Launched in 1954, the Garrard 301 'transcription motor' saw seven editions until production ceased in 1964. Sixty years later comes another, in an 'Advanced' plinth!
I can sense your confusion. However, before you start wondering why our 'Vintage Review' has moved closer to the front of the magazine than usual, let me explain. Yes, you are looking at a turntable based around a Garrard 301, but this is a rather special one - a Garrard 301 produced in limited numbers and made strictly to order. In the plinth shown here and complete with SME Series V-12 tonearm, it will set you back £51,645, or £43,945 with an SME M2-12R. What, you might reasonably ask, is going on?
First debuted in 2017, B&W's 705 standmount has been through three major iterations with both 2020's Series 2 and the current Series 3 being offered in 'Signature' guise
Loudspeaker brand B&W launched its first Signature model in 1991, in the shape of the (founder) John Bowers Silver Signature, and has intermittently released further Signature editions in the 30-plus years since. Well, I say intermittently - while only four more Signature speakers came in the next two decades, the 700 S3 Signature range, which also includes the 702 S3 Signature floorstander , comes hot on
Indulge yourself with linen-wrapped slipcases, in-depth liner notes and heavy art-card covers as Ken Kessler brings you 20 of the best deluxe reissue LPs coming your way...
With the vinyl revival now so firmly established that new pressing plants are being built, the competition has heated up regarding mastering, pressing techniques, vinyl thickness, playback speed and, as seen here, presentation. Deluxe packaging and pressings cost more, so it is applied mainly to milestone albums.
Some costly 'jitter-busters' are less than successful at cleaning up the digits, so can this one justify its high price tag? Paul Miller crunches the numbers...
Jan 1998
If the market for two-box CD transport/outboard DAC combinations has waned in recent years, then the same cannot be said for those little black boxes conceived to nestle in between. I refer, of course, to the add-on accessories often rather optimistically promoted as 'Jitter Busters'. Typically, these rely on a Crystal interface chip and one or two PLLs to suppress jitter while recovering the data clock.
Autobiography, revolution, angst and transcendence: music was never the same after the scandalous premiere of the Second Quartet. Peter Quantrill explores its history
There are pieces where you can hear the world - of music, of art, of human history - turning on its axis. Arnold Schoenberg's Second Quartet is one of those pieces. At the premiere in December 1908, one newspaper critic sensed and feared this (r)evolution in sound, saying it was 'like a convocation of all the neighbourhood cats'.
With recent data suggesting the vinyl revival is beng solely spearheaded by Taylor Swift, plus environmental concerns about LP production, Steve Harris wonders where it goes next
How much longer can it last? In America, as here, vinyl sales have been growing year on year for nearly two decades. But a 2022 slowdown in growth set some commentators suggesting that the vinyl boom could soon be over.
A century-old legend of suspicion and exceptionalism continues to haunt attitudes towards English music, says Peter Quantrill - and it appears that it's the English who won't let it go
The spring cleaning of schedules at BBC Radio 3 took its listeners by surprise, to judge from comments both within and outside the media. The 'shop window' of Record Review on a Saturday morning moved to the first floor, in the afternoon. The spoken-word programmes were shunted off to Radio 4, while Friday Night Is Music Night has resurrected an antique Radio 2 title. The channel's once-serious coverage of new and contemporary music is almost entirely effaced under the controllership of Sam Jackson, who formerly headed up Classic FM.
Silicon chips have been so successful there's a valley named after them, but new materials that are better suited to high-power applications are ready to replace them, says Jim Lesurf
Reading the review of HiFi Rose's RA280 amplifier had me thinking about the ways in which technology has developed over the decades. Modern audio enthusiasts are fairly familiar with the choice between 'solid-state' electronics and 'valve' (or 'tube' for our American colleagues). However, the full story of the choice of devices used for audio and radio kit has shown far more evolution over the decades - and is probably now evolving again.
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to high-quality music playback, says Barry Willis - and it's emotional engagement that's important, not the technology which is used to create it
This past winter I visited a new audio dealer, a fellow I'll call 'Colin'. He's a high-end hobbyist working from his home - a time-honoured practice and an increasingly prevalent one in the Internet age. His large demo room was festooned with recent examples of quality gear from multiple brands, but most conspicuous were the many brightly coloured cables connecting them - the work, he said, of a friend who had spent years researching the behaviours of such cables.
First debuted in 2017, B&W's 705 standmount has been through three major iterations with both 2020's Series 2 and the current Series 3 being offered in 'Signature' guise
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