Martin Colloms

While 'compact' in comparison to the flagship WAMM, this still imposing floorstander dazzles Martin Colloms with its dynamics and transparency

Once installed, a pair of Wilson Audio's X-1 Grand SLAMMs weighs half a tonne. It must be one of the heaviest domestic speakers ever made and its quoted UK price (in the region of £60,000) makes it one of the most expensive. The price includes delivery to your door (a total of nine crates) and a five-year transferrable warranty. Our pair was setup by company founder Dave Wilson, his presence invaluable in building the X-1, calibrating the room and aligning the loudspeaker for optimum performance. Even so, some 14 hours elapsed before everyone was happy.

In the UK, the turntable market has been dominated for a number of years by Linn’s LP12 – now well-priced by audiophile standards. Many attempts have been made to produce and sell better and more costly models, but it turned out that a far higher price had to be paid to achieve a genuine sound improvement. Enter the French products of Pierre Lurné – a turntable lineup which has enjoyed success for some years on the continent, but has only recently become available here.

The giant professional KM1 apart, KEF has been pretty quiet in the large loudspeaker market during the past year or two. The Reference series has run on without much fanfare, and most of the action has been with the budget ‘C’ range, particularly the highly competitive Coda, now in Mark 3 guise.

As an increasing number of digital source components come equipped with variable output level one might think that line controllers – preamps without a phono cartridge input facility – are an endangered species. This will make sense to those embarking on an all-digital system, mixing a variety of digital sources and prepared to convert from the analogue disc domain to digital via an A/D converter function. Indeed, some digital control units are digital-only and cannot handle analogue signals at all.