Pre/Power Amplifiers

While sawing Electrocompaniet's AW 800 M power amplifier is probably not advisable, doing so would admittedly bring some advantages. Not only would you get even better channel separation from dividing the amp right back to the mains socket - not that the stereo amp is exactly lacking in this respect - the resulting monoblock amps would hopefully be more manageable than the stereo model. It may not be huge, but the 800's 55kg mass puts unpacking and placing it firmly in 'phone a friend' territory.

Think JBL and, not unreasonably, you’ll probably think ‘speakers’. The company has been in the loudspeaker business for getting on 80 years, having been founded in California in 1946 by James B Lansing, from whom it takes its name. Lansing himself took his own life just three years later but left an insurance policy to keep the company going, in which form JBL has become an internationally famous audio company and, since 1969, part of what is now Harman International. In 2017 Harman became an independent subsidiary of South Korea’s technology giant, Samsung.

Search online and you’ll discover a groundswell of cheap DACs and streamers playing to every (hardware) whim, making it easy to overlook Eversolo’s efforts. But the company, which is the dedicated audio department of Shenzhen-based Zidoo, known for its EISA Award-winning Neo S media player, follows a different, more quality-focused strategy, as the affordable Z8 DAC and DMP-A6 have so far proved.

The resurrection of Rotel’s Michi series, previously delighting audiophiles in the 1990s, was a hi-fi highlight of 2019. The Japanese manufacturer again created a strand of components (stereo and mono power amps, a preamp and two integrated models) with a focus on both high-end performance and aesthetics, even going so far as to drop the Rotel name from the branding. Then, in 2023, it announced it was revisiting three models in the lineup, making changes inside rather than out.

Tipping the scales at a hefty 26kg, measuring a portly 46cm deep and 17cm tall, and selling for £14,900, T+A's PSD 3100 HV appears every inch the flagship DAC/streamer/preamp. Except that it isn't – that accolade is reserved for the German brand's SDV 3100 HV [HFN Oct '19], which has been deemed its 'reference' model since its arrival in 2019 and remains available for £26,040.

Here's a fun game to play: look through the product catalogue of US manufacturer Balanced Audio Technology and try to spot the odd one out. It should only take you a matter of seconds because all of its current models, bar one, employ tubes in either their power or preamp stages. And if you still haven't realised I'm talking about the new REX 500 power amplifier, it's the one that's roughly twice as big as all the others.

At times of late, it seems Salisbury's Naim Audio is wilfully courting controversy. It's been causing ripples with the brand's faithful fans ever since it launched its all-in-one Mu-so systems and second-generation Uniti products. It wasn't that these arrivals were on a mission to make hi-fi simpler for all, eschewing the tweakery and 'black magic' once suggested as a prerequisite for realising its true potential – no, what broke the usually calm surface was the fact the Naim logo, for decades lit in green, had turned white. Cue Naim aficionados fanning themselves like Edwardian grandes dames with a fit of the vapours.