With its macho industrial design, large touchscreen interface, fibre network connection and cutting-edge digital technology, Eversolo’s flagship streamer/preamp raises the bar
Eversolo’s DMP-A8 was an indication of the Chinese brand’s ambition to progress beyond affordable but very capable DACs and streamers into ‘real’ hi-fi territory. The DMP-A10, which ratchets up both features and finish, is the next step. It’s also Eversolo’s first full-sized component, alongside a new AMP-F10 power amplifier that’s clearly been designed to be a perfect visual match.
Perlisten’s flagship gets the ‘LE’ treatment with lashings of carbon-fibre, plus updated crossover and bass drivers
Talk about bursting onto the scene. Five years ago, few had heard of Perlisten even though the Wisconsin company had existed from 2016, ostensibly operating in stealth mode. Today it is an established name in hi-fi circles, abetted by two complete loudspeaker series featuring some ambitious technology. The four-way £19,000 S7t floorstander [HFN Apr ’22] had served as Perlisten’s flagship speaker until this £30,000 Limited Edition arrived two years later, boasting numerous detail enhancements. It’s at least 25kg heavier too, at 84kg per tower.
Forty years young, Dynaudio’s Contour series is raised to a new level in this ‘Black Edition’ standmount, featuring improvements to every component. Welcome to the dark side!
True to form, Dynaudio showed a slew of products at last year’s High End Show in Munich [HFN Jul ’24] – including a new loudspeaker styled by Tokyo’s Keiji Ashizawa Design studio, plus a turntable built by Thorens. Also shown was this Contour 20 Black Edition standmount, now finally in production. This is a range of one – an elegant two-way with no floorstanding partner – but it serves a useful purpose, offering Dynaudio fans an option to bridge the £4500 Contour 20i and the premium £9600 Confidence 20. Okay, at nearly £6000 a pair, it’s not exactly midway in price, but does represent a tempting step up.
Denon’s first big integrated since its Anniversary PMA-A110 model, launched five years ago, is designed to tug the heartstrings of traditionalist audiophiles. Are you one?
Denon updates its AV receivers at the drop of a hat, but its stereo amplifiers typically enjoy a far longer shelf-life. Side-stepping its 110th anniversary PMA-A110 model [HFN Dec ’20] for a moment, the brand’s previous flagship, the PMA-2500NE [HFN Aug ’16], illustrates this longevity. Nonetheless, there’s a direct line between the PMA-A110 and the £2999 PMA-3000NE tested here, as numerous hardware tweaks devised for that limited edition model underpin Denon’s new stereo integrated.
Produced under the watchful eye of Monitor Audio, Blok’s modular ‘hi-fi furniture’ combines acoustic engineering with contemporary design.
As the EISA Awards jury noted this year [HFN Oct ’24], AV furniture is ‘often overlooked… but has a crucial part to play’. Monitor Audio would agree, and having acquired Blok in 2019, it has launched a redesigned Stax 2G system this summer. Retaining its predecessor’s wooden box-like supports and full-width shelves, the improved modular form-factor promises to be easier to configure and assemble.
A fusion of Yamaha’s hi-fi audio technologies with the proprietary Sound Field modes debuted on its AV hardware decades ago, the HA-L7A is a headphone amp with a twist
For a brand name that appears on very diverse products, from grand pianos to outboard motors, it’s amazing that Yamaha has little in the way of high-end head-fi – the company was a very early adopter of planar-magnetic headphone technology, after all. The HA-L7A DAC/headphone amp is the second product launched to address that deficiency, following on from the YH-5000SE headphone, which garnered an EISA Award last year and is a spiritual successor to the legendary HP-1 from ’76.
Situated squarely in the middle of Canton’s five-strong set of floorstanders, is the Reference 3 the sweet spot?
First seen at High End Munich in 2023, Canton’s Reference range brought a major renewal to the flagship offering of Germany’s largest loudspeaker brand. Introducing a new design aesthetic, with a rounded lute-shape cabinet profile made popular by Sonus faber many years ago, and integrating new drivers, it heralded a major course change from the previous Reference K generation [HFN May & Aug ’22]. Yet Canton’s penchant for sprawling ranges has not changed, so the Reference series contains no fewer than eight models – and that’s not counting the exclusive GS edition, nor the two Alpha models revealed at Munich in 2024.
Innovative as ever, the go-to-speaker designer Karl-Heinz Fink solves the solution of where to best site a small speaker. For the diminutive ES-7N the answer is... anywhere!
The rebirth of classic UK brand Epos got off to a flying start when eminent loudspeaker designer Karl-Heinz Fink bought the brand from Creek Audio in 2020. As his first move he created a new iteration of the ES-14, one of Epos’s most beloved products, but this wasn’t a nostalgia project despite some Back To The Future-themed marketing. Instead, Fink took the basic principles of the original model and designed a new speaker utilising modern technologies. That was a clever move, for while the resulting ES-14N [HFN Jul ’23] might not be as true to the original as some would like – it’s undoubtedly better.
Described as ‘contemporary classics’, the six-strong, sixth generation Gold series spans, you guessed it, six models!
After the renewal of the Silver in 2021 and the Platinum range at the tail end of 2022, it was only logical the intermediate Gold line would reappear, now in 6th generation (6G) guise. The Gold 300 6G is the smaller floorstanding model in the new range, and in many households will be the sensible choice. The three-way design and two 150mm woofers promise performance, while its living room friendly footprint makes choosing between the £4000 Gold 300 6G and the Gold 100 6G standmount (£3000 plus £550 for the ST-2 stands) just that bit more difficult. Its design chops, both when it comes to looks and acoustics, made it an obvious candidate for the EISA members to pin an EISA Award on its lapel this summer.
With the H600’s streaming/DAC platform at its heart the new H400 – dubbed the ‘Streamliner’ by Hegel – looks set to take over as the sweet spot of the range
When Hegel’s reference H600 integrated amplifier [HFN Oct ’23] arrived to replace the H590 [HFN Oct ’18] last summer, it didn’t require much insight into the hi-fi industry to guess that the H390 [HFN Aug ’19] would also be marching in the general direction of the exit soon enough. It’s taken a year, though, before the replacement H400 – aka the ‘Streamliner’ – eventually pulled into port.