineers who were in the vicinity to carry priceless master recordings to safety outside the building.
From crude prototype in 1938 to its initial production run in 1947, the Klipschorn was founder Paul W Klipsch's 'cornerstone' horn loudspeaker. How does it fare today?
Viewed from a modern perspective, there's more than an element of 'forget everything you know' about the latest incarnation of the Klipsch Klipschorn AK6, a classic now heading for its 80th birthday. It was designed in 1946 from earlier prototypes by company founder Paul W Klipsch – officially described by the US brand as 'genius, madman and maverick' – in an Arkansas tin shed, and it's been continuously made and refined ever since.
The Liverpudlian post-punk quartet, led by enigmatic front man Ian McCulloch, were told they needed to write some 'killer tunes' after the lukewarm reception to their 1983 album Porcupine. They returned a year later having done exactly that...
The promotional posters for Echo & The Bunnymen's fourth album Ocean Rain proclaimed it 'The Greatest Album Ever Made', a typically provocative quote from the group's singer Ian McCulloch. There were so many bands emerging in post-punk UK that if you wanted to get noticed you had to talk a good game, and with its historical cultural associations, Liverpool was particularly competitive.
This downsized, but perfectly-proportioned, facsimile of B&W's 801 D4 flagship is smaller in all but sound...
It's all good and well lusting after a flagship like the B&W 801 D4 [HFN Nov '21], but not everyone has the means or opportunity. Cue the 803 D4, which is a modestly downsized version costing (nearly) half the price. Intriguingly, it also utilises the same technology and similarly designed drivers as the 801 D4, including the trademark turbine head.
Sixty years since Hideo Matsushita founded Audio-Technica in a Tokyo suburb the brand continues its love affair with vinyl with the launch of a new ART series moving-coil
Offering all the functionality of full-sized components, this petite five-part '90s system took micro to the max, spawning imitations industry-wide. How does it sound today?
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